Tulsa, Oklahoma

With her long, wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail, the young mom sat alone outside courtroom 6 at the Tulsa County Family Center for Juvenile Justic, checking her phone and anxiously waiting for a court official to call her name for an eviction hearing.

“I’ve never been through this,” Courtney said in early May. Her two kids, ages 5 and 6, were staying with her mother out of town while she tried to catch up on rent or find another place to live. It was the best for the children, she said, but “they want to be with me.”

Between losing one job and starting another, she feared she’d still come up short of the  $1,004 she owed.

She didn’t have much time.

In Oklahoma, the eviction process moves faster than the ability of most renters to respond. State law gives tenants five days to pay their debt or move out. A tenant has to appear in court just three days after a summons arrives. 

Tulsa has one of the worst eviction rates in the country — the as of a decade ago. Since then, the rate has grown from 8% to . Last school year, landlords filed evictions affecting more than 600 children in the state’s largest district, the Tulsa Public Schools. 

Her kids’ schools, Courtney said, didn’t ask why she withdrew them with a month left in the school year.

That’s hardly surprising, experts say.

“[Parents are] looking for, ‘How do I find a place where my kids are going to sleep?’ ” said Eric Hallett, a staff attorney at Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma. “They’re not thinking ‘What can a lawyer do for me?’ or even ‘What can Tulsa Public Schools do for me?’ ”

But in a state with one of the in the nation, that’s something the district is trying to change. Since 2020, leaders have worked with ImpactTulsa, a nonprofit, to prevent disruption in kids’ education and quickly direct parents under threat of eviction to resources like legal aid and rental assistance. When a student’s address appears in an eviction filing, the parent receives an email from the district offering help.

The alert is a promising example of schools being “first responders” in a housing emergency, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a national advocacy organization focused on students experiencing homelessness. Tulsa’s system has caught the attention of organizations doing similar work from Dallas to Dayton, Ohio. But the resources available to families fall far short of the demand, and the threat of eviction itself can be so traumatic that parents are often too overwhelmed to respond.

“There is a culture of defeat,” said Ana Barros, the director of collaboration and partnerships for ImpactTulsa. If the eviction seems like a “done deal, why would I reach out for help?” 

Roughly nationally are caught up in evictions each year, with households headed by single Black mothers . Housing instability lands the heaviest on families with young from a Stanford University survey shows that nearly 30% of parents with children under 6 were worried about being evicted in the next month and 8% had already received an eviction notice. A federal program provides homeless students with educational and transportation services. But families who are evicted don’t immediately qualify for the same support, and the damage to students’ learning is clear.

“The gaps in children’s education are huge,” said Emily Turner, an attorney who is part of ImpactTulsa’s eviction prevention team. Missing days and weeks of school because of an eviction raises concerns about kids’ safety, she said, and the more they miss, the harder it is to come back. “They feel behind or they feel scared or they feel like this isn’t my space anymore.”

In the Oklahoma City schools, 65% of students whose families received were chronically absent, almost as many as those who were actually evicted, according to , part of Mental Health Association Oklahoma. On state assessments, students with an eviction notice or judgment had 25% lower proficiency rates in math compared to their peers. In reading, the academic impact was more than twice as much — 56% lower. 

“We have slipped to the bottom in education rankings,” said state Rep. Amanda Clinton, a Democrat who this year to give tenants facing eviction access to free mediation before a judge heard their case. The bill passed the House, but died in the Senate. She agrees with Republicans that the state should focus on turning around its dismal performance in . “But we cannot be serious about improving student outcomes unless we get serious about keeping kids in the classroom to start with.”

At Kerr Elementary, on the east side of Tulsa, Principal Jennifer Thomas sees the academic impact of evictions every morning. Students with unstable housing are frequently absent, and when they do come to school, they often arrive at least an hour late and hungry. 

“We have students who have been at four different schools within a month,” she said. As with Courtney’s kids, Thomas said it’s not unusual for grandparents to provide backup, but that adds to the learning disruption. “Grandma doesn’t know where the school is, or Grandma’s not used to having to get the kids up at 7:30.” 

Lawmakers took up the issue last year and worked to pass a bipartisan bill that would have given tenants a few more days to show up in court — a rare development in such a deep red state. But Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, . With a background in , including rental homes in Florida, he argued that the extension would be too “burdensome” for landlords. This year, a died in committee. 

