Residents of Oklahoma House District 53, which encompasses Moore and northwest Norman, will elect their representative between challenger Amy Corley, D- Newella, and incumbent Randy Terrill, R-Moore.

Corley ran for the House District 94 Democratic nomination in 2004 and lost by five votes, according to Oklahoma Election Board’s 2004 primary results. Having lived in District 53 since 2005, Corley said she thought it was time to run again.

“I’m running because I want to be a public servant,” she said.

Corley said she would work on issues for children and families with special needs children and senior citizens.

As a mother of a special needs child, Corley said she sees many issues with the state’s quality of care in that area.

“All too often, I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding that parents of children who have disabilities want the state to help them; we don’t necessary need help, but we need access to health care and need the schools to do their jobs and let kids go to school every day like they are supposed to,” Corley said.

With more than 58,000 special needs children on the state waiting list for state assistance, Corley said she thinks Oklahoma is not prepared for when these children age out of parental guardianship and when the state must assist them.

With more baby boomers aging into retirement, Oklahoma has little community based programs to help senior citizens stay independent and she would rather promote these programs, Corley said.

As for education, Corley said she would like to see Oklahoma school districts’ administrative services consolidate by 30 percent.

Because of the lack of accountability of the funding going to straight to the classrooms, Corley said she does not support State Question 744 and she thinks Oklahoma needs to reinvent how to teach future generations of Oklahomans.

“We are using a medieval approach to education by still using one book to teach a subject,” she said. “I don’t think we improve [education] until we change the way we teach. We can keep throwing money at it and the administrators can still take from the top, but until we changed the way we teach, we are not going to improve education.”

The Daily’s three attempts to reach Terrill by telephone were unsuccessful before press time.

Terrill is the Oklahoma House of Representatives Public Safety and Judiciary chairman and has authored bills such as House Joint Resolution 1042 which was the basis of State Question 751 which, if passed, will make English the official language for state official actions.