The student population has not only , but the district saw an unprecedented influx of English learners. 

“It’s a huge testament to the work being done in Tulsa,” he said at a state board meeting. “I think that you’re seeing parents that have confidence in what’s being done there.”

But now he wants parents in Tulsa and other districts throughout the state to share their citizenship status when they enroll their children — a proposal that not only violates but is likely to keep some parents from sending their children to school. 

Districts say they don’t know how many undocumented students they have, but In Tulsa, the population of English learners grew from 10,168 in 2023 to 11,149 last year. 

President-elect Donald Trump’s are celebrating Walters’ effort to end “sanctuary schools,” but district leaders say the plan is traumatizing vulnerable families.

“It’s hurtful, and it’s going to create fear,” said Nick Migliorino, superintendent of the Norman Public Schools, south of Oklahoma City. “Not educating kids because of the status of their parents helps nobody.”&�Բ�����;

The Oklahoma State Department of Education says the is needed to determine how many tutors and teachers districts need for English learners. But it comes as many national Republicans are eager to challenge a longstanding Supreme Court ruling, , which  guarantees undocumented students an education in the U.S. 

“It’s reasonable to presume that this is an attack on Plyler,” said Julie Sugarman, associate director of the National Center on Immigrant Integration at the Migration Policy Institute. “If the Supreme Court was to say, ‘Well, we changed our mind — you actually can ask about immigration status,’ that would really put all of Plyler into question.”&�Բ�����;

The public has until Jan. 17 to submit comments on the rule. The state Board of Education will hold a public hearing the same day. 

The plan follows an election in which President-elect Donald Trump referred to the U.S. as a for undocumented immigrants. He has called for on Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at schools on the day he takes office and said he would — even if their children were born in the U.S.

Walters foreshadowed the new rule in July when he asked districts to account for the “cost and burden” of illegal immigration. And on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE Deputy Director Peter Flores for $474 million, saying their “failed border policies” have placed “severe financial and operational strain” on Oklahoma’s schools. He a bill for the same figure in October. 

The state, which has an under 16, will need an additional 1,065 teachers for English learners over the next five years, he wrote in his letter to Harris. He offered no specifics on where he got that figure. 

“We cannot effectively budget or allocate critical resources when we have no accounting of the cost that illegal immigration places on our schools,” the letter said.

shows that the percentage of English learners in the state, about 10%, hasn’t increased since the 2021-22 school year. But teachers in Tulsa have definitely noticed the influx of newcomers. 

“Some of them just show up on Monday and they don’t speak any English,” said one teacher in the district who did not want to be named in order to protect students. She often communicates with students through bilingual staff members. “I just hear the saddest stories every day. The kids are really sweet, but they’re afraid.”  

She worries about what might happen if recent immigrants are unable to attend school. 

“We provide coats,” she said. “We provide groceries on the weekends.”

‘Will not comply’

Norman, where about 8% of students are English learners, was among the many districts that didn’t submit any data to the state last summer. Regardless of their needs, Migliorino said, “educators invest in the students who show up in our district.”

Leaders of other districts, including the , and the , pushed back on Walters’ demands, saying they haven’t  asked about families’ immigration status and don’t intend to start. 

Bixby Superintendent told The 74 the proposed rule was “clearly unconstitutional.”&�Բ�����;

“Bixby will not comply,” said Miller, an outspoken critic of Walters who is suing him for .

He compared Walters’ plan to the state’s legal battle over a first-in-the-nation religious charter school. While the Oklahoma Supreme Court said the Catholic charter violates the law, the school and the state’s charter board have appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court has not yet decided whether to hear the case. 

“I believe they are trying to create a case for the Trump Supreme Court,” he said.

In , a Texas school district sought to charge tuition to students not “legally admitted” to the country. The U.S. Department of Education has long interpreted the court’s opinion to mean that states “cannot do anything to chill the atmosphere or to make people feel afraid to send their kids to school,” Sugarman said. 

Oklahoma isn’t the first state to attempt to curb illegal immigration’s impact on schools. In 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187, which denied undocumented immigrants access to public education and other services. The measure directed teachers to report students they suspected were undocumented to authorities. But advocates and federal courts found it .

Since then, , Arizona, Maryland and Texas have sought to ask parents about their citizenship, all for the stated purpose of determining how much it costs to serve unauthorized students. Only Alabama’s law was enacted, but a federal appeals court in 2012, after only a year. 

The issue could prove appealing for the Supreme Court, which took a sharp right turn during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. That ideological shift resulted in the end of and the reversal of that gave federal agencies significant leeway to interpret the law. 