“This is a very, very landlord-friendly state,” said Delia Kimbrel, the director of research and policy at ImpactTulsa. “The scales are really stacked up against the family.”

‘Human realities’

landlords are the most likely to evict, . Those include Vesta Realty, which owned Barcelona Apartments, the Spanish-style complex at a busy intersection in southeast Tulsa that filed the case against Courtney.

Hannah Remick, a former administrative assistant for the company, who herself from one of its 40 complexes, estimates that Vesta filed about 25 evictions a week. Whether tenants have kids doesn’t make landlords any less likely to force them out, she said.

“They would just say ‘units.’ They wouldn’t think about who is living in that unit,” she said. The process, she said, is “very separated from the human realities of what’s going on there.”

When ImpactTulsa identified management companies evicting families with school-aged kids, some of the affected properties had and code violations that had gone for months. In 2024, one mom of a kindergartner told reporters she was to the media about a lack of hot water and cockroaches in her apartment. 

Poor living conditions for renters are not unique to Tulsa. A showed that 13% of renters moved in the past two years because their home needed repairs. Five percent said they were either evicted or trying to avoid eviction.

Remick described as “one of the worst,” with workers instructed to layer coats of Kilz primer over walls with mold. Courtney told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· she had six work orders pending, including one for a leaky water heater, when she was evicted. Because an eviction can prevent a tenant from getting another lease and affect future employment, she asked Âé¶čŸ«Æ· not to use her last name. 

The company’s financial condition was likely one reason for the backlog of repairs. Vesta’s owner, Marc Kulick, is facing . In February, Fannie Mae, the mortgage lender, against the company, and in July, as a result of litigation, a , YSA Investments, took ownership of multiple Vesta properties, including Barcelona. Vesta was also among the Tulsa landlords that fell months behind on .

“We all got letters on our doors saying they were going to charge for water,” Courtney said, even though that cost is supposed to be part of the rent. 

According to a city official, the company caught up with water bills, and Vesta issued a statement saying that because of a pending “ownership dispute,” all questions about conditions, staffing or maintenance at Barcelona should go to the current operator. 

YSA spokesman Parker Detweiler said his company is “doing everything humanly possible within the law to get living conditions where they should be.”

Sherri Daley, executive director of the Tulsa Apartment Association, said while it’s important to address the “underlying causes of housing instability,” landlords have to worry about their bottom line.

“Property owners and managers typically focus on the lease obligations, payment history, and compliance with the rental agreement rather than whether a household includes school-aged children,” she said. One of the arguments against extending the eviction timeline was that it would hurt small, independent landlords. “Even one missed payment can create a ripple effect, leading to deferred maintenance and other financial pressures for the owner.”

Tenants falling behind on rent can sometimes avoid an eviction if they communicate with their landlords, said Amy Coldren, who launched Shelterwell in Oklahoma City in 2023.  As part of its eviction prevention work, the organization provides nonprofits and schools with a free, tenant education program called . It covers topics like how to understand a lease and manage a budget.

Coldren said one of the first women she met after starting Shelterwell was facing eviction because her children, who had previously been in foster care, were considered unauthorized occupants.

“I’m a former foster parent, so I know the work that she did to get her children back,” she said. “A simple solution would have been for her to have a conversation with her landlord and put her kids on the lease.”

‘A sensitive manner’

ImpactTulsa’s work began with a disturbing realization.

Property owners  are also concentrated in the same neighborhoods as schools with the highest . That’s what the organization found when it began scraping the eviction court docket six years ago for addresses that match those of district students.

Between 2020 and 2023, Kimbrel identified eviction filings affecting roughly 4,400 Tulsa students. The disruption wasn’t brief. A year after a district family’s eviction showed up on their radar, nearly three-fourths of those students were still chronically absent. 

“That just slapped everybody in the face,” she said. 

But even the most sophisticated of district data systems can’t stop families from being displaced. The district’s homeless education staff last school year emailed all 621 families identified through the alert system, said BreAnna Shine, director of student engagement. Less than 100 ultimately received support through the district. Most didn’t respond. They might have landed somewhere else, ignored the message or resolved the issue with their landlord.

The other half of the system is a resource hub in one of the district’s most heavily impacted clusters of schools, East Central. The schools on that side of town draw from apartments like Eastgate, which filed eviction notices during that 2020-23 period affecting 47 students at Cooper Elementary and 26 students at East Central High School, Kimbrel’s analysis showed.

