During his nearly 45-minute-long remarks at Thursday’s Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting, Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters drew questions from board members by making controversial claims about available money for statewide free lunches, his proposed “America-first assessment” for “woke” teachers entering Oklahoma from certain states, and the department’s new partnership with an Arizona-based online private school.
Following brief remarks about the state’s current summer school programs, Walters addressed his directive that all public school districts fully fund students’ meals using existing state and federal dollars for the 2025-2026 academic year, a proposed mandate that some board members said is an utmost concern for parents and students.
“I’ve heard superintendents push back on this,” Walters said. “They want more funding. I’ll be really clear. This is not a funding issue. It’s a spending issue. Schools have record amounts of funding, including $1 billion in reoccurring revenue, additionally, over the last four years. So the taxpayers of Oklahoma provided a record amount of funding. We want them to prioritize kids eating while they’re at school over administrative staff, administrative salary.”
In a July 7 video posted to Twitter, Walters announced his directive to end what he called a “triple-tax” placed on parents to feed Oklahoma students. Instead, he proposed taking taxpayer dollars from “administrator and bureaucratic pockets” and prioritizing those funds for students’ needs.
“Last year, Oklahoma families were slapped with a staggering $42 million bill for school meals—on top of their taxes—while administrators pocketed a 14% salary hike,” wrote Walters in a July 7 press release. “This isn’t just incompetence; it’s a betrayal of our kids and communities. Oklahoma taxpayers are being triple-taxed to cover lunches while bureaucrats fatten their wallets. We need less administrators in our schools. We need to get taxpayers dollars to the students, not to grow bureaucracy.”
But public school leaders and some legislators have refuted Walters claims, alleging that he is misrepresenting budgets and putting all districts in a tight spot weeks ahead of the next academic year after staff contracts have already been signed. House Common Education Committee Chairman Dick Lowe, a former teacher, issued a July 9 press release noting that the state superintendent “does not have the constitutional or legal authority to direct how individual school districts allocate their budgets.”
“This attempt to overstep the authority of Walters’ office is a threat to the independent decision-making power of Oklahoma’s school districts. Regardless, it is nothing more than an empty threat,” said Lowe (R-Amber). “Addressing student hunger and streamlining administrative costs are both worthwhile endeavors, but these changes must be implemented legislatively, not through an unfunded mandate. State law clearly outlines what districts are required to fund, including minimum teacher salaries and limits on administrative spending, but it does not require free meals universally. That decision rightly belongs to locally elected school boards, who know their communities best and are entrusted with setting district budgets according to local needs. Districts that choose to use discretionary funds to cover meal costs for all students do so voluntarily, not because of any mandate from the state. As such, there is no legal basis for the State Department of Education to retaliate through special sanctions over budget decisions that are entirely within districts’ rights.”
Lowe referenced Walters’ long-strained relationship with the Legislature.
“If Walters has legislative goals, I encourage him to be communicative with lawmakers year-round, not after session has adjourned and it’s too late for the Legislature to consider any of his proposals,” Lowe said.
On Thursday, State Board of Education member Michael Tinney — a title and probate attorney — questioned the validity of Walters’ claims. Tinney said he calculated the money necessary to feed all public school students and inferred that Walters’ own calculations were inaccurate and that the superintendent had exacerbated the amount of funding available to districts.
Board member Ryan Deatherage also followed Tinney’s line of questioning, stating that he has seen and heard of district superintendents’ pushing back against Walters’ directive. Deatherage asked Walters where those administrators are “wrong” and whether he is “just making up those numbers.”
Walters said those district superintendents are “gaslighting” the media, causing members of the gallery to erupt in derisive laughter.
“The woke peanut gallery didn’t like that, but listen, here’s the deal,” Walters said. “They have millions of dollars in carryover funds. We have put those numbers out there. They are sitting on a lot of money. They are sitting on a lot of child nutrition. They have grown administrative costs to the highest level in state history. That should come down regardless, regardless of whether they’re putting it in child nutrition funds. They should be putting that in the teacher pay. They should be putting it in tutoring. They should be putting it into a teacher recruitment effort, so the administration spending is going to get under control.”
