Oklahoma’s $1.3 billion school funding gap (Capitol Updates)

Steve Lewis served as Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1989-1991. He currently practices law in Tulsa and represents clients at the Capitol.

There was more bad news this week that Oklahoma, for the third straight year, had the largest cuts in the United States in state aid funding for education. The per pupil state aid formula cuts were 26.9 percent after inflation between fiscal year 2008 and fiscal year 2017, nearly twice as much as Alabama which was the next worst state. It’s hard to believe that publicity like this enhances our reputation as a good place to live and do business.

There are those who will argue that total support for public schools, including both local and state funding, is the relevant measure of support and that education is not faring so badly. A graph from the National Center for Education Statistics on the Oklahoma Education Coalition website rebuts such an argument. It demonstrates that in 2016 Oklahoma’s neighboring states invested substantially more in common education on a per-student basis. Oklahoma would have to invest nearly $1.3 billion more annually to reach the regional average per-student spending.

The neighboring states compare to Oklahoma in per-student expenditures as follows: Kansas ($11,711), Missouri ($11,208), Arkansas ($10,968), New Mexico ($10,418), Colorado ($10,170), Texas ($9,988) and Oklahoma ($8,851). So, if a student is in a class with 25 students in, say, Kansas, Texas or Oklahoma, there would be financial support for that classroom of $292,775 in Kansas, $249,700 in Texas, and $221,275 in Oklahoma. The 25 children in the Oklahoma class get $71,500 less than the kids in Kansas and $28,475 less than the kids in Texas.

When you multiply those figures by the number of classrooms in a district, it’s not hard to see why our Oklahoma schools are struggling to compete with our neighboring states to pay for buildings, maintenance, transportation, text books, technology, and teachers. Since teacher salaries and benefits are the biggest share of expense and are somewhat flexible, they are quick to feel the squeeze. No small wonder educators and many parents are discouraged and frustrated. It’s hard to watch class sizes grow, course offerings shrink, and irrational measures taken to make ends meet.