The hub at East Central Middle is two offices near the front entrance where Angeles Gonzalez, a family “navigator” with Tulsa Responds, and Turner, an attorney for the YWCA, meet privately with parents to triage their immediate needs — items like rental assistance, a free hotspot or food stamps. But district staff initially wrestled with whether they even wanted to know which families had been evicted. 

“It’s a sensitive matter,” said Stephanie Andrews, executive director of student and family support services. It’s uncomfortable to contact a parent who might not want anyone to know they’ve hit such a low point. “It’s not been without some bumps.” 

The district can guide a family to a nonprofit offering short-term rental assistance or temporary housing, but that often means they end up on a waiting list for services. Restore Hope, a nonprofit, spends about $100,000 a month in rental assistance, but those funds only cover about 30% of the eviction cases, said Josh Geppelt, executive director. Plus, to qualify, applicants have to show they have “means to maintain the rent after we do the assist.”

Living in limbo during that application process, while also bouncing from one living situation to the next, is draining, said Aspen Allen, a mother of three.

“You’re waiting for them to call you, and if nobody answers, they move to the next person,” she said. 

She leaned on the district last fall for clothes and backpacks for her kids in between leaving a rental home with plumbing problems, spending time in a run by a local church and moving into Parkview Terrace on the west side of town, a public housing development known for . It’s the same complex where she’s currently waiting for a subsidized apartment. 

“I haven’t been able to have my own spot for my kids to be happy, go to school, go on vacation and just have a good life,” said Allen, who works as a DoorDasher and was waiting to hear back about a part-time FedEx position. “I’m trying to keep them in school, not missing any days, which is very difficult at times.”

‘They grab what they can’

Inspired by Tulsa’s example, nonprofit leaders in other cities nonetheless face the same obstacles in trying to serve families with scarce resources. 

“There is no system,” said Aqua Porter, executive director of the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative in New York. “There are just things that people have to navigate through, and they are not connected.”

Most of those other nonprofits have something Oklahoma does not — a longer timeline between eviction notices and court appearances.  In New York, for example, nonprofits have roughly 30 days from an eviction filing to help families find legal aid, point them toward sources of financial support and encourage them to attend their first court appearance.

Because Oklahoma’s system is designed to get renters with delinquent payments out as soon as possible, it’s often too late to prevent eviction. Those with nowhere to go may stay in the apartment after they’re evicted until they’re forced out by the sheriff’s department, said Melissa Vowell, a homeless education program specialist for the Tulsa Public Schools.

They usually have about an hour to collect belongings. 

“If it’s a sheriff’s eviction, they grab what they can in the time a sheriff will allow,” she said.

Their next stop might be Vowell’s office, which connects to a storeroom packed with school uniforms, socks and underwear, and personal hygiene products.

She also maintains a detailed spreadsheet filled with organizations offering food, transportation and housing. One nonprofit on the list is , tucked into a serene, wooded area west of downtown. Out of a small white cottage, Executive Director Tina Massey runs an eviction diversion program that provides one-time payments of up to $1,000 for those who have fallen behind on rent. Massey estimates that the program reached close to 90 district families last school year.  For those who lose their housing, a shelter on the same property offers fully furnished apartments for up to three months.

Brooklyn Cloud found Family Promise on Facebook last year while living in a Mazda SUV with two daughters, one in preschool and another in second grade. After an eviction from Harmony Glen, a 74-unit complex owned by a , they spent six months sleeping under the lights in Walmart and QuikTrip parking lots. 

“I didn’t even know a 7-year-old could get depressed,” Cloud said. “Her grades started to slip, lack of appetite. She wanted to sleep all the time.”

While staying in one of the apartments, Cloud and her husband paid off the eviction and saved for a new home. Their oldest now “has her own space.” 

“She’s more bubbly and her personality is back,” she said. “She’s not so down-in-the-dumps and snappy.”

‘Legal first aid’

Most parents in a crisis like Cloud’s don’t even show up to court. 

“They can’t get time off work or child care,” said Hallett, the legal aid attorney.

That was clear the day Courtney’s case appeared on the docket. Of the 89 eviction filings before Judge Tammy Bruce, who hears about 13,000 eviction cases a year, less than half of the tenants showed up. 

