Oklahoma Schools are not OK

 

by Pa Rock

Retired Teacher

The chief of public education in Oklahoma is an elected political position with the title "Superintendent of Public Instruction," which for the past year-and-a-half has been held by a 39-year-old Republican named Ryan Walters.  Before being elected to his current post, Walters served in an appointed capacity as the state's Secretary of Education for more than two years.  Walters is generally regarded as a strong proponent of the Christian Nationalist movement.

Walters, a former Oklahoma high school history teacher who graduated from a religious college in Searcy, Arkansas, is currently involved in a "complete overhaul" of the state's social studies standards - standards that as a teacher serving on the former revision committee, he helped to create - and he is promising that this time it will be a more "pro-America and pro-Bible" revision.

Last June Superintendent Walters ordered that public schools in Oklahoma incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades five through twelve.  The state has allocated $3 million for the purchase of 55,000 Bibles to be used in the public school classrooms.

The use of public funds to purchase Christian Bibles for mandatory use in public school classrooms is certainly, on its face, controversial and an expenditure and curricular decision that is sure to anger many citizens of Oklahoma who value the importance of the separation of church and state, but this particular program is complicated even further and made even more egregious by the specificity with which Superintendent Walters intends to carry it out.

Walters has properly put the. purchase of the Bibles up for bid, a process which is normally useful in helping state officials get the best product at the best price for the people's money.  However, in this bidding process, called an "RFP," the specificity is so exact that it appears to narrow the choice down to just two Bibles, both previously endorsed by Donald Trump.   

Walter's RFP calls for each of the 55,000 Bibles to contain the King James Version of the Old and New Testaments, which is pretty much standard fare in Christian Bibles, but then the RFP also calls for the Bibles to be bound in leather or a leather-like material, and also include the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

The Oklahoman, the state's largest newspaper, reached out to a Christian educational supply house, Mardel Christian & Education, which said that none of the 2,900 Bibles that they sell fit the criteria that Superintendent Walters set forth in his bid proposal.

Donald Trump has endorsed two Bibles, the "We the People" Bible ($90) and the "God Bless the USA Bible ($60), and, not surprisingly, both fit the RFP offered up by Superintendent Walters for the Bibles he wants the state to purchase for its schools.  At this point, those two Trump-endorsed Bibles seem to be the entire market, though another manufacturer could conceivably rush something to print.

Donald Trump stated in a financial disclosure last August that he had already received $300,000 from sales of the "God Bless the USA Bible," the one priced at $60 each.  

Drew Edmonson, a Democratic former Oklahoma State Attorney General, said that the bid "does not pass the smell test," and he warned that the courts could void it if the bid was found to limit competition.

The entire process has the smell and feel of snake oil.  It looks as though the taxpayers of Oklahoma are about to have their pockets picked, the public school students of the state will soon have their healthy minds soaked in religious dogma, and Donald Trump is going to pocket a few more bucks.   

Oklahoma schools appear to be anything but OK!