School Board Stipend Increase: No Joke!

Is it an Oklahoma thing to give more money to criminals, shelter them from responsibility, then re-elect them?

Opinion: Questions came to mind yesterday with the arrival of notice that the Oklahoma Senate approved a bill by Tulsa’s Sen. Regina Goodwin to update the stipend school districts may provide to board members for attending board meetings.

Only the largest school districts pay stipends as most school board members in Oklahoma serve for the benefit of their community’s children. The state’s two largest districts, Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) and Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) do pay and such payments don’t much improve local education. Together both districts draw our national educational rankings down the drain and both have failed audits by the Oklahoma State Auditor & Inspector office. They fail to teach or account.

Auditor Cindy Byrd in her Tulsa announcement of candidacy for the Lt. Governor’s position said her personal takeaway from auditing Oklahoma’s two largest school districts is that attempts to fix education with “more programs, more services, more counselors, more technology” have not improved academic outcomes but have only added to rising costs.

Auditor Byrd’s office found under a previous superintendent, “TPS contracted out $29 million on consultants and $37 million on vendors, totaling $66 million not directly benefiting teachers or students.”

Audit teams reviewed hundreds of lengthy contracts containing vague, non-tangible concepts like $5.2 million for “system-level alignment to strategic priorities,” $1.2 million for “multi-tier wraparound services,” and $6 million for “behavior management.”

Wow, who else would like to be paid for providing intangible things so vaguely detailed that no one understands what they are? Paid with no proof of delivery? Paid from nearly blank invoices. In this case, “Due to the vague invoices and contracts, auditors reviewed emails and purchased materials to justify payments, revealing funds went to private companies, NGOs, nonprofits, and consultants for TPS restructuring.”

Ever wonder why School Board Elections are held separately? So only their loyalists and extended families show up to vote. Thank you Oklahoma Legislators for catering to the Educational Industrial Complex voter base. Is it time for pitchforks and torches or can you see the lights of constituent concern?

Byrd asserts that when public schools, which receive tax dollars, are in academic decline, taxpayers deserve answers. She advocates for citizens to easily access online financial records, detailed expenditure lists, and meeting agendas with votes by each governing school board member, believing that greater community awareness of finances strengthens schools and helps accomplish academic goals.

That is not happening in Oklahoma School Board meetings or online.

Back to Sen. Goodwin’s bill, she had to know that TPS is now asking for $609 million in bond approval April 7^th from Tulsa citizens. She had to know about the TPS audit.

Former Tulsa City Councilor Jayme Fowler, in a recent interview with this writer, said the propositions fail to address deep-seated systemic issues, including poor academic outcomes, administrative bloat, underutilized facilities, and a destructive busing policy.

“This bond package perpetuates a failing status quo,” Fowler added.

Maybe Sen. Goodwin wants to get both the bond and the stipend approved before Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond brings charges against the TPS School Board, assuming of course, he can pull his head out of his gubernatorial race before the statutes of limitations kick in.

Goodwin’s family is in the news business. TPS’s legal trouble, which has been ongoing for years, is not a secret.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but current TPS Board Member (District 5) John Croisant who failed to stop the $66 million financial disaster, is running as a Democrat for Congress to represent Oklahoma’s first district. God only knows how much oversight accountability he can avoid should he win a Washington office.

The release said, “Sen. Regina Goodwin has received Senate approval for a bill to update the stipend school districts can opt to provide to school board members for attending board meetings. Under the provisions of Senate Bill 63, the stipend, which has not been updated since 1972, would be raised from $25 up to $190 per meeting for up to four meetings (total $760) each month.

“Under current law, school districts are not required to offer a stipend – for those that do, this change reflects what that $25 stipend would be 54 years later when you adjust for inflation,” said Goodwin, D-Tulsa.

“The people who step up to serve on school boards are taking time away from their own lives and families to serve on behalf of our students, teachers, and patrons,” Goodwin said. “This is a long overdue update to our statutes, and again, it is not mandatory for any district to offer the increase. I hope the House will join the Senate in giving school districts the ability to update the stipend amounts for their dedicated, hard-working school board members.” [Including some who fail to provide oversight over tens of millions of dollars that should have gone to teachers and classrooms.]

About the author: David Arnett’s beginning in print journalism was not planned in 1985 but covered by Rebecca Martin writing for the Columbia Journalism Review in 1987. After 11 years in print, he established TulsaToday online in 1996 and Straight Up on Substack in 2022 providing email subscriptions to the latest local news and opinion. Arnett is identified nationally as a “Veteran Oklahoma Political Journalist.”

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