“We have a different court now,” said Sugarman of the Migration Policy Institute. “The court’s willingness to overturn legal precedent means that lots of things are on the table that we wouldn’t previously [have] thought were in play.”

Attorney general agreement

The education department has until March to submit the rule to the legislature, where both the House and Senate must approve the measure for it to pass. If they don’t take action, the package automatically goes to the governor to sign. 

Walters, who frequently clashes with Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond on issues like religion in public schools and education funding, has found common cause with his frequent opponent on the issue of seeking parents’ citizenship status. 

“The Attorney General has said he believes Oklahoma has the right to collect citizenship data in connection with government services,” said spokesman Phil Bacharach.

In a , Drummond, who announced his Monday, spoke about efforts to cooperate with the incoming Trump administration to deport undocumented immigrants who are committing crimes in the state. But he didn’t address education.

As “protected areas or sensitive locations,” schools have been off limits for ICE agents at least . Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, said she wasn’t aware of any past ICE raids at U.S. schools. But that enrollment of Hispanic students in school drops, especially in the elementary grades, when ICE and local law enforcement partner to enforce immigration laws. Following a raid at a Tennessee meatpacking plant in 2019, in the local district were absent. 

For now, some districts have tried to reassure parents who might be hesitant to enroll their children or send them to school. Oklahoma City Superintendent Jamie Polk issued a statement saying the district’s schools “are a safe and welcoming place for all students, and our mission remains unchanged.”

But the state’s recommended rule is especially controversial in Tulsa, where conservative Board Member E’Lena Ashley told a Republican group that many English learners are undocumented and could pose a safety risk to other students.

Superintendent Ebony Johnson has tried to put families at ease, saying that rulemaking is a long, drawn-out process.

“There is a place for you and your children here,” Johnson said in a . “We want students here at school every day.”&�Բ�����; 

Oklahoma colleges and universities are working to bridge gaps in the state’s health care workforce, particularly in rural areas, by incentivizing students to pursue careers in various health care professions.

Some students pursuing degrees in health professions will be eligible for tuition payments through a new partnership between Southwestern Oklahoma State University, or SWOSU, and Comanche County Memorial Hospital, while partnerships at other schools, like the University of Oklahoma’s College of Nursing, are also taking aim at meeting workforce needs.

Critical shortages can be found in nearly all of Oklahoma’s health care professions and those shortages are intensified in rural areas, according to the

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SWOSU students who are pursuing degrees in specified health care and administrative programs can receive tuition payments if they work at the Comanche County Memorial Hospital after graduation. Students will also receive hands-on experience at the hospital while in school.

“We will serve as one of SWOSU’s clinical sites for various health care related professions,” said Brent Smith, CEO of the hospital, in a statement. “We appreciate this collaborative effort and are eager to begin this program that will help meet the growing health care needs of our community.”

Joel Kendall, provost and vice president for academic affairs at SWOSU, said the partnership was modeled after a previous one between SWOSU and for nursing students.

“It’s just really important that we provide that workforce, for nursing and other allied health programs, especially in rural health,” he said. “In Oklahoma that’s critically needed right now, so partnerships like this are trying to address that.”

Kendall said around 1,500 SWOSU students could be eligible to participate in this new partnership. This includes specialties in nursing, radiologic technology, physical therapy assistant, surgical technology and health care administration among others.

He said the dollar amount for the tuition payments will be decided by Comanche County Memorial Hospital and may be dependent on how many graduates accept jobs at the hospital.

Melissa Craft, interim dean of University of Oklahoma’s College of Nursing, said OU is also working to meet workforce needs by expanding the number of students accepted into the school’s nursing program.

In a 2022 OU news release, the Oklahoma Nurses Association that the state had 712 nurses per 100,000 residents, which ranked Oklahoma 46th in the nation in terms of nurses per capita.

“Our qualifications for application and what would make someone an eligible student have always kept the same. What we changed was our ability to accept,” Craft said. “The goal is still that we accept all qualified applicants.”

Craft said “health care is needed everywhere,” not just in Oklahoma’s metro areas.

She said OU works with five regional sites in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Lawton, Duncan and Norman to provide nursing students with hands-on learning experiences, like the SWOSU students.

But beyond the learning experience, Craft said partnering with regional hospitals helps the students find and build a community with those they work with and the patients they serve.

“Nursing is about relationships … we know that if we can partner with a facility and the nursing students, while they’re in school, can feel like they are a part of that community the chance that students will go to work there is really very, very high,” Craft said.

