On April 1, voters in Edmond Public Schools Board of Education District 5 will cast their ballots in the race between incumbent Marcus Jones and challenger Jim Putnam.
District 5 covers much of north-central Edmond from Forrest Hills Road south toward Danforth Road. According to EPS district maps, District 5’s borders include the John Ross, Cross Timbers, Centennial and Heritage elementary campuses, Sequoyah and Cheyenne middle schools, and Edmond North High School.
Jones, who was first appointed in November 2021 following the resignation of former board member Meredith Exline, currently serves as board president after winning election in 2022. Outside of his role as a board member, Jones works as a systems administrator for the U.S. Air Force and is a long-time Edmond resident.
Putnam also shares ties to the U.S. Air Force as a retired colonel whose career spanned three decades. Putnam said he chose to challenge Jones for the seat after being approached by a “campaign committee” of concerned EPS parents who knew him through his and his spouse’s involvement in local Republican clubs. Although not originally from Edmond, Putnam has lived in the area for 28 years.
NonDoc interviewed each candidate about their campaign priorities and vision for EPS. Putnam and Jones have also agreed to attend a forum hosted by Edmond PLAC, with whom NonDoc has partnered to moderate the discussion. The event is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday, March 27, at Sequoyah Middle School, 1125 E. Danforth Road.
Jones: Professional development for alt-certified teachers a priority
Like other states impacted by significant teacher shortages, Oklahoma has relied heavily on emergency and alternative certifications and pay incentives to bolster the education workforce. While Jones said simply having more teachers available in Oklahoma is a boon in itself, the state continues to see lower reading and math scores than the national average. Jones said he believes providing alternatively-certified educators more opportunities to develop their teaching skills can improve education outcomes.
“We’ve had a lot of teachers that are alt-certified that have come into the district, and it’s great that they’re alt-certified and that they want to be a teacher. However, they didn’t go through the traditional career path of becoming a teacher,” Jones said. “Sometimes, they might need some additional professional development or supports because they didn’t go through the traditional route, and so that is another focus. [I want to make] sure those alt-certified teachers have the proper supports, and not only have the proper supports, but are able to obtain a teaching certificate so they can continue to teach in our district, because alt-certification only goes for so long.”
Putnam shared a similar desire to help new teachers by expanding educators’ access to mentors with more experience in the field.
“Are we mentoring teachers? Are we helping them in the classroom, or are we just landing on them like a ton of bricks? If you have a not very good teacher, is there someone who can work with them and train them and mentor them?” Putnam said. “Again, this is not to add a burden to the current teachers, so much as give them a chance to be their best and help them be their best, and then reward them. Give them the top end of the pay scale, give them a path to advancement.”
Aside from his experience as the District 5 incumbent, Jones also touted his communication and listening skills as qualities that he believes make him a good candidate.
“Serving in this position, there’s a lot of listening and a lot of gathering of information, processing that information, and then either linking people up with the correct contact, directing people where they need to go, or (making) hard decisions that need to be made,” Jones said. “And making them in a rational way.”
Jones said his top priority currently involves helping EPS in its search to replace Superintendent Angela Grunewald, who is set to retire at the end of the school year, a move she announced in January. The EPS Board of Education has partnered with the Oklahoma State School Boards Association to conduct the superintendent search.
“The school board is in charge of policymaking and the hiring of the superintendent, and so that is our No. 1 goal,” Jones said. “The highest priority right now, I will say, is making sure that we find a superintendent that has those Edmond values, that has the drive and the desire to continue that and the vision to make sure that our kids continue to excel.”
Much of Grunewald’s tenure saw Edmond at the heart of the raging American culture war, spurred heavily by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters. In Edmond, Walters’ effort to remove certain books from public school libraries — The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini — resulted in the Oklahoma Supreme Court siding with the EPS Board of Education in a lawsuit to retain local control of library contents.
“It was all about local control. So now that we know where we stand on local control, we can make sure that the policies and the curriculum and everything aligns with our Edmond values,” Jones said. “I can’t speak for what the state’s trying to do, obviously, because I don’t know. I will say that I hope their heart is in the right place. My thought would be, maybe they’ve seen something that they thought was unacceptable in one school, and they’re trying to curtail it, or maybe prevent it from happening at other schools, but in doing so, some of the blanket things that they were passing are things that we’re already doing in Edmond.”
