While We Were Out: Debate over SQ 744 heats up
My decision to take vacation over the final week of July and first week of August allowed me to avoid not only some of the worst of the summer heat wave here in Oklahoma but also much of the heated controversy that followed the release of OK Policy’s issue brief on State Question 744, the ballot measure that would peg education funding in Oklahoma to per pupil expenditures in neighboring states. We set out four main arguments that have led us to take a position opposing the measure, the most compelling of which is the strong likelihood that mandating an estimated $1.7 billion increase in funding for common education over three years without a new revenue source would set the state even further behind in our other areas of public investment that all Oklahomans, including our schoolchildren and teachers, depend on.
Our position was strongly praised by the Oklahoman in a written editorial and this video editorial by editor Ed Kelly (you’ll first get a short commercial for an investment company):
