OKPOLICY.ORG
The most remarkable — if not the most important — happening in state government last week was the announcement by State Superintendent Ryan Walters that he is resigning with sixteen months left in his term of office. His departure may remove one near-constant source of conflict in the state involving the Legislature, the Governor, and Oklahoma’s public school system.
It’s hard to figure what happened with Walters. After teaching at the high school in his hometown of McAlester for a few years beginning in 2012, he became executive director of Oklahoma Achieves, a nonprofit organization created by the State Chamber in 2019. In May 2020, the organization transitioned into an independent nonprofit called Every Kid Counts. While there, Walters was plucked out of political obscurity by Gov. Kevin Stitt and appointed Secretary of Education in September 2020.
When Walters filed to run for State Superintendent to succeed Joy Hofmeister in 2022, little in his public background would have suggested the divisive, ideologically-driven public figure he turned out to be. He got through the Republican primary against John Cox, Peggs Public Schools superintendent who had previously run as a Democrat, and William Crozier, a comparatively unknown and underfunded candidate, and landed in a runoff with April Grace, superintendent of Shawnee Public Schools, who seemed to have the support of most educators.
Walters was helped in the runoff by negative publicity about the arrest of a former assistant athletic director at Shawnee High School for sexual misconduct and accusations that Grace had allowed him to continue employment after earlier incidents. Grace was unable to fully defend herself because the facts of the case were still unfolding and she was limited in what she could say. Walters won the runoff.
Early signs of the direction Walters could take the state’s public education system became public during his campaign for State Superintendent. He supported vouchers for private schools — as did Gov. Stitt — and emphasized his opposition to transgender students playing sports and using the bathroom they feel matches their gender identity. He claimed a far-left-wing mob was forcing woke policies — like the transgender issues — into schools and proclaimed Oklahoma Schools are not going to “go woke.”
Walters was also backed by Gov. Stitt, who was running for re-election against then Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, who had switched from Republican to Democrat after clashing with Stitt over many of the same education issues that both Stitt and Walters were espousing.
It must be said that neither Walters nor Stitt tried to hide who they were or what they stood for in their campaigns. Both showed little regard for those who had preceded them. Stitt claimed to be a “fresh set of eyes” that would initiate an “Oklahoma turnaround,” cashing in on the resentment politics that seems to work in the current political climate. Like it or not, their opponents were put on the defensive.
After Walters’ election as State Superintendent, Gov. Stitt appointed State Board of Education members — who serve at the governor’s pleasure — who were either in line ideologically with Walters or willing to accede to his bizarre behavior, until it finally became too much even for Stitt, who then changed the makeup of the Board.
Walters says he is going to work for a national nonprofit committed to destroying teachers’ unions. It remains to be seen whether that’s a long-term plan or just an exit strategy to quit his day job and run for governor without the hassle of having to run the state agency he was elected to lead. If it is the latter, I certainly would not count him out. The culture war seems alive and well.