If they do appear, they’re unlikely to have . In nearly every case, Judge Bruce told them they could either meet with their landlord’s representative or see if they qualified for legal aid. Court documents show Courtney represented herself, while a Vesta employee appeared for the company.

Courtney was evicted two weeks later. Attempts to reach her by phone and text since then were unsuccessful.

Last year, Hallett began asking tenants if they have children in the Tulsa schools. It’s his contribution to the district’s effort to identify more families. 

On the district side, about 40 teachers at East Central MIddle learned how to offer “legal first aid,” like helping parents construct timelines of the events that led up to eviction. Missed or partial payments, maintenance issues reported, and messages to landlords and property managers are important to document because when apartments change ownership, new managers don’t always honor previous attempts to pay. 

Barros, with ImpactTulsa, expected some resistance from staff to the training. She’s a former social studies teacher at East Central Middle.

“Teachers are like ‘Whoa, that’s not my job. You’re adding something else to my plate,’ ” she said. But schools play a unique role in eviction prevention, she said. “Kids are legally required to be here. So let’s take advantage of that.”

“Resting up from my vacay.”

“Netflix binge last night.”

Those were among the “lame excuses” for missing school that Oklahoma’s Union Public Schools featured during the 2024-25 school year, part of a humorous campaign intended to reduce chronic absenteeism.

Behind the comical posters, however, leaders were troubled by the data. During the 2022-23 school year, 29% of students missed at least 10% of the school year. At Union High School, the rate soared to 43%.

“I think there have been huge changes in behavior since COVID,” said Chris Payne, spokesman for the Tulsa-area district. He echoed what policy experts and school leaders nationwide have been saying since rates skyrocketed after schools fully reopened. “I think people reprioritized and decided, ‘You know, I’ve got things I need to take care of.’ ”

In addition to the attendance campaign, staff met with parents and visited students’ homes to find out why they were missing school. But starting in 2027, Oklahoma schools will no longer be judged on whether those chronic absenteeism rates go up or down. The legislature voted last year to remove the indicator from the state’s education accountability system as a factor that contributes to a school’s overall grade and can determine whether a school is labeled in need of improvement. 

Among , teachers and administrators, there’s a sense of relief.

“I’m not sure that it’s fair to evaluate schools based on something that we cannot control,” said Mike Simpson, superintendent of the Guthrie Public Schools, north of Oklahoma City. Originally in favor of making chronic absenteeism a factor in schools’ A-F grades, he no longer thinks it’s a good way to assess schools.

Oklahoma’s most , for 2024-25, gives the state a D for the percentage of students with good attendance. Its chronic absenteeism rate of 19% is far from the worst in the nation, but it’s still 5 percentage points above the state’s pre-pandemic level of 14%. Data from shows the rate stands at about 21%. 

“It’s not just an Oklahoma thing,” Simpson said. “I’ve got colleagues and friends all over the country, and they’re fighting some of the same challenges.”

Oklahoma isn’t the first state to remove chronic absenteeism from its accountability system. Arkansas took it out in 2024 as part of . Illinois officials have recommended replacing chronic absenteeism with , and now reports broader attendance data rather than just chronic absenteeism.

‘States already had the data’

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires state accountability systems, and the report cards available to the public include indicators of academic performance, graduation rates, progress in learning English and an additional measure of student success. For that last metric, 38 states chose chronic absenteeism.

The U.S. Department of Education confirmed that it’s currently considering the state’s request to replace chronic absenteeism with a new measure, but so far, state officials haven’t said what that’s going to be. The challenge will be landing on a K-12 data point that is comparable across Oklahoma’s more than 500 districts, said Paige Kowalski, executive vice president for the Data Quality Campaign. The nonprofit has published reviews of state report cards since 2016.

Chronic absenteeism “was an inexpensive indicator to implement because states already had the data,” she said. Adopting a new measure, she said, could require districts to pay for changes to their student information systems and spend time training staff to collect and input the data. In addition, she said, it takes two years to ensure data is reliable enough to use in decisions about school ratings.

But the connections between chronic absenteeism and student achievement are backed by years of research. , for example, showed that a 1% increase in attendance was linked to a 1.5% jump in third graders passing the state reading test. showed that students who were chronically absent in middle school had lower math scores and were less likely to graduate on time than those who didn’t miss as much school. 

