Quotes of the Day

“That may surprise some people, but it shouldn’t because we have seen in polling for some time that people want teachers to make more money, so it’s not too surprising that (SQ 779) has support. I think people see this as a need that has gone long overlooked by the Legislature, and I think this state question is basically the people saying ‘If you aren’t going to do something about it, we will.’ ”

-SoonerPoll CEO Bill Shapard, on polling that shows 62 percent of voters support the ballot question that would create a penny sales tax for education (Source). Read our statement on the proposal here.

“There was one teacher to every 30 students last year. I can’t imagine a 35-to-1 ratio. It’s hard for a teacher to make sure 25 students are focused. How can a teacher get students to focus when the student ratio gets bigger?”

– Cassidy Coffey, an organizer of last spring’s student walkouts and now a senior at U.S. Grant High School in Oklahoma City (Source)

“If the Republicans truly cared about teachers, they would have used their legislative supermajorities to pass a teacher pay raise at any time during the past eight years — when teachers last had a pay raise. And that included years when oil was bringing $100 a barrel.”

– House Democratic Leader Scott Inman (D-Oklahoma City), speaking against a suggested special legislative session to use the state’s surprise $140 million surplus to fund a teacher pay raise (Source)

“If we are going to be a state that attracts the brightest and most capable women in the country to work in industry and business, we need to make sure as a state we are showing that we value a woman’s work. The least we can do in that regard is to make sure we have equal pay for equal work in Oklahoma.”

-Rep. Jason Dunnington (D-Oklahoma City), who plans to reintroduce a bill to reduce the wage gap between men and women (Source)

“When I worked for Senator Nickles, he was still working on bills from when he first got there, 19 years earlier, whereas when I was with [Mayor Bill LaFortune], he said ‘We’re going to have a Vision Summit’ and then three years later the BOK is under construction. The velocity of change is so much greater at the local level. Nationally, it’s philosophical. Locally, it’s tangible.”

-Tulsa Mayor-elect G.T. Bynum (Source)

“More diversity is a good thing, period. I think that different life experiences, different backgrounds make for better governing because iron sharpens iron.”

-Tammy West, a businesswoman running for House District 84, speaking about the uptick in women running for the Oklahoma Legislature, which currently has near the lowest percentage of women in the nation (Source).

“We are now working in a building that will be under construction for the next six years.”

– Trait Thompson, Oklahoma Capitol project manager, briefing Capitol employees before exterior renovation begins in August (Source)

“The council needs to take under consideration what it would mean to a portion of the community if we can get rifles with officers, but we still don’t have body cameras.”

– Grace Franklin of OKC Artists for Justice, an advocacy group for women of color, speaking at a recent meeting on a policy change allowing Oklahoma City police to bring privately-owned rifles on patrol (Source)

“Glossip has resulted in unmitigated disaster in Oklahoma. Since the Supreme Court approved of the midazolam protocol there, Oklahoma authorities have shown that they cannot properly carry out the protocol. Oklahoma executed one prisoner with the wrong drug in January 2015 … and it almost executed another with the wrong drug before a member of the execution squad caught the error hours before the injection was to occur. This state of affairs gives the U.S. Supreme Court a good reason to revisit Glossip.”

-Lawyers for eight death row inmates in Arkansas who are challenging the state’s execution procedures, arguing that the US Supreme Court should reconsider the case (Source)

“The conversations happening because of State Question 779 are long overdue. This campaign will continue to talk about the importance of giving our teachers a pay raise and investing in our schools because we can no longer allow public education to be dismantled brick by brick.”

– OU President David Boren on the proposed sales tax increase for education (Source) Read our statement on the proposal here.