OKPOLICY.ORG
Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, Vice Chair of the Senate Education Committee and the Education Appropriations Subcommittee, has prefiled a bill for next session aimed at reducing the critical teacher shortage in the state. The bill, Senate Bill 7, creates the Oklahoma Teacher Recruitment Academy, to be administered by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. The bill would provide tuition and mandatory fee assistance to individuals to earn a bachelor’s degree if the individuals commit to teaching in one of the subject areas identified by the State Department of Education as in critical need of certified teachers.
SB 7 requires the tuition and fee assistance will be provided only for students who will agree to complete a bachelor’s degree, to pass the teacher certification competency examination, and to teach in a public school in Oklahoma in a critical shortage subject area for one year for each year the assistance is received. The bill creates the “Oklahoma Teacher Recruitment Academy Revolving Fund” and anticipates an expenditure of up to $10 million. It will be up to the Legislature later to determine if the bill will be funded.
Sen. Seifried’s proposed Oklahoma Teacher Recruitment Academy would be in addition to the “Inspired to Teach” program created in 2023 by House Bill 2559, authored by former Rep. Mark McBride, R-Moore, and former Sen. Dwayne Pemberton, R-Muskogee, respective chairs of the House and Senate Education Appropriations Subcommittees. That program provides $5,500 in scholarships spread over the course of a four-year degree program at an Oklahoma college or university. It then provides a $4,000 stipend for each of the first five years one of those graduates teaches at an Oklahoma public school.
SB 7 requires the State Department of Education every three years, beginning on July 30, 2025, to identify and publish on its website a list of the top five critical shortage subject areas taking into consideration the results of the educator supply-and-demand study conducted pursuant to 70 O.S. Section 6-211. In recognition of the worsening teacher shortage, the educator supply-and-demand study was created by HB 2885 in 2014, authored by former Rep. Ann Coody, R-Lawton, then Chair of the House Education Committee and Sen. John Ford, R-Bartlesville, then Chair of the Senate Education Committee.
The teacher shortage has developed into a crisis over the past decade. The State Board of Education, last July, granted emergency teaching certificates to 1,089 individuals without education degrees to serve as classroom teachers during the 2024-2025 school year, thereby increasing the number at the time to 1,728. The expectation is that, by the end of this school year, Oklahoma will surpass the 4,676 emergency certifications awarded for the 2023-2024 school year. The number has grown from only 32 emergency certifications for the entire state in the 2011-2012 school year.
The last educator supply-and-demand study, dated December 2018, was published on the State Department website in 2018. In its introduction the report states that “while state-mandated pay raises for all school staff holding a teaching certificate went into effect July 1, 2018, for the 2018-2019 school year for the first time in more than two decades, it is still unclear whether the compensation incentive will abate the acute shortage issues the state faces, and if it does, by what degree.
“Public school education in Oklahoma has suffered one of the largest national budget cuts over the past decade. As a result, steep reductions to school budgets have occurred, forcing administrators to implement strategies to reduce expenses, many of which critically hinder instruction and unequivocally contribute to making the teaching profession less attractive.”
In recent years some of the best in the Legislature have put their minds to dealing with teacher shortages in the state, which is by no means only an Oklahoma problem. Ironically, the state’s economy over the past few years has provided abundant revenue, evidenced by the state’s $4 billion in savings.
Instead of slashing income taxes and stashing cash away in various holding accounts, the efforts of these legislators could be greatly enhanced if the Legislature would demonstrate to teachers the state values their calling by vastly upgrading teacher salaries.