Kowalski said there’s plenty schools can do to improve attendance. Reducing bullying, increasing teacher retention and challenges, she said, can address some of the reasons students miss school.

Transportation surfaced as a barrier when the Union district surveyed parents, teachers and students on the issue. But teachers were far less likely than parents to say that reliable transportation would improve attendance — 25% compared to 47%. There were also stark differences between parents and students. Twenty-three percent of students said mental health reasons kept them home, while 12% of parents said that was a common explanation. 

Tulsa makes progress

Some communities in Oklahoma have adopted a tough posture toward parents whose children are frequently absent. Erik Johnson, a Republican district attorney in the southeastern part of the state, has prosecuted and jailed parents to force compliance with the law. 

Prior to the pandemic, Guthrie allowing police to fine parents for their kids’ truancy, but Simpson, the superintendent, said those measures didn’t “move the needle.”

In Tulsa, the state’s largest district, Board Member Stacey Woolley said she’s glad chronic absenteeism is no longer part of the grading formula because the indicator lowered schools’ scores. 

“At the same time, we have to continue to make it a priority,” she said. When leaders examine student data, they find that students who struggle are chronically absent, regardless of their socioeconomic status. 

The district’s work shows that reductions are possible. The rate has declined over the past two years from 44% to 37%, and have seen drops of at least 10% compared to last school year. 

Such efforts won’t go completely unrewarded. Under the to the Education Department, schools that lower chronic absenteeism could still score “bonus points” toward their grade but the indicator won’t be used in determining which schools are identified as needing improvement. 

By the end of the Union district’s campaign, chronic absenteeism had dropped by about 1.4%, well below the goal of 7%. Still, Payne said, the progress equated to 200 fewer chronically absent students. 

Leaders also realized something else: Students in the district’s career-tech programs, like aerospace and construction, had lower absenteeism rates than those in the general student population. Now, in response to local workforce shortages, the district has launched a healthcare career pathway as well. 

“I had students that didn’t really have a direction,” said Jason McMullen, who teaches aviation courses at the district’s Innovation Lab. “Then they see a helicopter land and that lightbulb goes off.”

On a recent Wednesday morning, some students at the lab learned how to secure safety wire to the nuts and bolts that hold planes together, while others patched holes in sheetrock. 

The change to the state’s accountability system, “doesn’t mean we’re going to quit working on it,” said Payne, the district’s spokesman. “The reality remains that if students are not present, they’re not going to perform and have success in school and life.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma reached a new milestone on Monday with a new superintendent taking office in Oklahoma City Public Schools.

For the first time, Black women are simultaneously leading the state’s two largest school districts, OKCPS and Tulsa Public Schools.

Jamie Polk on Monday, succeeding Sean McDaniel.

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Ebony Johnson became the first Black woman to lead the Tulsa district, the state’s largest by enrollment, when she was picked to be interim superintendent in September and .

Polk said she looks forward to working with Johnson to enrich students’ educational experiences and opportunities.

“It is our shared belief that every child should see themselves represented in the educators and leaders who guide them in their educational journey,” Polk said.

Tulsa schools did not return a request for comment from Johnson.

When Johnson was promoted in TPS, Oklahoma had only one other Black female superintendent working in the state at the time — Cecilia Robinson-Woods at Millwood Public Schools.

Robinson-Woods said she sees Johnson’s and Polk’s hiring as a “big step” for women, especially Black women, to be given the confidence and trust to lead a school district.

It’s also a boost in representation of groups that aren’t always well served, she said.

“It is not a secret that minority children, especially Black children, have the lowest test scores in everything,” Robinson-Woods said. “It’s not to say just because you have someone of color that things are going to change for those learners, but it does at least give you an insight, and it does at least broaden the conversation about what kids need.”

on minority students’ test scores and long-term outcomes when they have a teacher of their same race.

But the demographics of educators and school leaders in Oklahoma public schools are vastly different from that of the students they serve, . While 77% of public educators in the state are white, more than half of all students are racial or ethnic minorities.

Having diverse leadership is important in districts that want to prioritize equity, said Karlos Hill, regents’ associate professor of African and African American studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“We care about equity both in terms of making sure our kids are fairly educated, but we also should care about the people who are educating them,” Hill said, “and making sure that there’s a diverse group of, not only teachers, but diverse leadership to make sure that the policies (and) the procedures of the school are not just reflective of one group, but of the community.”

