As Ryan Waltersâ Right-Wing Star Rose, Critics Say Oklahoma Ed Dept. Fell Apart
<¶¶Òő¶ÌÊÓÆ” class="subtitle"> Fans liken his efforts to a 'spiritual battle,' but even some GOP lawmakers say he mismanaged and neglected his central role: state schools chief. By Linda Jacobson | October 29, 2024The start of the school year in Oklahoma would have tested the mettle of even the most battle-hardened leaders.
The stateâs Republican attorney general twice accused Superintendent Ryan Walters of ignoring laws on and , actions he called âdeeply troubling.â Members of Waltersâs own party said heâd fallen down on his responsibility to get funds to school districts on time. And a series of media reports pointed to his role in a botched release of state test data: While it appeared student performance had skyrocketed, in reality the state had dramatically lowered the bar for success.
But if Walters was feeling the heat, it didnât show.
On the morning of Aug. 22, a phalanx of supporters waited for a chance to congratulate him for his headline-grabbing push to put a Bible in every state classroom. One even brought him a gift â a paperback copy of .
âWe raise you up in prayer all the time,â another told him. âI thank you for what you’ve done.â
Taking his seat in the cramped state Board of Education chambers, the 39-year-old Walters picked up a coffee mug with a Latin phrase that evoked his days as a small-town history teacher: Si vis pacem, para bellum. “If you want peace, prepare for war.â
In his 21 months as state chief, Walters has taken the battle to an array of foes. He labeled the state teachers association a â,â blocked from press conferences and moved to the licenses of ââ teachers. Heâs acted as a one-man publicity machine, a performance thatâs earned him venomous foes and ardent fans who follow him with a near-religious fervor.
But in his focus on the culture war, his tenure has eschewed many of the mundane, unglamorous tasks of a typical superintendent. By summer, it appeared that one casualty of this approach might be a functional state education bureaucracy. Some pointed to inattention from Walters and the exodus of at least two dozen for a series of damaging missteps, from having to return in grant money to the federal government to keeping districts in suspense about .
Walters, who did not respond to requests for an interview, is used to fielding . But increasingly, heâs under fire from fellow Republicans.
The most visible sign of GOP impatience is an investigation sparked by House Republicans into whether Walters misappropriated state and federal funds.
âRegardless of party, citizens want transparency, accountability and communication,â said Rep. Tammy West, a Republican running for her third term. âItâs their tax dollars. This is not the government’s money. This is not an agency’s money.â
The legislative probe comes on top of an August that required âurgent attentionâ in over 30 different areas. And earlier this month, a found âpervasive mismanagementâ in the handling of two pandemic relief programs for students, one of which Walters administered.
The grand jury report shows âhe’s not competent or qualified to handle millions of dollars, let alone ⊠$4 billion,â said GOP Rep. Mark McBride, referring to the size of the state education departmentâs annual budget. McBride, who oversees the departmentâs finances and is one of Waltersâs more persistent critics, said he expects the upcoming legislative report, due Oct. 29, to show âfurther examples of the incompetence of the department of education under his leadership.â
Even some of those who have supported Walters are openly saying that the steady drumbeat of controversy is not only hurting schools, but Republican chances at the polls in November.
Kendal Sacchieri is a former high school Spanish teacher now running as a Republican for state Senate. Like West, she is anti-abortion and pro-parental rights. Such views would typically place her firmly in Waltersâs camp. But she said she was âflooredâ by his recent budget request for $3 million to purchase Bibles for schools.
“If Ryan Walters is trying to get a point across that we need to be teaching more Christian values, then he needs to go about it a different way,” she said. âRyan Walters is not doing Republicans any favors.â
âTalent drainâ
Critics say heâs been busy building a national brand, fueled by he used to hire a publicist responsible for elevating his profile in conservative media. He is a frequent guest on and right-wing , where heâs opined on hot-button national issues seemingly far afield from running Oklahomaâs schools, like the war in and illegal traveled at taxpayer expense to Phoenix for a retreat with the in March and in July attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee
If his primary aim is self-promotion, heâs been âhighly successful,â said Deven Carlson, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma.
