“I think it’s crazy. In North Dakota, they’ve set away like $2 billion for something similar like this to happen and, in Oklahoma, we’ve only set away a fraction of that.”

– Matthew Mcquistion, a 14-year-old who marched for better education funding on Thursday as part of the third Let’s Fix This rally (Source). During the oil boom, North Dakota invested oil and gas tax revenues in a conservatively-invested sovereign wealth fund that could be used to shield the state from the effects of economic downturns.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carly Putnam joined OK Policy in 2013. As Policy Director, she supervises policy research and strategy. She previously worked as an OK Policy intern, and she was OK Policy's health care policy analyst through July 2020. She graduated from the University of Tulsa in 2013. As a student, she was a participant in the National Education for Women (N.E.W.) Leadership Institute and interned with Planned Parenthood. Carly is a graduate of the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits Nonprofit Management Certification; the Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities Council’s Partners in Policymaking; The Mine, a social entrepreneurship fellowship in Tulsa; and Leadership Tulsa Class 62. She currently serves on the boards of Restore Hope Ministries and The Arc of Oklahoma. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking, and doing battle with her hundred year-old house.

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