She said that OU graduates more nursing students than “anyone else” and while it’s an honor, “we graduate them for the workforce of Oklahoma.”

Craft said that in 2020, OU’s College of Nursing graduated 313 nurses. In 2024, that number has grown to 456 nurses.

She said that OU offers financial assistance to qualifying nursing students through various grants. The offers loan forgiveness to nurses who go on to educate the next generation of nurses after graduation. The Oklahoma Workforce Innovations and Nursing offers financial assistance to dozens of advanced practice nursing students per year.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

OKLAHOMA CITY — Tulsa Public Schools now faces the possibility of closing schools as the state adds new demands for academic improvement.

The Oklahoma State Board of Education created another set of goals for Tulsa to achieve by the end of the school year, and state Superintendent Ryan Walters said “all options are on the table” for penalties if the district falls short.

Walters and the board urged the school district to consider consolidating resources and funding into fewer school buildings, which means some sites could close.

“We think they need to be looking at school closures,” Walters said. “I’m not telling them which schools they need to close, but I am telling them when you look at these numbers of that many F schools, you look at the resources that you’re making available, you look at (the fact that) some of them have been on this (F) list for years, it absolutely has to be part of the decision-making process.”

Tulsa interim Superintendent Ebony Johnson said the district is exploring the possibility, as well as significant changes to staff.

“There will be district-office and school-level changes in personnel that will take place this school year,” Johnson told the state board. “We are also having conversations regarding ensuring that we provide the best quality learning experience for our students. And in that conversation, that could lend itself to some school closures.”

Such a move would not be unprecedented. Oklahoma City Public Schools closed 15 schools and reconfigured 17 others in 2019.

Rather than spreading students and resources across more schools with lower enrollment, the plan concentrated services, like counselors and academic programs, into fewer schools while cutting costs of building maintenance.

The for four months, as state officials continue to scrutinize the district’s poor academic output. Former Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist resigned in September to help stave off such a drastic measure from the state.

To avoid further penalties, Tulsa now must have 50% of its students score at least at a basic level on state reading tests this spring or see a 5% increase in academic growth in reading.

Academic growth measures students’ improvement over the previous year in a subject area. Scoring at a basic level on state tests indicates partial mastery of a subject.

Last school year, 57% of Tulsa district students scored below basic in reading, according to recently released state report cards.

Walters said he hopes to require all Oklahoma public schools to achieve at least 50% of students scoring at or above basic in reading and math. Adding this to every school’s yearly accreditation evaluation will require a 60-day period of public comment, state board approval and a review by the state Legislature — a process Walters said will begin in the coming weeks.

The state Board of Education also required Tulsa to improve its 18 schools that have been designated for “more rigorous intervention,” a label given to low-performing schools. Twelve of the 18 schools must show enough improvement that they aren’t marked for “more rigorous intervention” next year.

The district also must train all of its teachers in the science of reading.

Additionally, the board demanded the district’s finance team meet with staff from the Oklahoma State Department of Education to review district expenditures. The department’s general counsel, Bryan Cleveland, said Tulsa staff delayed the finance meeting multiple times.

However, email records show it was state agency staff who suggested postponing the meeting to after Thanksgiving because of the large volume of documents the state had asked the school district to compile, according to records the Tulsa district provided to Oklahoma Voice.

Cleveland questioned the thousands of dollars Tulsa spent on items listed as “miscellaneous” expenses. He said the district should explain these expenditures in greater detail.

“I’m not even saying these expenditures are necessarily bad,” Cleveland said. “The problem is you don’t know if they’re good or bad if you keep having different ways of using the word ‘miscellaneous.’”

Tulsa Board of Education President Stacey Woolley said she worries the new academic expectations won’t be attainable.

State officials complained the district’s academic plan wasn’t ambitious enough, but Woolley said Tulsa’s goals were developed with school data experts.

She said the possibility of closing schools will be a “very challenging conversation” for the Tulsa school board, but she didn’t dismiss the idea.

“What I’m certain of is our board wants to do what is best for students and that Dr. Johnson wants what is best for students,” Woolley said. “If she can tell us that she believes that her actions will help improve student outcomes, then that is critical for our students and we have as a board said that we will support her in doing what it takes to achieve outcomes.”

Any site closures would be a local decision made with input from families, the community and the Tulsa school board, district spokesperson Luke Chitwood said in a statement.

“Ultimately, the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education considers any recommendation made and decides if any closures, consolidations, or changes in school format will be approved and implemented,” he said in a statement after the meeting.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

A history teacher and 2016 finalist for Oklahoma teacher of the year, he encouraged vigorous debates on pivotal moments like Roe v. Wade and, closer to home, the forced relocation of Native Americans known as the “Trail of Tears.”

