Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Oklahoma newspapers:
Tulsa World. March 24, 2019.
- Tulsa Public Schools grabs the third rail of education administration - the school calendar
The school calendar is the third rail of education administration.
Parents and teachers have very strong opinions about when school should be in session and when it should be closed. Those strong opinions are not always universally accepted, and there’s the rub.
With such potential for dispute, once school officials find a calendar that seems to work, they stick with it.
It should have been with some anxiety that Tulsa Public Schools officials started working with ImpactTulsa a year ago to rearrange the calendar in an effort to reduce a very real problem - chronic absenteeism.
More than one out of 10 Oklahoma students are “chronically absent,” missing more than a 10th of the school year. That translates into lower achievement.
Here’s how the school calendar comes into that conversation: TPS attendance drops by 1.5 percent the day after a holiday, meaning about 500 additional students aren’t in class. Economically disadvantaged students are 50 percent more likely to miss school on a short week.
To address the problem, TPS plans to move professional days so that fall break and Thanksgiving break will be full-week closings starting next year. That reduces the number of partial school weeks from 11 to six.
On first impression, we were concerned about the idea of having more long school breaks. Extended breaks lead to retention issues and require more review when school resumes.
But the logic of the plan and the statistics speak plainly against that objection: Whether the school is scheduled to be open or closed, it doesn’t do students any good if they aren’t there.
The new calendar is more rational and, we hope, will translate into more students making it to class for more days.
If TPS administrators have done their job and vetted the plan with all the interested groups in advance - making sure everyone understands the need - this could be a good move that is well-received.
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The Oklahoman. March 24, 2019.
- Speech bill a reflection of the times
Two Republican members of the Legislature visited Washington, D.C., last week to hear President Trump defend free speech on college campuses. It’s a worthwhile issue, as speech - particularly by conservative groups - has been under assault in many places across the country.
This hasn’t been a significant problem in Oklahoma, thankfully, and Rep. Mark Lepak of Claremore and Sen. Julie Daniels of Bartlesville want to ensure that remains the case with Senate Bill 361, which earned them their invite to D.C.
Ideally, students and administrators would have a firm grasp of what the First Amendment is, and what it stands for, and that would be enough. But in too many places in recent years, individuals or organizations have been shouted down (sometimes, demonstrations have turned violent) or had their invitations to a campus event rescinded because someone else doesn’t like the message.
The result is legislation like SB 361, which is similar to bills approved in other states such as Arkansas.
SB 361 says the state’s higher education institutions can’t ban free speech in public areas and that those areas will be available for scheduled, organized or spontaneous expression. It also says administrators may set reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on free speech activities.
The bill would require Oklahoma’s public colleges and universities to publicize free speech regulations and expectations in their online and written literature for students. It also would require that schools make sure their administrators, campus police and others understand the policies. They would be required each year to post on their websites, and submit to the governor and the Legislature, a report showing what they’ve done to comply with the bill.
The reports would cite any “barriers to or incidents of” disruption of free speech on campus, what disciplinary action was taken against those responsible, and any other information the school deems “valuable for the public to evaluate whether free expression rights for all members of the campus community have been equally protected and enforced .”
Anyone who felt compelled to file suit over an apparent violation of their free speech rights would have a year to do so. If a school is sued, it would have 30 days to submit to the governor and Legislature a “supplementary report” with a copy of the complaint.
Critics say the bill could wind up letting a government body decide what violates free speech. One concern is that it could leave the Legislature to micromanage, although that is less likely if administrators are forthright in their reporting of incidents.
SB 361 won easy approval in the Senate and the same is likely in the House. The shame is that we’ve reached a place where such efforts are deemed necessary in the first place.
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Enid News & Eagle. March 25, 2019.
- Proposed ag cuts don’t make sense
Oklahoma agriculture representatives were taken aback recently when President Donald Trump released his budget blueprint for the 2020 fiscal year.
The record $4.75 trillion budget requests included a $3.6 billion cut to U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The plan would eliminate subsidies to higher-income farmers and reduce what the proposal terms “overly generous” crop insurance premium subsidies.
It would reduce the average premium subsidy for crop insurance from 62 to 48 percent and limit commodity, conservation and crop insurance subsidies to producers earning $500,000 or less.
Agriculture is unlike most other businesses. There are large capital outlays - mainly equipment and land - but so much of the end product, not to mention a farmer’s profit, is dependent on forces outside of anyone’s control, namely the weather.
“It’s got us a little bewildered in just what they’re thinking up there,” Scott Blubaugh, president of American Farmers & Ranchers/Oklahoma Farmers Union, told Gaylord News.
We wonder, too.
Rural economies continue to struggle. Input costs for farmers are high, and commodity prices are low, making the margin for a profit or loss razor thin.
Cutting the safety net out from under farmers would not be good policy. Reducing crop insurance subsidies would mean farmers would pay more for insuring their crops, thus putting them in a more precarious financial position.
The problems faced by rural America have been brought into focus by the historic flooding facing much of the Midwest.
Farmland in Nebraska and Iowa is underwater in many places. Livestock has been killed, stored grain has been ruined by rising waters and inundated fields mean delays in planting crops.
Oklahoma farmers know weather-related problems well.
Floods have ruined crops in the past, while drought has been the major issue in recent years.
Add to that the devastating fires of 2016 and 2017 in Northwest Oklahoma and Kansas, and you can see now is not the time to be messing with crop insurance.
The president’s budget plan is just that - a plan.
It is expected to be quickly rejected by Congress, so any spending plan that makes it to final form will be quite a bit different than what has been proposed.
And, we hope cuts to USDA are not part of the final budget.
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