Oklahoma public education will face a nearly $110 million budget cut by the end of the fiscal year June 30, negatively impacting all schools in the state.
Oklahoma education ranks 48th in the nation, and some believe the budget cuts could hurt its quality even further. With the additional cuts, education administrators are worried it will be even more difficult to improve the standing and are planning for the worst.
"We must find ways to make required cuts in a manner that will do the least amount of damage to our core mission and to the excellence which has been built at the university," OU President David Boren said in an email to university faculty and staff last month.
Boren isn’t the only one preparing for adjustments.
Joseph Siano, the superintendent of Norman Public Schools, said what concerns him more than the money is the quality.
“It doesn’t matter the money you have if you don’t have the quality or the resources to pay for,” Siano said, mentioning that the Norman Public Schools system already faces a shortage of a 1,000 teachers.
Siano is worried that even if Oklahoma education suddenly did manage to accrue more money, there would not be any more well-qualified teachers left in the state to hire because they have all been driven out.
That is also a concern of Gregg Garn, dean of the OU College of Education, who said around 60 percent of the college's graduates leave the state to seek better teaching jobs, and that it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep them in Oklahoma.
“The sort of discrepancy in terms of the salary gap between us and surrounding states, it continues to increase,” Garn said.
Garn said that as a result of more teacher education graduates leaving the state, Oklahoma has had to hire “emergency” teachers — people with no teaching degrees or experience.
The Oklahoma State Board of Education approved 503 emergency certifications just last August.
Meanwhile, the education budget cuts have also been accompanied by a sharp increase in higher education tuition, a detail that affects all current and future public university students.
Siano said the rise in tuition has caused hesitancy among some high school students considering attending college, especially those from low-income families.
Around 50 percent of students enrolled at Norman Public Schools are on free and reduced lunch, Siano said, therefore turning the possibility of higher education into an equity one.
“They are more and more isolated from getting higher-ed opportunities,” Siano said on students going through adverse conditions. “It affects their high school grades too because they don’t feel like they have anything to strive for anymore.”
“You don’t want a state of have and have-nots,” he added.
Garn said the higher education barriers are something that should definitely be addressed, but even still, enrollment at the College of Education has not been severely affected.
“We get lots of people who, regardless of the negative aspects of teaching, can’t wait to come into the college,” he said. “It’s definitely a challenge … but we still get tons and tons of people where that’s their passion.”
Garn said the higher cost of an education is one of the reasons the Debt-Free Teachers program was put into place. For any recent education graduate with student debt, Oklahoma is willing to pay $5,000 every year towards the debt for four years so long as the graduate works as a teacher in the state.
Garn said the program has been able to keep some students from leaving, but not enough.
“You'll never go into teaching for a huge check … but there has to be that livable salary,” he said.
As of now, there have not been many attempts at combating the education budget crisis in Oklahoma, but OU President David Boren has proposed his own solution: an increase in the state sales tax by 1 cent on the dollar. Boren hopes the penny tax would raise an additional $615 million to go toward state education. His plan will be put on the November ballot for a vote by the people if the process of gathering signatures for a petition is successful.