Multiple board members voiced concern over the purported differences in the financial information individual schools provided and the numbers on which Walters is basing his directive. Before Tinney could finish his next question, Walters interrupted him to threaten schools with state audits for alleging differences in reported fiscal information.
“The State Department’s numbers are their numbers,” Walters said. “If the numbers are wrong, then we need to audit their district and figure out why they turned in bogus numbers.”
Noting his doubts that the board would be able to find a solution to the disagreement during Thursday’s meeting, board member Chris VanDenhende asked Walters to have documentation drawn up for board members containing a detailed breakdown of the fiscal information at hand. Walters agreed to provide the information.
VanDenhende specifically requested that the fiscal information start with the number of enrolled public schools students and trickle down to the amount of funding needed to feed those students, as well as a breakdown of the methodology Walters and the state department used to calculate the amount of carryover funds districts allegedly have.
‘You’re not going to undermine American exceptionalism’
To begin his superintendent remarks, Walters announced to board members that the state has recruited around 4,000 new teachers since the start of July 2024. Shortly after, Walters addressed a new program in partnership with PragerU that would require educators coming from “woke” states to pass what he calls an “America-first assessment.”
Although Oklahoma is in the midst of a severe teacher shortage, Walters’ purported “America-first assessment” would determine whether an educator qualifies to work in Oklahoma public schools based on three subject matters:
- teachers’ knowledge of the U.S. Constitution;
- teachers’ “understanding of American exceptionalism;” and
- teachers’ “grasp of fundamental biological differences between boys and girls.”
“What we have moved forward to do is to say, ‘If you’re coming from these states, you will take a test [at] the State Department to show you align to our standards,'” Walters said. “You’re not going to come in here and teach that there’s 27 genders. There’s boys and girls — that’s in our science standards. You’re going to come in, and you’re not going to undermine American exceptionalism by teaching anti-American, antisemitic hate. So as states are now requiring — these left-wing states — teachers to do things that are so antithetical to our standards and local values, we want to make sure — as we are recruiting the best and the brightest in the country — that they align with our values.”
Walters argued that the educational values portrayed in “blue” states, such as California and New York, directly oppose the traditional teachings included in the Oklahoma Academic Standards. Ironically, the attempt to require some people to take a test for licensure based on where they previously lived while not requiring the same of those who lived elsewhere has hoisted red flags as a potential violation of the equal protection clause in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
“Yes, I see several legal problems with that,” Tinney said when asked after the meeting whether Walters’ proposal might run afoul of the constitution he says he values.
During the meeting, Deatherage asked what methodology is being used to determine whether current Oklahoma teachers — not just new educators, but career educators — meet Walters’ same standards.
“So in the state, when you go to one of our colleges of education, or apply through an alternative program or through an emergency [certification] program, you go through you take a battery of tests,” Walters said. “Then, when you sign your teacher contract, what you are agreeing to is when you teach a biology course, for example, you are agreeing to teach those standards, which is why standards are so important.”
Walters went on to explain that OSDE ensures teachers are sticking to the proper standards through the accreditation process, saying that district accreditation will be determined by teachers’ commitment to teaching the standards — some of which are highly controversial owing to the addition of religious ideology and unproven claims about past presidential elections.
VanDenhende asked for further clarification.
“I thought I heard you saying, maybe I misunderstood, that part [about] a teacher contract (…) part of that requirement is to teach to the standards adopted by the state. Correct?” VanDenhende asked.
Walters replied, “That’s correct.”
VanDenhende continued, “So why would that be different, depending on where you were educated or you taught last?”
In response, Walters said cooperative agreements between state education systems can mean that educators coming to Oklahoma might not be aligned with his goals for instruction in the state.