âEverywhere you look, you see him gaining media opportunities and speaking engagements that no other secretary of education in the country has ever gained,â Carlson said.
Walters has said he inherited a from predecessor Joy Hofmeister when he took office almost two years ago. But as students headed back to school in August, signs that the stateâs school machinery was sputtering were hard to miss.
Services for many students with disabilities were disrupted for about a month when teachers and therapists couldnât access with special education plans. The state also $250,000 for emergency inhalers to combat asthma, a condition suffered by about 10% of Oklahoma students. The education department blamed a software update for the technical glitch, while confusion over how to write for inhalers held up that purchase for a year.
When confronted, Walters frequently gets personal. Thatâs what happened in a spat over Title I funding, a perennial responsibility for state chiefs across the country. Itâs a particular concern in Oklahoma, where 1 in 5 children live below the poverty line and districts rely on $225 million in federal funds for tutoring and afterschool programs. Districts typically get estimates in the , allowing them time to recruit and hire staff for the fall.
When late July came without a word, Rob Miller, superintendent of the Bixby, Oklahoma, schools, couldnât suppress his frustration any longer. , he attributed the delay to Walters falling down on the job amid a âtalent drainâ under his leadership. More than â over a third of the staff â have left or been fired under his watch, according to local news reports.
At a press conference four days later, Walters called Miller âa clown and a liarâ and pointed â without evidence âto âall kinds of financial problemsâ in his district.
The name-calling didnât phase Miller, a former Marine major who participated in the 1991 operation to recapture the Kuwait airport from Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm. But the accusation of mismanagement rankled: The district had just received a .
âWe’ve checked with his folks, and they don’t know what he’s talking about,â said Miller, who calls himself a Reagan Republican. âIt was obviously a false claim, and he’s made no attempt to retract it.â In turning down a request for comment for this article, department spokesman Dan Isett cited Waltersâs âvery busy schedule.â
Responding to the controversy, a local business âI Stand with Robâ T-shirts, and former military members in the state House in a statement that they couldnât âstand by while a respected leader and veteran is insulted and demeaned for simply doing his job.â
Miller, meanwhile, has filed a , seeking at least $75,000 from Walters. The state ed chief has called the suit âfrivolous,â adding that he should be immune from such litigation because he was acting in his official capacity.
âLeft-wing apparatusâ
In with Blaze News Tonight, a conservative talk show, Walters made no apologies for promoting his priorities over maintaining a bureaucracy has turned schools into âstate-sponsored atheist centers.â He said state employees who were fired or quit were part of a ââ that has tried to undermine his agenda. He even plans to use from their departure to help defray the multimillion-dollar costs of his Bible initiative.
Itâs talk that has some appeal in Oklahoma, where two-thirds of voters chose Donald Trump in 2020 and many sympathize with the former presidentâs rhetoric about the bureaucratic âdeep stateâ and âswampâ in Washington.
And there are some lawmakers who havenât lost faith in Waltersâs ability to turn around an education system that consistently ranks among the worst in the nation. Rep. Chad Caldwell, a Republican from Enid, north of Oklahoma City, said career educators and the local media have treated Walters unfairly, accusing him, for example, of allowing political ambition to interfere with his job when spent over a year of her second term on a failed bid for governor.
He pointed to Waltersâs announcement earlier this year that schools across the state had made enough academic progress to be removed from a list of 191 low performers â news, he noted, that his own local paper didnât even cover.
Walters first connected with Caldwell over text.
The lawmaker was sponsoring a bill to eliminate the statewide salary schedule for teachers and let districts set their own rates. The plan was highly unpopular with teacher groups, who argued they would lose automatic raises. But Walters, no fan of unions, reached out to show his support.
