OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Department of Education is asking the legislature to turn back time and take a step towards reinstating a decade’s worth of funding cuts next fiscal year.
After more than two hours of questions and line item breakdowns, the Oklahoma Board of Education approved State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister’s 2021 $3.29 billion budget request by a 4-0 margin at its Oct. 24 meeting. Board members Estela Hernandez and Kurt Bollenbach abstained. Brian Bobek was absent.
The proposal seeks an additional $220 million in state funding, a 7% increase from the current fiscal year. Should the request be granted, it would place per-pupil spending at $3,275.60, or the same level as fiscal year 2009. The request is not adjusted for inflation.
“We’re only asking to return to 2009,” Hofmeister said. “We haven’t even asked for additional funds yet. We have been cut by ... 20% over the last decade. This is an incremental increase to just get out of the hole, then we can talk about doing the things that would make our state really advanced.”
Even with the continued funding cuts over the last decade, public school enrollment statewide has increased by about 50,000 students, which is slightly less than the entire population of Grady County. Among the requests in the increased budget is an additional $118 million in order to hire additional teachers and reduce class sizes, including $25 million just to address the need for more kindergarten and first-grade teachers.
The class size audits that were once required by state law under House Bill 1017 have been waived since 2012 due to budget cuts. However, those audits are scheduled to resume in 2021-2022 with kindergarten and first grade, thus putting the need for more teachers into sharper focus. Once the waiver program ends, districts will be fined should their kindergarten or first-grade teachers have more than 20 students in a class.
Further exacerbating that need is the state’s goal of reducing the number of emergency certified teachers by 95% by 2025 as part of the state’s long-term plan, also known as Oklahoma Edge. Through Thursday, 2,158 emergency teaching credentials have been requested for the current fiscal year, including 544 for elementary education and 350 for early childhood.
“We have to state and acknowledge what’s happened over the last decade,” State Board of Education member Carlisha Bradey said. “We have to think about the trajectory of generation of kids who’ve been in underfunded education system.” The proposal also calls for $19 million to create a School Counselor Corps. Along with hiring up to 366 new school counselors statewide, the program would create competitive grants that districts could apply for to address chronic absenteeism, trauma and other counseling-related issues.
A version of the School Counselor Corps was included in the State Department of Education’s budget request last year but was among the cuts made to the final version. “We are not going to be a ‘Top 10 state’ if we do not invest in our children in a very strategic way,” Hofmeister said, referencing a repeated goal of Gov. Kevin Stitt. “We have to meet these basic needs first.”
Other areas slated to receive more money in the proposed budget include an additional $9.68 million for alternative education programs, a $6 million bump for instructional materials and $4.4 million for SoonerStart, an early childhood intervention program operated in conjunction with the Oklahoma Department of Health. Although board members acknowledged the need to reinstate a decade’s worth of cuts, at least one was quick to point out that there is no guarantee that the state legislature will grant their request when it reconvenes in 2020.
“It’s an outline,” State Board of Education member William Flanagan said. “It’ll still go to the senate, house and governor’s house ... then it’ll come back to us. This is just a first budget attempt. They’re going to change the numbers the way they see things. This is not the final cut.”