Quotes of the Day

“It really excites me, because I want to go back and practice in a rural area. Having these residencies in those rural areas allows us to actually go out and be in the community. You kind of become a part of that community, and that’s important in getting us to stay there.”

– Jesse Arthur, a third-year medical student at Oklahoma State from Pauls Valley, speaking about a TSET grant to OSU to establish a medical residency program in rural parts of the state (Source)

– The Tulsa World’s Editorial Board, on the 1,000 teaching vacancies across the state as the 2015-16 school year kicks off. The shortage persists despite eliminating 600 positions across the state and a record number of emergency certification requests (Source)

“Saying we don’t have the money for teacher pay raises is no longer an acceptable excuse. Schools are doing the best they can under the circumstances, but we have to ask ourselves: Are we really OK with 5- and 6-year-olds who will go without a teacher trained to develop young readers? Are we really OK with eliminating high-level science classes because we refuse to pay teachers a competitive wage?”

– Shawn Hime, executive director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, speaking about a recent a new survey revealing that even though 600 teaching positions have been eliminated across the state, 1,000 remain unfilled. Schools are seeking record numbers of emergency teaching certificates for applicants who haven’t completed basic higher education and training requirements (Source)

“How much money are we talking about for Oklahoma? According to the Kaiser Commission, Oklahoma would receive $8.561 billion in federal funds over 10 years from expanding coverage. This means that we are giving up $2.3 million every single day that could be used to boost Oklahoma health-care providers and expand access to needed care for working families. Think of the economic stimulus that money would create.”

-Tulsa attorney Teresa Meinders Burkett, in an op-ed arguing for Oklahoma to stop refusing federal health care expansion funds (Source)

“The discrimination is just unbelievable toward these kids. They are not getting an education like everyone else.”

– Traci Cook, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Oklahoma, on the disproportional level of disciplinary actions taken against special ed students. Oklahoma ranks 1st in the US for expulsions of students in special education programs, and 4th in use of corporal punishment on such students (Source)

“As Gov. Fallin has noted in her ‘Oklahoma Works’ initiative, by 2020 more than 60 percent of Oklahoma jobs will require much more than a high school diploma. Young people deserve an opportunity to pursue the American Dream, and in most cases that means a pathway to college or career strategies.”

– State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, speaking about a new program that allows all Oklahoma high school juniors the opportunity to take the ACT free of charge (Source)

“All of us work together to provide affordable housing for the very low-income, and all of us are full. And all of us have these incredible wait lists. Our Section 8 wait lists are years long.”

-Mark Gillett, executive director of the Oklahoma City Housing Authority, which has a wait list of about 5,000 families. The Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency, which provides subsidized housing outside the Tulsa and OKC metro areas, has a waiting list of 10,290 families (Source).

“Most women involved in the criminal justice system are suffering from untreated trauma, mental illness and or drug addiction. They are homeless, unemployed and oftentimes victims of domestic violence. They have on average two to three children. Once they enter the criminal justice system, they are assessed with multiple fines and fees, most of which support the criminal justice system itself. If they are arrested, jailed or sent to prison, they rarely receive services to address any of the issues that entangled them in the first place.”

-Tulsa businessman Ed Martinez Jr., writing in the Tulsa World that the business community and the state as a whole needs to do more to reduce female incarceration (Source)

“I followed my partner to Tulsa, but compared to Texas and what I could have made had I stayed in Texas, it’s quite a shock. I would have probably started at $10,000 to $15,000 more in Texas. One of the other big differences I’ve noticed is a lot of the teachers in Oklahoma who are young tend to have second jobs just be able to make ends meet or to live well. That also affects the quality of teaching — if they could put that energy into their classrooms, imagine how much better their instruction could be.”

-Nadia Najera, a social studies and science teacher at Zarrow International School in Tulsa (Source)

“Over 100 years ago, a young woman named Kate Barnard took our state by storm and motivated the people of Oklahoma to improve children’s lives. Thanks to Barnard’s efforts, the Oklahoma Constitution banned child labor and required public education. The welfare of Oklahoma children was addressed and the lives of poor and working poor children were improved. It’s time for another ‘Kate Storm.”

-Jim Priest, CEO of Sunbeam Family Services, and Terry Smith, executive director of the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, writing about Oklahoma’s high poverty, food insecurity, and child abuse that rank the state low for the well-being of children (Source)