Hiring Black female superintendents is significant in the context of the state’s “long and deep history of exclusion” for people of color, said Hill, who is also the OU president’s adviser for community engagement.

That history, he said, is the reason Oklahoma didn’t reach this milestone decades ago.

“If we care about equity, we will care about that history of exclusion and the ways in which it shows up today,” Hill said.

Unlike in Tulsa, there are Black female predecessors in the Oklahoma City superintendent’s office. The first was Betty Mason in 1992, who also was the first woman and the first African American superintendent to lead OKCPS.

“We all owe her a debt of gratitude for setting the stage for the historic moment we find ourselves in today,” Polk said.

The new superintendent said her district will continue to recruit diverse teachers through its “Grow Our Own” program. The initiative, founded in 2016 at the OKCPS Foundation, covers the cost of a teaching degree for paraprofessionals working in the district.

Twenty-five teachers, most of whom are bilingual or racially diverse, have earned a bachelor’s degree through the program so far, and another 81 are on track to graduate this summer. The OKCPS Foundation launched a similar program to .

Sen. George Young, D-Oklahoma City, said he hopes Polk will continue to emphasize the teacher pipeline program and overall teacher pay. Young has represented the historically Black area of northeast Oklahoma City in the state Legislature for 10 years and is a pastor in the community.

“When you’ve got folks who look like you standing in front of you, it does make a difference,” Young said. “It doesn’t make all the difference, but it sure does make a difference. And so I hope that she will remember that and see the things that made a difference in her life. And I think that’ll make a difference in the life of our school district.”

An Iowa native, Polk spent 25 years as a teacher, principal and district administrator in Lawton Public Schools, where she moved because of her husband’s military career. McDaniel, the outgoing OKCPS superintendent, hired her in 2019 to oversee the district’s elementary schools.

Leading the neighboring district of Millwood, Robinson-Woods said she’s gotten to know Polk as a “very personable” leader and a data-driven problem solver.

Similar descriptions have been applied to Johnson, who is from the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Johnson was raised in Tulsa and spent her entire career in the district when the local school board promoted her from chief academic officer to superintendent.

Like Johnson, this is Polk’s first superintendent job, one she said she’s “deeply honored” to accept.

“Moving forward, OKCPS will remain steadfast in our dedication to cultivating leadership that reflects the vibrant tapestry of the communities we serve,” Polk said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

But then Hofmeister, a former teacher and onetime owner of a Tulsa tutoring company, put half a million miles on her car traveling throughout the state. She listened as educators spoke of the challenges facing small-town schools. 

“She was willing to listen and learn by getting out into our districts,” Ford said.

Educational options in those communities are now center stage as voters prepare to choose their next governor. Incumbent Gov. Kevin Stitt is campaigning on a statewide platform and promises to “support any bills 
 that would give parents and students more freedom to attend the schools that best fit their learning needs.”

A that died in the Senate earlier this year would have opened them to children in families that earn roughly three times what it takes to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, with most awards ranging from $5,900 to about $8,100. Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, a Republican, has pledged to if Stitt wins.

But Hofmeister, who switched parties to challenge Stitt as a Democrat, has called the proposal a because it would pull funding from traditional districts.

“I have gone to those communities that have lost their school, and then they lose their town,” Hofmeister told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. 

As the leader of one of the reddest states in the country, Stitt fully embraces the GOP education agenda, from how teachers discuss race and gender to a policy that allowed students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity. In his State of the State this year, he said, “God gave kids to parents — not the government!” He , who is finishing her second term, for a lack of improvement in Oklahoma schools, while she points to financial scandals under his watch.

show Stitt’s lead over Hofmeister shrinking — a reflection, some say, of the power of her message about rural schools. 

“We’ve hit on an issue that strikes at the heart of a community’s identity,” said Amber England, a public affairs and political consultant who previously ran an education nonprofit. 

A Hofmeister supporter, England said Stitt might roll into a rural town “with a hat on and cowboy boots,” but doesn’t grasp that his proposal won’t help students in remote areas without private schools.

Rural schools depend more on state funding than those with a larger tax base, said Ford, executive director of the Organization of Rural Oklahoma Schools. Vouchers, he said, could translate to an annual loss of $350 million in funding for public schools.

“We’re worried about money,” he said. “Anytime you take money out of the formula, how are you going to replace it?”