During pandemic lockdowns, Caldwell worried about his kids falling behind academically as they learned from home. His thoughts turned to Walters, previously a popular AP history teacher from the southeastern Oklahoma town of McAlester and a 2016 finalist for state Teacher of the Year. Caldwell convinced his twins, then in high school, to log in to one of the award-winning teacherâs virtual classes.
âMy son, after one class, said, âMr. Walters is the type of teacher that makes you want to go to school,â â Caldwell said. âI’m not a teacher, but I would think that’s about the best compliment that you could ever hope for.â
But even he said he is eager for the release of the House investigation to separate suspicions of wrongdoing from actual misconduct.
âI would have concerns if ⊠he was intentionally thwarting the will of the legislature,â he said.
Caldwell was not among the 20-some House Republicans who signed a letter in August calling for an impeachment investigation into Walters. House Speaker Charles McCall rejected that idea, saying he would not âoverturn the will of the people.â But he OKâd the into department finances.
To some, such conflicts are evidence that Walters is enmeshed in a âspiritual battle.â
âHe’s doing the right thing, and sometimes the right thing gets you bad press,â said Jackson Lahmeyer, who leads Sheridan Church and founded . Lahmeyer, who calls pro-LGBTQ positions âdemonic,â met Walters when he was running for superintendent in 2022. At a church service in June, he thanked Walters for his push to put Bibles in every public school classroom â a plan thatâs now the subject of from parents, teachers and faith leaders.
âI know it feels like ⊠the world is against you right now,â Lahmeyer told the superintendent as Waltersâs three youngest children clung to his side. The pastor while the congregation stretched their hands toward the altar.
In October, news emerged that suggested the narrative of Waltersâs Bible push may not be completely inseparable from his political ambitions. that the only versions of the Bible that would fit Waltersâs criteria were those endorsed by Trump and his son, potentially stifling competition from other vendors. The former president earns endorsement fees from the God Bless the USA Bible, which costs $59.99. Heâs taken in $300,000 in sales, according to a recent .
A week after the article was published, the department to allow more companies to bid.
A department âin transitionâ
One member of the education department exodus under Walters was Matt Colwell, who served as director of school success until the superintendent fired him for exposing internal emails intended to clamp down on staff members talking to the media. Heâs and a top aide for wrongful termination.
To Colwell, episodes like the Title I blowup fit a familiar pattern. âHis strength is threatening; his weakness is administration,â he said of Walters. âThere were tons of comments like, âI’ve directed my staff to do A,B,C and D on curriculum.â And then Iâd talk to the curriculum people, and they’re like, âWe haven’t heard a thing.â â
Staff turnover, he said, likely explains the sheer volume of findings in the recent federal audit. By the end of summer 2023, almost no one who had been overseeing federal grants was left. Staff that remained “didn’t know who to ask” when federal officials posed questions, Colwell said. “Each department would know their little slice of how that money was being spent, but nobody had the big picture.”
The departed include those who once celebrated Waltersâs ascent. , a veteran educator and conservative Christian, said she appreciated his focus on âthe basicsâ and believed Oklahomaâs standing in national education rankings would improve under his watch. She was eager to join his administration and took a position in charge of monitoring grants in 2023.
But she quickly grew disillusioned. He wouldnât meet with her, Smith-Gordon said, and she was locked out of computer programs she needed to do her job. She recalled waiting weeks, sometimes in vain, for his signature on grant applications. Smith-Gordon said her only glimpse of him before quitting four months later was when she looked out the window one morning and saw him walking to his car.
