Words from the Director

Voucher Bill Lacks Both Dollars and Sense

Dr. Pam Deering, CCOSA/OASA Executive Director deering@ccosa.org

This issue of Better Schools Magazine was in production before SB 1647 was defeated on March 23, 2022.

Throughout the first few weeks of legislative session, we’ve witnessed a lot of conversation around education in our state. Much of the strongest rhetoric has centered around the Oklahoma Empowerment Act, a controversial voucher bill that its proponents and their outof-state lobbyists have touted as reshaping how students are funded in our state. Yet for a bill focused on funding, very little has been said about how much it would cost and where the money would come from.

This voucher bill will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The money would come directly from the state funding formula that aids in the education of every public school student in Oklahoma. All public school students would lose funding – even if none of their classmates leave the school for a private option.

Analysis of the bill in its current form predicts as much as a $350 million impact to the state in the first year with similar numbers in each subsequent year. The voucher proposal could add as many as 60,000 new private and homeschooled students into the education funding formula, reducing the amount of public dollars available for educating all current public education students. Even with significant education investment by the legislature the last several years, Oklahoma ranks 47th in the country in per-student funding. The financial ramifications of this bill could drop our state even further down in these rankings.

Earlier in my career, I worked in the Oklahoma State Department of Education as the Assistant Superintendent of Finance. I was fortunate to help create the state’s funding formula and have since been able to utilize it at the local level through various school administrator positions.

The state’s funding formula is rooted in equity. It utilizes a financial snapshot of all corners of our state. Schools in areas with historically lower income and property value are allocated additional funding to make up for the lesser amount of locally generated funds. Districts with historically greater needs – higher numbers of special needs students, for example – are able to receive additional state dollars for students who need more educational services to succeed in school.

Should elected officials pass the Oklahoma Empowerment Act, hundreds of millions of dollars would be taken directly from that funding formula each year. Significantly less money would be available to provide communities and students with the resources they so badly need. This is why it would be especially harmful for students in our rural school districts, who will lose funding even if their enrollment numbers remain the same.

The millions of dollars being siphoned to private groups through the Oklahoma Empowerment Act will have zero accountability to taxpayers. Worse, there are no consistent academic standards or benchmarks for how these entities are teaching our kids.

This dramatic diversion of taxpayer dollars has been positioned by its champions as a plan to “fund students, not systems.” In reality, it creates two distinct systems with vastly different rules. It takes away funding from a large majority of students to build a separate system benefiting a small group of families. It financially punishes the districts whose families have chosen their local public school.

The secret is out. Oklahoma doesn’t have the dollars to implement this bill without jeopardizing education for a majority of students in our state.

Sincerely,

Dr. Pam Deering CCOSA/OASA Executive Director ■

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