“Dear Oklahoma, I moved away from you once. Looking for bright lights and big city action. I lasted barely a year before scurrying back as quickly as I could. I missed your sunsets and thunderstorms. I missed your wide open plains of beauty. I missed your welcoming faces in every city. I missed the feeling of knowing my roots and being grounded to a place that would always be ‘home.’ I missed QuikTrip and Taco Bueno. I missed my family. I missed my state. Today, I’m about to break up with you.”

– A post on the Facebook page of Oklahoma Parents and Educators for Public Education by Lea Nance, a kindergarten teacher and mother of three who says she’s planning to search for education jobs in bordering states because SQ 779 failed (Source)

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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