But Trent England, a fellow at the conservative Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, accused Hofmeister of seeking to preserve a one-size-fits-all system and “trying to scare people” by implying vouchers will shutter rural schools — often the largest employers in these towns. 

“There are serious problems in public schools, and that’s not limited to urban areas,” said England, who is not related to Amber England. 

‘Hard feelings’

On his campaign website, Stitt said Hofmeister hasn’t done enough to fix Oklahoma’s schools, which have ranked low for decades. The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress put the state among those performing the U.S. average in math and reading. 

Hofmeister said one way to improve schools is to address the state’s teacher shortage. She has proposed a $5,000 as part of a budget request for next year’s legislative session. Meanwhile, Stitt proposed a bill that would push some teacher salaries to as high as . But the only legislation that passed was a new incentive and scholarship to push high schoolers to major in education when they go to college. 

Oklahoma teachers haven’t had a substantial raise since 2018, when the legislature passed a $6,100 increase, falling short of the $10,000 they asked for. They walked out for nine days, part of the wave of “Red for Ed” demonstrations across the country. Walking out even after lawmakers boosted their pay, Ford said, “created hard feelings between the teachers and legislators” that linger today. 

“Our teachers don’t feel respected,” he said. 

Those feelings have only increased with Republicans’ efforts to clamp down on lessons and educator training that address institutional racism, . In July, the state board of education the Tulsa district’s accreditation after a state prompted by Stitt concluded the district’s training materials violated the state’s law banning critical race theory. 

“I firmly believe that not one cent of taxpayer money should be used to define and divide young Oklahomans by their race or sex,” he said in on the audit. “Let’s teach students, not indoctrinate them.” 

Ryan Walters — the state’s education secretary, a new position created by the governor — has tweeted calling out teachers he says push far-left ideology. Walters, who is running for state superintendent, trails Democrat Jena Wilson, a middle school teacher in Oklahoma City, according to a released last month.

“Many teachers state they don’t know how they will be able to remain teaching should the outcome of the race be a win for both men,” said Stacey Woolley, president of the Tulsa Board of Education. “Many have directly said they will resign immediately.”

‘Overseeing the money’

In addition to decrying Stitt’s culture war focus, his critics draw attention to the misuse of $650,000 in federal relief funds distributed through ClassWallet, an online payment system for educators. Walters oversaw the $8 million program, which offered $1,500 grants to low-income families for educational expenses. 

But some spent the money on video games, Christmas trees and cookware, a . that in his role as executive director of an education nonprofit, Walters helped ClassWallet secure the contract. The ClassWallet’s parent company, Kleo Inc., for breach of contract.

Stitt’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. 

With Hofmeister and Stitt scheduled to debate on the 19th and the election still weeks away, the race is expected to be close. 

Kenneth Hicks, a political science professor at Rogers State University, said the results might hinge more on voter reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in , which took away the constitutional right to abortion and returned the decision to the states. 

“It was easy as a campaign issue for Stitt to say he would sign any ,” Hicks said â€œRepublicans may be finding themselves regretting jumping on that issue with both feet.”

Regardless of the reason for the race’s narrowing gap, some of Stitt’s supporters are nervous.

“For Republicans, it’s certainly closer than it should be,” Trent England said, but added Oklahomans are “staunchly pro-life” and support the governor’s opposition to transgender females using girls’ locker rooms. 

In a state that was solidly Democratic until its Congressional delegation began to shift in the 1980s, Amber England is hoping for an upset. As someone who led a successful campaign in the state in 2020, she’s seen surprises on Election Day.

“Voters don’t get enough credit for making good decisions at the ballot box,” she said. “If we’re able to run a race in Oklahoma on the issue of protecting public schools, that’s a game changer for our friends across the country.”

Released Tuesday by researchers at Georgetown University, the results show that young adults who attended a universal pre-K program in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as 4-year-olds were more likely to graduate from high school on time and enroll in college than peers who didn’t attend.

They’re also more civically engaged. The percentage of former pre-K students who registered to vote and actually cast ballots was 4.5 points higher than for those who started kindergarten without pre-K.

“Middle class kids benefit from a strong program,” said William Gormley, a professor and co-director of the Center for Research on Children in the U.S. “Disadvantaged kids benefit even more.”