Jones voted to retain both books in Edmond high school libraries, despite some parents objecting to the fact that both books contain graphic scenes depicting sexual violence. As part of the review process, Jones said he read each book and reviewed how parents can contact EPS to ensure their children are not allowed to check out certain literature if they do not want them accessing the content. For books that are part of a course, Jones said, EPS also allows parents to opt out of those lesson plans and have their students complete alternate assignments.
“As a parent, the district and school board understand that you know your kids best, and as a school board member, I respect that,” Jones said.Â
In a January interview with NonDoc, Putnam said the district’s solution is a fairly straightforward way to address parents’ “very apparent” concerns.
“If the parents don’t want them to read it, then they contact the library and say, ‘Not my kid,’” Putnam said. “Mission accomplished. (…) There needs to be that mechanism. I think there’s a fear of the parents that the school pushes things on their kids that they don’t want.”
Later, at a March 20 forum conducted by the Oklahoma Constitution, a conservative newspaper, Putnam drew a harder line on the books being available in libraries.
“Let’s get back to the purpose of education. The purpose of education is to prepare students for development: reading, writing, arithmetic, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, social skills,” Putnam said. “Anything outside of that is probably a distraction. Why are we putting things of that nature even available in the library? My point is, if it’s contentious — some say it is, some say it isn’t — why do we expose our children to it in the library at all?”
The full March 20 forum is available on both candidates’ Facebook pages.
Putnam: Parents feel ‘left out’
One of Putnam’s primary motivations to seek the school board seat, he said, is to engage with concerned parents in the district.
“The first issue is that parents feel like they’ve been left out or they’ve been ignored. I’m hearing that more than once,” Putnam said. “They get a chance to speak before the school board. There’s no response. They never hear back again. They feel like they’re talking to the wall.”
Putnam said his career in the military, including multiple command postings, make him well suited to advocating for parents.
“If the parents are up in arms, give me a call. Tell me what your concerns are,” Putnam said. “I was inspector general for a base of 20,000 people. I was used to looking into things.”
Putnam said he was also concerned there appeared to be little dissent or discussion on many agenda items.
“[I went] online and took a look and watched the previous meetings and noticed an awful lot of five-to-nothing votes in support of the superintendent. The way it’s supposed to work is that the school board hires and supervises the superintendent, and it seems to have flipped,” Putnam said. “It’s very easy for the superintendent to act as a leader and just put that in front of them, saying, ‘We’ve done all the homework, sign here.’ I understand that. I have to wonder if every single thing is unanimous.”
Putnam noted a decline in Edmond Public Schools’ performance against its peers, as recorded by Schooldigger.com, which sources information from the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. Department of Education and the Oklahoma State Department of Education. While EPS continues to outpace most other Oklahoma school districts based on state test scores — outperforming about 70 percent of other Oklahoma school districts — the gap has closed over the last decade. The website notes all three EPS high schools received a five-star rating and that EPS is overall a “high-performing system,” but equity concerns are apparent in that high-rated schools generally serve “more affluent student populations.”
Other “sociological problems” facing Edmond Public Schools, according to Putnam, include students learning English as a second language being included in the same classrooms as native speakers.
“Let’s put them in a class where they can learn English and still get their education at the same time, so that they’re not behind and not in conflict,” Putnam said. “And this is not to segregate, so much as assist.”
Putnam and Jones found common ground in their view of Walters’ recent push to incorporate Bibles and Christianity into public school settings more prominently.
“[Religion] is a family issue. It should be taught by the parents. If they wish, they can send them to Sunday schools. They can send them to church school. They can send them to Christian high schools, that’s all fine,” Putnam said. “But I think the thought of that in public school, for a lot of parents, is disturbing.”
Jones agreed, adding that the millions in public funds Walters has sought to purchase Bibles for Oklahoma schools could be better used in the education system. Jones also noted the Bible is available in district libraries and that students have access to the Bible for free through cell phone apps.
“I feel like we should keep the separation of church and state. Many teachers are not qualified to teach on religion. They are qualified to teach on whatever subject matter they’ve been trained to teach in,” Jones said. “I think we could take that funding and use it for something else to enhance our student outcomes.”
Putnam did not completely disregard religious text in classrooms, however.
“I’m not sure what the happy medium is. I don’t have a problem with the Ten Commandments being up on the wall,” Putnam said. “It says you won’t lie, you won’t cheat, you won’t steal, won’t bear false witness and so on. All valuable stuff, and our civilization is based on that.”
The EPS Board of Education District 5 election is set for Tuesday, April 1. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and anyone who is in line before 7 p.m. is still permitted to vote, even if polls close while they are in line.