In a statement following her resignation, she described Walters as a âdictatorâ who publicly scolds and humiliates districts and said he spent more time âwith cameras instead of in the halls of a struggling [department] in transition.â
âWear us downâ
One of Waltersâs frequent targets has been the LGBTQ community. A principal in the Western Heights district, for example, after an anonymous letter revealed that he performed in drag on the weekends. Walters called repeatedly for his removal. drove in from across the state and stood outside school board meetings and the principalâs school with signs that read âGot AIDS yet?â and âHomo sex is sin.â
âIt was terrifying for the kids,â said Nicole McAfee, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, an LGBTQ advocacy group. âI think that teachers see that and worry that anything that might be perceived as supportive of queer kids could make them the next target.â
Some of his forays have run afoul of the courts. In June, the state accused him of operating with âunauthorized quasi-judicial authorityâ when he and his like-minded state board against library materials with sexual content. He had tried to force the to remove by Khaled Hosseini and by Jeannette Walls from high school libraries. Some members of the community found the books too sexually explicit, but state law leaves those decisions up to districts.
Walters responded to the ruling with a familiar counterpunch, âthe face of pornography in schools.â
Such rhetoric has contributed to an environment of âfearâ and âexhaustion,â said Leslie Briggs, legal director at the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. She represents a transgender student over his preventing districts from changing a studentâs sex or gender in student records without the state boardâs OK.
Until recently, most district leaders were cautious about publicly criticizing Walters, and in Facebook groups, teachers warn each other to keep their social media accounts private.
âObviously,â Briggs said, âit’s to his benefit if he can wear us down or wear the community down.â
âA tough positionâ
No one has felt Waltersâs wrath more than the Tulsa Public Schools, the stateâs largest district, with 33,500 students. He demanded that Tulsa âstop emphasizing woke policiesâ like . And he pushed for former Superintendent Deborah Gist , which she ultimately did in an effort to preserve the district’s accreditation and avert a .
For a year, he required Tulsaâs new leaders to drive the hour and a half to Oklahoma City to give monthly updates on their progress in academics, teacher training and financial management. So when he visited Tulsaâs Will Rogers High School in April, with only a couple daysâ notice, and asked to teach a lesson, district leaders were apprehensive.
âItâs a tough position,â said Stacey Woolley, Tulsaâs school board president. âBut we live in a place where making him angry certainly feels as though our students will potentially suffer.â
She watched him walk into an AP World History class that day and comfortably slip into his former role as teacher. In under 11 minutes, Walters packed in an analysis of political cartoons and seamlessly wove together perspectives on imperialism from Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Surrounded by students sitting three or four to a table, he urged them to play the game Risk to better understand world domination and explained why Americaâs founders took a different path.
Every other country was âtrying to be big and powerful and take over other countries,â he said, according to a recording of the lecture provided to The 74. âBut America had this Declaration of Independence, so we’re going to protect people’s rights.â
It was a strange moment. Being in Waltersâs , Woolley said, has been stressful for staff and families. But she couldnât deny his expertise.
âHe is a teacher, a very good one,â she said. âI sat there in a state of cognitive dissonance.â
That day, Walters showed a side of himself that few have seen since he entered politics. It was the same enthusiasm for teaching that first impressed Rep. McBride when he met him six years ago. A home builder, McBride was new to education policy in 2018 when House Speaker McCall appointed him to chair the appropriations subcommittee on education. He wanted to better understand teachers’ concerns, so he reached out to Walters after catching him on the radio.
âWalters was such a breath of fresh air,â the lawmaker from Moore, south of Oklahoma City, told The 74. âHe was just happy to be a teacher.â
Now, they regularly spar in the media, with Walters counting McBride among the âliberal Republicansâ who â in your kidsâ schoolsâ and McBride saying itâs his responsibility to search for â.â Those nightly soundbites, however, donât reflect their complicated relationship.
âWe donât hate one another,â said McBride, who will in November after serving the maximum six terms. During an exchange earlier this summer, he said Walters asked when they were getting together for biscuits and gravy. He agrees with some of the superintendentâs positions, like having fewer strings tied to federal funds. But as a âpracticalâ Republican charged with monitoring the departmentâs fiscal affairs, he said heâs grown weary of Waltersâs âpolitical theater.â
âYou canât have that kind of ego and not eventually get caught up in your own self-worth,â he said. âYou know it says in the Bible, âPride comes before the fall.â â
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