“We have a current practice that says we will reciprocate with other states based on your certificate,” Walters said. “Well, now we have states giving out certificates that say, ‘You’re going to teach that there’s 27 genders.’ Well, that’s a problem. Because now, as you come into our state, instead of just saying, well, that certificate, the standards are close enough that we’ll get you there right? We’ll move you from where you are to where Oklahoma is. Now you’ve got states are going this far over. We’ve got to determine, can we get you there? Are you this far out that you’re not going to teach these type of standards moving forward?”
Later in the meeting, board members asked if the “America-first assessment,” once finalized, would be brought before the board. Walters, who described his initiative as “very common sense,” responded, “No,” without providing additional information.
OSDE partners with American Virtual Academy
Also at Thursday’s meeting, Walters announced OSDE’s new partnership with the Arizona-based virtual private school American Virtual Academy (AVA), a preparatory online school dedicated to “re-establishing core American values” in today’s education system.
Touting Oklahoma as the most “school-choice-friendly” state in the country, Walters said he was proud to include AVA as an educational option for parents.
“We believe in promoting American values and patriotism in our schools,” Walters said Thursday. “And we want our parents to be able to ultimately make the decision on what’s best for their kids, whether that’s a public school, private school, charter school, home school — whatever that looks like. We know that every kid’s different. God created every kid a unique way, and we want to make sure that every parent has the most opportunity to put their kids in the school that meets their needs.”
Following Tuesday’s announcement, education stakeholders noted AVA’s connection to the controversial Primavera online public charter school that is in the process of being shut down in Arizona after the school’s attorney and CEO, Damian Creamer, paid himself $24 million for his own legal services.
During Thursday’s meeting, Walters claimed media reports got the connection “blatantly wrong.”
“This is not the same school in Arizona they’ve been referencing,” Walters said. “This is a private school that is starting up, that is a newer school that is in several other states, but that they keep connecting it to another school. This is a different school with a different mission, completely different missions, completely different setup, completely different governance structure.”
According to AVA’s LinkedIn page, the “American Virtual Academy started in 2001 as a partnership with Primavera Online High School in Chandler, Arizona.”
“At the time, Primavera needed computer-based curriculum that could effectively teach its students,” the American Virtual Academy’s LinkedIn states. “AVA’s one-of-a-kind browser-based system kept students engaged and motivated. AVA gave students the ability to log onto their courses any time of day, anywhere in the world. Over time, AVA’s curriculum and technology services expanded and improved to meet the growing needs of the largest virtual high school in Arizona.”
While Walters seemed to claim that he was referencing a different school, AVA’s LinkedIn account shared a post earlier this week about how it is “expanding nationwide.”
Through the Parental Choice Tax Credit Program, Oklahoma provides an income tax credit for families who choose to homeschool their children or enroll them in private schools. Citing state statute, Tinney said the tax credit only applies for schools in Oklahoma — which would make AVA ineligible — and posed the question of how the online school meets the state qualifications.
Walters said American Virtual Academy has an Oklahoma address. However, no organization by that name has registered with the Oklahoma secretary of state.
When asked if there is not an Oklahoma-based option OSDE could have partnered with instead, Walters told board members to direct their questions to Gov. Kevin Stitt.
“I know that you all are appointed by the governor,” Walters said. “The governor has been very clear in all of his directives that he wants as many school choice options in the state as possible. So I would also — anyone have a conversation with the governor who’s put this forward to say he wants more school choice, more private schools in the state. So what we’re going to continue to do is pursue best options for our parents. And ultimately, the beauty of school choice is the only people that go to these schools are the people whose parents decide to put them in schools. So this is up for a parent’s decision.”
During a press conference after the meeting, Walters was asked if he thought parents would enroll their child in AVA.
“I look at their mission statement — I look at their vision — and look, I think it’s going to be very successful,” Walters said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of parents that want to sign up for it. But again, you know, that’s a parent’s decision. I think it’s great when you have parents sitting at the table with their kids talking about what different schools Oklahoma offers, what’s best for them, what’s best for their future, their career. Look, I think those are great conversations to have.”
(Correction: This story was updated at 5:02 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, to correct the spelling of Chris VanDenhende’s name.)
