As the school district of Oklahoma’s third-largest city heads toward an April 1 general election, the District 5 candidates for the Norman Public School Board of Education — incumbent board President Tina Floyd and challenger Tori Collier — agree NPS should prioritize establishing accessible mental health resources and ensuring students’ safety in the classroom.
Floyd was appointed to the board in January 2023 after long-time board member Linda Sexton announced her retirement in the middle of a five-year term. In April 2024, Floyd was elected as president of the NPS Board of Education and is currently campaigning for her first full term as the District 5 board member.
Currently working as the CEO of Spark Softball — a female-led OKC-based professional softball team she has co-owned with her husband since 2022 — Floyd holds multiple higher education degrees, including a doctorate in educational leadership and administration from Southern Nazarene University.
With more than 20 years of education and school administrative experience under her belt, Floyd has worked in five school districts across the state serving as a teacher, assistant principal, principal and “various leadership roles,” according to her website.
Collier, a communications professional and special education advocate, is a community consultant for Evolution Foundation — a nonprofit organization whose mission is to work with “local coalitions in Oklahoma to develop alliances between coordinated behavioral health-oriented networks to meet the needs of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance, substance abuse disorders and co-occurring issues,” according to Collier’s website.
Working for state government agencies including the Department of Human Services, Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and the State Department of Health, Collier is passionate about mental health and disability advocacy — especially after the birth of her son, who has moderate developmental disabilities.
NPS constituents must choose between Floyd, who said she wants to continue to work with the board on important issues if reelected, and Collier, whose goal is to bring minority advocacy to the board as both a black woman and a mother of a child with autism.
The general election for NPS District 5 is set to occur Tuesday, April 1. Early voting at the Cleveland County Election Board is set for Thursday, March 27 and Friday 28. Polls are open on Election Day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Floyd, Collier prioritize mental health for NPS
In addition to her professional expertise, Collier said she has seen first-hand the impact of mental health on Oklahoma youth as a mother of three children who went through NPS.
“I was able to learn about the impacts that mental health has on the youth during my experience [at ODMHSAS] and also watch my own children and their experiences with friends and their own mental health going through school,” Collier said. “I had one of my children experience the loss, through suicide, of a friend that she had gone to school with and helping her to cope through that.”
In order to have truly accessible mental health resources in schools, Collier believes providing district employees with more training on possible mental health “markers” could make counselors “freed up” to assist with the training and distribution of additional resources.
Collier also said creating a safe environment for all students to express how they feel and what they are experiencing is crucial to addressing the issue.
“I think that if we can really bolster and improve mental health resources, that would help,” Collier said. “If there were resources to help with that, divert them to places where they could either talk about those things or get referrals, I think it would be really helpful. I also think that we should be proactive in trying to create (…) outlets for kids to put voices to what they’re going through and feeling.”
Although mental health is also one of Floyd’s top priorities, she emphasized the work the district has already done to address mental health needs. In 2023, NPS was awarded a $6.5 million grant to fund Project REACH — which stands for recruitment, education and certification for mental health professionals — over five years to strengthen and expand the districts’ mental health infrastructure.
“I know we’ve increased access to mental health professionals in the last two years by 50 percent, so that’s really by having extra bodies,” Floyd said. “I know we have around 24, 25 student interns from [the University of Oklahoma] that are coming in and working with our students, too. And that’s great that we have OU in our backyard to get to partner with. And that’s at all sites — so that we have one [student intern] at all sites. And then there’s other mental health coordinators in the buildings now that that grant is going to be able to help. So there’s just so much more access, other than just counselors, to mental health support.”
Despite what the district is currently working to improve, Floyd said teachers and staff must address the problem as soon as a student begins to show signs of mental distress.
“It’s more than just keeping them safe physically. We’ve got to address it when they come to us as a 4 year old. Let’s make sure their mental health is OK and safe,” Floyd said. “It’s good that we finally figured out that, hey, the mental aspect of this is just as important as the physical aspect. And hopefully, if we can adjust that mental aspect the minute they come to us as 4 and 5 year olds, then that will [help].”
