For the few
people who read my blog, I promise to get back to ramblings about my family and
personal financial goals. Until then, I
wanted to take a brief break to discuss a political matter.
Full
disclosure, I am not a native Oklahoman.
I was born and raised in Carl Junction, Missouri, a small suburb of
Joplin with a population of around 8,000 people. I am the child of two retired public school
teachers who worked their entire careers for the same school district I
attended. There were 200 kids in my
graduating class and roughly 1000 kids total in my high school. Our football team was abysmal, but we
regularly won academic and fine arts competitions throughout the state.
I moved to
Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2006 to attend law school and received my first dose of
reality. I knew teachers were
underpaid. I knew teachers were
constantly buying classroom supplies from their own paychecks. I knew this, because I watched it unfold from
the dinner table each night. What I
didn’t know was that many of the public schools in Oklahoma weren’t places you
could send your kids….at least not if you cared about them. My first year in law school, I realized that
most of my classmates attended private school.
I rolled my eyes and naively voiced my opinion that private school was a
waste of money. I was a proud public
school graduate with high academic honors in college and a promising legal
career on the horizon. If public school
was good enough for me, it was good enough for everyone. The response was
unanimous.
“You must
not be from Oklahoma.”
Over the
past 12 years, I have built my life and career in Oklahoma, and I’m proud to
say it feels like home. I have paid a
minor amount of attention to the public school issues in the state, but while I
personally feel that more should be done for teachers and schools, I can’t say
I’ve actually put those feelings into much action – regrettably so. I have voted in elections, and debated the
issue at social gatherings - I’m a lawyer after all, I enjoy a good
debate. But that’s where my involvement
ends.
I’m not sure
I can get away with that any longer. My
son was born in October of 2017, and in a mere 5 years, he’ll be enrolled at one
of Oklahoma’s public schools. Maybe. Hopefully.
What is it
about Oklahoma education that seems so much harder to fund than states like
Texas, for example? Without conducting
any kind of real study of the issue, I assume it has to do with the overall
state budget and revenue base of parents within the top districts. This is something we see play out within the
top ranked public schools in Oklahoma as well.
Schools in Edmond, Broken Arrow, Jenks, and Mustang, etc. don’t seem to
be failing as hard as the inner city.
But is that because parents are footing the bill through fundraising
efforts? That doesn’t seem like a
sustainable solution state wide.
Is it the
greedy oil and gas industry that needs to pay their fair share and solve the
problem? That seems to be a sentiment
held by many throughout the state. Full
disclosure again, I work in the oil and gas industry. When times are good, it’s really good. When
times are bad, it’s really bad. At the
start of my career, things were extremely good.
Over the past three years, I’ve suffered with job instability and
decreased wages. I’ve been caught in corporate layoffs and witnessed first-hand
the worst side of this industry. Oh poor pitiful me. This really isn’t about that. But suffice it to say, there are plenty of
people suffering in the oil and gas industry right now. Still, if raising the gross production tax on
oil and gas companies would fix this issue, it’s worth considering. It would result in less drilling and
therefore less production to tax, but if the net result is enough additional
revenue to fix the education crisis, maybe that’s what we have to do. Maybe we could even get the oil and gas
companies on board for the sake of our children's futures.
Maybe. Hopefully.
One of my
hobbies is personal finance. I’m a nerd,
I get it. But I’m routinely called by friends
and family to assist with something as simple as building a household
budget. It’s amazing how complicated
that can be for many people. In my years
of evaluating personal finances, I’ve never had a situation that would be
permanently fixed simply by making more money.
Obviously when someone is on the verge of bankruptcy, a cash infusion
seems like a simple solution. However,
if that’s the only change, then that person would be back on the brink of
bankruptcy in no time.
Financial
management is a product of behavior. Giving someone more money, when they have proven that they are bad with
money, merely exacerbates the problem. I feel like Oklahoma has proven they are
terrible with money.
Budget
issues have plagued this state for several decades. I dare say budget issues are a concern in
every state that has a constitutional requirement to balance the budget. Nobody
ever has as much money as they want, and when debt is not allowed to be a
source of income, one must live within ones means. This is not a bad thing, but what it means is
that the state can’t pay for everything it wants to.
In
situations where I’m counseling an individual or family through their own
budget situation, we have to establish a list of priorities. Keeping a roof over their head and food on
the table are the top priorities.
Healthcare, reliable transportation, and access to education are all high
on the list as well. For a state, the
same rules apply. I would assume that
infrastructure, healthcare, and education would be the top priorities for a
state. Obviously those are broad and
costly topics. But what nobody has shown
me yet are where Oklahoma has been willing to cut in areas outside these big
three in order to take care of their top priorities. There have been numerous funding options over
the years like all that casino money that was supposed to be earmarked for
education. All I hear is how that money
was stolen for other purposes than education.
If that’s true, then people should be held accountable.
That begs
the question, who’s in charge here?
Members of
our own legislature – I’m looking at you Kevin McDugle - post temper tantrum
rants on social media about how greedy teachers are being, while other members – kudos to Scott
Inman - make public statements of support and acknowledge that any funding
measures passed so far are little more than empty promises with existing
education funding already being pulled from other sources to fund the
supposedly new funding bill. It’s just a
shell game, with Oklahoma education left again on the losing side.
If it’s
truly a matter of needing more money, then someone from the legislature should
be able to sit down and calmly explain where the existing funds have been spent
and where the shortfall lies, in addition to being able to explain how any
additional revenues received from, say, increasing taxes will be spent to
alleviate the problem. I suspect, like
with any financial management issue, the problem is one of behavior rather than
a lack of actual cash.
Admittedly,
I need to look into this issue much more thoroughly. I don’t have enough hard information to come
up with a solution, so my opinions are just that. I listened to an interview yesterday on Fox News
with gubernatorial candidate Todd Lamb.
He laid out a surprisingly simple solution to the crisis which involved revamping
the current state budget process to create more transparency, as well as
passing legislation that requires that 65% of all education funding be spent in
the classroom. It all sounds really
good. Great talking points from a seasoned campaigner. I’m just
confused why someone who’s been on Oklahoma’s payroll as a politician of some
form for the past 13 years hasn’t put forth this simple solution until
now. His own wife is a public school
teacher, so I have to assume he’s been well aware of the issues in Oklahoma
education for some time. A quick
internet search showed me that the only attempted legislation of note bearing
his name had to do with abortion. And it
failed to pass, because the issue is well established at the federal
level. I’m not feeling as confident in
his abilities to govern as I was a few minutes ago.
I haven’t
educated myself as to the positions of the other potential candidates in the
Governor’s race, but it’s my cynical view that you’ll never hear more reasoned,
sensible, plausible solutions than from the mouths of those running for public
office. I have yet to see someone be able to make good on all their plans once they
actually find themselves in the role they campaigned to fill. Perhaps, at some point in the future, I’ll be
proven wrong. Maybe. Hopefully.
I want a
legislature full of people who care about this state. I want a legislature full of people from all walks of life who have
experiences similar to those in the districts they represent. But we’ve made politics a rich man’s game,
and the hard truth is those with the real solutions have more sense than to
associate themselves in the sewage pond of politics.
This whole
thing makes me want to run for an office myself, but then again, it would be so
much easier to just stay where I am.
Maybe this is an attitude worth changing. Maybe.
Hopefully.
