Governor May Fallin today issued this statement on the announcement that $140.8 million initially cut from agency allocations midyear can now be allocated.
“I’ve begun discussions with legislative leaders to consider calling lawmakers to return in special session to address the issue of teacher pay raises. I continue to support a pay raise for teachers, having called on lawmakers at the beginning of this year’s session to approve a teacher pay raise. Lawmakers considered it, but this was an extremely difficult budget year and a funding agreement couldn’t be reached. With this available money, I am again asking lawmakers to act on this important issue of providing a raise for every teacher in this state.”
What about re-hiring the people who were laid off due to the budget cuts.
We have 140.8 million because the appropriation Chair and Vice-Chair can not do remedial math. There are those at the State Capitol who say these two individuals are the worst they have ever seen.
Seems the GOP is concerned with up coming elections and pressure from cities and town about David Boren’s sales tax increase. Another Special Session to do states business didn’t the Legislature just go on vacation? She’s scrambling to stop the uprising in Oklahoma as the citizens realize what the GOP has done to appease the wealthiest citizens. Seems she will have to learn to Govern as she isn’t getting a VP post. I believe the last special session cost us $153,000.00. We could pay what almost 5 teachers salaries with that. I believe the Governor and the Legislature are math challenged. Lets float a bond issue to by calculators for them (with the big buttons).
excuse me I went to OKC schools , I meant to say “to buy calculators” we had to study out of old paper books.
As a teacher, I truly appreciate our governor for her efforts on our behalf. Now that we’re officially a “red state” (Republican), it’s safe to assume that, slowly but surely, we’re going to get past the endless pro-education cheap rhetoric and “save-our-schools” talk and FINALLY get down to some both some real solutions and some actual, tangible, realistic relief from the insanity we’ve been experiencing. What I would remind everyone about, however, is that we didn’t get into this situation over night, and that somebody has been asleep at the wheel for far too long. Who was minding the store while teacher salaries went to 48th in the nation while six-digit upper-administrative pay went to sixth in the nation and six-digit salaries became the norm? Who was in charge when literally HUNDREDS of separate school districts (all with their own administration) came into being across Oklahoma, and common sense consolidation was dismissed as an option just because schools didn’t like one another’s sports teams? A teacher who wants to responsibly put his wife on his insurance will pay somewhere around SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS a month—and then will legally be REQUIRED to pay for his kids to be covered as well just to put his wife on his policy, effectively taking his monthly take home pay to little more than he’d make if he worked at a store or a fast-food place—who walked away and let that happen?
This is getting long, and I apologize for that, but the bottom line is this—without radical, sweeping changes and actually DEALING with all these issues, this possibility of a raise will not fix what’s wrong with education in Oklahoma. It may be a great beginning, but without effective, decisive changes to actually fix the glaring problems, it’s going to be like putting a band aid over an infected sore. It make look a little better, but the infection still needs treated.