Presented at Georgetown, the findings, based on a sample of over 4,000 students, build on more than two decades of work from Gormley and colleagues to determine the lasting benefits of state-funded preschool programs. The researchers also discussed new results from a second study that shed light on whether the benefits of pre-K withstood the pandemic.

At a time when schools are under pressure to reverse learning loss and increase performance beyond pre-pandemic levels, Gormley stressed that classroom quality and connections to the K-12 system matter. 

In an interview, he acknowledged recent disappointing showing worse results for those who attended that state’s program. Tennessee’s program primarily serves those from low-income families. The Vanderbilt University study concluded that improving the quality of the elementary schools those students later attend could boost results, and the state has since . Gormley said that because Oklahoma’s program has always been open to all 4-year-olds, not just poor children, there’s a stronger effect on the K-12 system.

Oklahoma launched its program in 1998 as essentially a new grade level. of the state’s 4-year-olds participated in 2020, but enrollment dropped to 64% during the pandemic. Teachers are fully credentialed and receive additional early-childhood training. Originally, classes were primarily in elementary schools. In Tulsa, many are also in “well-staffed” Head Start centers, which, Gormley said, likely contributed to stronger results.

While President Joe Biden campaigned on adding two years of free preschool to the public education system, he failed to get the proposal through Congress. For now, states wanting to emulate Oklahoma’s model are on their own

“I would love to see the federal government step up and do more in early childhood,” said Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. He joined the event virtually to discuss the 2020 state ballot measure establishing a nicotine tax to pay for preschool for all 4-year-olds. “If it can pass in a purple state like Colorado with 67% of the vote, there ought to be a package that gets 65 or 70 votes in the U.S. Senate.” 

Colorado became the eighth state with universal pre-K. Polis, who championed the effort, in May creating the program. While the law guarantees children 10 hours of pre-K per week, starting in the fall of 2023, he said he hopes most districts will push beyond that to at least 12 hours.

But he said many policymakers are reluctant to consider benefits that won’t emerge until children are in high school. 

“In the short term, I think one of the appeals to the business community, to many Republicans, is the workforce benefit,” he said. “This empowers a second parent returning to work, helps a single mom struggling to get by.”

A frequent argument against public funding for pre-K is that any boost in achievement in the early grades fades by the time children reach third grade and beyond. Anna Johnson, an associate professor of psychology at Georgetown who is leading a second Tulsa pre-K study, noted that the gains for former pre-K students don’t disappear. Children who did not attend catch up after entering school.

Gormley’s research shows that some advantages of attending pre-K persist well beyond the early grades, while there are little to no positive effects in other areas.

For example, earlier from the Tulsa study showed that in high school, former pre-K students were less likely to fail classes and repeat a grade, and were more likely to take advanced courses. But they didn’t have higher test scores or grades than those who weren’t in the program. 

When researchers examined student performance in middle school, they saw no impact of pre-K on students’ attitudes toward school and their likelihood of risky behavior, including smoking, drug use or early sexual activity. But those who attended pre-K were more likely to take honors courses and have better attendance. 

“Researchers who study early-childhood should not put all their eggs in a standardized test basket,” Gormley said. “There are lots of other crazy, scary, but wonderful things happening to kids’ lives. It’s a mistake to avoid those other choices.” 

Pandemic-era data

Emerging results of focus on children only from low-income families who began Head Start at 3 and entered Tulsa’s pre-K program at 4. They were in first grade when the pandemic began.

The researchers, led by Johnson and Deborah Phillips of Georgetown, found and noted that children’s home lives before the pandemic predicted whether they were able to keep learning when schools closed. If there wasn’t enough to eat, parents were depressed or the environment was chaotic, children were less likely to participate in remote learning.

But despite school closures, they found that last school year, third graders who had two years of preschool still had more complex vocabularies and stronger math skills than those who did not . They were also better able to manage their behavior and emotions and had better working memories — what Johnson calls a “mental desktop.”

“These are the skills that underlie success in school and in life,” she said.

Phillips, a psychology professor at Georgetown who has worked with Gormley on the study from the beginning, said both studies reveal elements of high-quality programs, such as well-trained teachers and support for instruction, that contribute to strong results. 

Policymakers, she said, shouldn’t cut corners.

“Don’t take anything away from it. Keep your [bachelor’s]-level teachers. Keep the incredible professional development that you do,” she said. “Don’t feel like ‘We can start chipping away at it.’ That would be a really bad thing.”