Supportive of the districts recent improvements, Collier is concerned with the distribution of the Project REACH grant money.
“I think what my focus will be is making sure that those funds get into the schools,” Collier said. “I want to see evidence of that. I want reports (…) making sure that we are evaluating those resources that are being given to our district, but that it’s working and impacting our students, and our schools and our teachers and also being disseminated to the families. I think that’s where I want to come in with my experience, and making sure that not only are we just saying, ‘Oh yeah, this is a great idea of prudent expenditures,’ but being able to hold the parties accountable. To make sure that we get real, true impact in the schools.”
Floyd’s concerns are drawn elsewhere, as she notes the funding uncertainties brought on by the nation’s current political climate around education.
“The only caveat there, and again, don’t want to get political, but, you know, as a federal fund and with federal dollars being — I don’t want to say ‘withheld’ — but some have been put on pause for now, and that’s a scary situation. What federal funds are we going to get? When are they going to be released? Things of that nature,” Floyd said. “We want it to be sustainable, but if, for some reason, the grant goes away and it is impacting our students and making a huge change, we will dig deep to find that money to carry on with those programs.”
Floyd addresses mental, physical health disparities
Given that NPS recently received millions of dollars to allocate toward the district’s mental health needs, Floyd said the additional funding created a “disparagement” between resources to address students’ mental health and the resources available to ensure students’ physical safety.
“This year alone, Norman Public Schools has invested and received federally, $10 million for the mental safety of our students,” Floyd said. “We’ve only spent $800,000 on the physical safety. So there’s a disparagement there that we’ve got to get a little bit more equal.”
Floyd emphasized the need for more school resource officers, which she said are necessary to keep NPS children safe.
“We have one school resource officer per two schools in elementary. Our high schools and middle schools are covered, which is great, but we do not (have enough) at the elementary level, and that’s not satisfactory for me,” Floyd said. “If you don’t feel safe, your best learning is not going to take place. If you don’t feel safe, your best teaching is not going to happen. We have to make sure those resources are protected.”
Collier is taking a more psychological approach to discussing student safety.
“When I think of safety, I really am focusing on those pillars of mental health and the physical health of the child,” Collier said. “[We need to be] having that resource of peer-facilitated, play-safe spaces for youth to be able to express how they’re feeling about their experience in school and how their experiences in their young lives are impacting their educational experience.”
Along with giving a voice to students, Collier intends to create partnerships between schools and families, encouraging an environment that welcomes dialogue within the community as a way to create possible “non-traditional solutions” to the district’s problems.
“I think that there’s kind of been these barriers that have been erected between family and the schools, and not just the child having a voice, but also families being able to — beyond a PTA and parent teacher conference — have a two-way dialog with schools,” Collier said. “We need to find more non-traditional ways to do that and also get back to some ways that maybe we’ve abandoned with being able to have better conversations and access to have conversations about the concerns of our children.”
Similarly, Floyd said Oklahoma’s teachers are overwhelmed, and she said the only way to improve the school environment for everyone is to listen to the district’s teachers and their needs.
“We need to make sure we can attain or retain them for years to come,” Floyd said. “Teachers are a big, big asset and very valuable. I mean, they’re with [the children] more than their parents are. And that’s just, it’s not a slam in any way, that’s just reality. My kids are the same way. I mean, they’re with a teacher eight hours a day. By the time I would pick them up, it was time to go to ball practice, eat and go bed. So you want to make sure who’s with our kids all day long wants to be there and is in a good environment. So that’s another really big passion for me — to make sure we’re always attracting the best and keeping them.”
(Correction: This article was updated at 1:38 p.m. Thursday, March 27, to correct reference to the size of Norman Public Schools. NonDoc regrets the error.)
