Listening to our State of the State address this week and reading about just some of the literally thousands of bills being proposed for the now in session 2025 legislative buffet, I somehow feel Oklahoma lawmakers are missing the point about leading our state forward.
We have to get our public schools on a path to success. Otherwise, not much else matters.
Governor Stitt mentioned his focus on making Oklahoma an easier place to do business as a key to our continued success. Oklahoma was ranked 26th in CNBC’s Best States for Business in 2024. However, we ranked No. 1 by CNBC for Cost of Doing Business and 19th overall for Business Friendliness. Oklahoma City was ranked the 2nd best place for small business by Forbes Advisor in 2024, and a recent study by Arizona State University found OKC to be the easiest place in the country to do business. However, the CNBC rankings ranked Oklahoma 36th in Workforce, 47th Quality of Life and 40th in Education. If one were to aim to improve upon our overall rank of 26th, would it not make sense to focus on areas where we are underperforming?
Quality of life, workforce and obviously education are where we need to focus, and our public schools matter most. Large-scale employee populations don’t send kids to private schools, so being a top state for school choice is not going far toward making Oklahoma a better state to do business. Yes, the “school choice credit” provides a nice benefit for wealthy Oklahomans, and it also allows our private schools to raise tuition in step with the newfound money in parents’ wallets. This is not attracting business to Oklahoma. Business leaders want basic things for their employees. Good public schools and a high quality of life matter a great deal. They also need a good workforce to employ, which is a simple byproduct of better schools and vocational/technology training, etc.
To be fair, Oklahoma has improved in these rankings in recent years, but we are not Top 10. We aren’t even Top 25. To move into the upper half for business, we have to focus on where we are clearly struggling. I see no plan in place to improve our public schools, only talk around turning them into Sunday schools, banning the very few potentially inappropriate books on our school library shelves, not being inclusive, making certain undocumented immigrants don’t attend schools in our state and other stuff Ryan Walters likes to discuss on Fox News. We do not properly fund our schools, full stop. It’s not even up for discussion. The lottery was going to fix this problem 20 years ago, but we have been in steady decline from having a Top 20 school system in 2012 to nearly dead last today.
We can make no better investment than in our kids and public schools today. Which leads to our governor’s renewed call for tax cuts. Oklahoma City has done great things over a 30-year period by investing in our city and funding the investment with sales tax increases. I’m not promoting raising any taxes. However, if there is room to cut taxes, that means there is room to properly fund our public schools in Oklahoma. Last year’s “School Choice” credit was a tax cut for wealthier Oklahomans, most of which already had kids in private schools. Discussion of removing the cap on this program is just opening the voucher flood gates to shift public dollars to private schools and benefit the wealthy, who aren’t in need.
Ninety percent of Oklahoma’s kids attend public schools. Not focusing on funding and fixing our public schools is simply ignoring the real problem and focusing on the wrong things.
Lawmakers should also preemptively act to create oversight and accountability at Oklahoma State Department of Education in the event the Trump administration follows through on promises to close the Department of Education. If this happens, Ryan Walters will likely have unfettered access and control of well over $1 billion of previously federally administered funds. Since Walters has proven himself capable of screwing up, this is a very predictable mess. Just look at the $35 million GEERS funds debacle that occurred on Right-Wing Ryan’s watch. OSDE has virtually no internal controls, experienced staff or oversight in place. This is a disaster waiting to happen, and the potential for fraud and foul play is beyond measure.
Oklahoma lawmakers should do the right thing with a long-term view, not the politically expedient and overused strategy from the tax cut playbook. I’m heartened by a bill to raise minimum teacher pay to $50,000 and also by Senator Dusty Deevers pulling his crazy and ill-advised bill to ransack special ed. Maybe our legislators will figure out where the real problems lie and take action in 2025. Oklahoma kids deserve a better education and leadership from this year’s legislative session.
Drew Williamson is managing partner of Red Center Media, LLC, holding company of Oklahoma Gazette. Drew has been a registered Republican since the age of 18.
This article appears in The OG Food Issue 2025.