During homecoming week, students gently mocked him on “Dress Like Ryan Walters Days,” sporting his signature slim-fitting suits, skinny ties and color combinations that didn’t always blend well. 

Life-size cut-outs of Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan in his classroom spoke to his conservative values. But if he was a firebrand, none could tell. 

“He made us feel validated. He never told us that we were wrong,” said Starla Edge, who had Walters for homeroom, history club and classes each year she was in school. Having come out as queer in eighth grade, she served as president of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance junior year. But she never felt shunned by her favorite teacher. “I got excited when he went into politics, because I thought, ‘This is my voice.’ ” 

Now Edge barely recognizes the man who was elected Oklahoma’s state superintendent last November. In selfie videos from his car, Walters denounces “woke ideology” and frequently of pushing a radical agenda based on atheism, racial justice and gender identity. In a series of provocative statements, he’s called the state’s teachers union a and dismissed the separation of church and state as a  

The relentless focus helped push the small-town teacher who never ran a school or a district into the national spotlight. In July, he spoke along with other conservative luminaries at a summit in Philadelphia held by the right-wing parent group,  a platform for several GOP presidential hopefuls.

To Edge and many of Walters’s former students and colleagues, the transformation is dizzying. 

“This is not the man that I knew for a large chunk of my life,” she said. 

To supporters in blood-red Oklahoma, however, it’s not Walters who’s changed, but the education system that’s gone off the rails.

“We want our teachers to teach … reading, writing and arithmetic,” said Wade Burleson, a retired Baptist minister who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year and met Walters on the campaign trail. Burleson also wants school prayer and to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom — key tenets of a Walters formed in June. He called the state chief “one of those rare individuals who will do exactly what he said he was going to do.”&�Բ�����;

Walters declined interview requests from The 74. But as the 38-year old builds his national profile, he’s coming under increasing scrutiny at home. Following his recent threats to take over the and a social media post that sparked bomb threats in a neighboring district, Democrats stepped up calls for his They cite investigations into his handling of COVID relief funds and a “pattern of inflammatory language.”

Even some Republicans think his rhetoric has gone too far. 

“This guy cares more about getting on than he does about doing his job,” said Republican state Rep. Mark McBride, who leads a House education subcommittee. “Someone has whispered in his ear that he could be governor or … secretary of education.”

Religious upbringing

Walters may not have set out to become a culture warrior, but his values and politics, like those of many in McAlester, reflect a deep religious upbringing.

Nestled between an Army munitions plant and a state prison, the former coal mining center some 91 miles south of Tulsa is a town of and more than .

His father was a and his mother worked at . Both remain active in the , where he is a minister and she is elementary education director. Like them, Walters attended Harding University, a conservative Christian college in Searcy, Arkansas. His brother and sister also attended.

In honoring him as an “outstanding young alumnus,” Walters, who is married and has four children under age 10, said he chose the school for its “Christian mission.”

Harding students take mandatory Bible classes and attend chapel daily. Its explicitly forbids same-sex relationships and maintains that “gender identity is given by God and revealed in one’s birth sex.”

It’s an atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the McAlester Walters returned to in 2011.

His eight-year tenure at the high school coincided with greater visibility by the LGBTQ community. In 2015, students at the high school founded a Gay-Straight Alliance. Based on from the Obama administration, the district also set aside a “family” restroom for transgender students to use. 

Brenda Calahan, a retired art teacher who served as the GSA’s first adviser, said many in the community didn’t welcome the developments.

“It was rough for those kids,” she said. 

Members of the wrestling team one of the club’s founding members, setting up a point system for everything from slashing his tires to killing him, said Debra McDaniel, his mother. He left soccer practice one day to find screws stuck in the tires of his car.

The principal at the time told Calahan to remove students’ LGBTQ-themed artwork from a display case near the front of the school. Some students petitioned the school board to disband the club, which still operates today.

Edge remembers overhearing a “few grumpy teachers” complain about the gender-neutral bathroom. Not Walters. Other staff members, she added, made crude references to the GSA, mocking it as “gay shits allowed.” But Walters, she said, “would have shut that down.”

‘There was no black or white’

That view is widely held among former students at McAlester, where Walters taught three Advanced Placement courses — U.S. history, world history and government — and also coached boys basketball and girls tennis.

Former students interviewed by The 74 admired his approachability and sense of fun. When Edge struggled to grasp the finer points of Islam during his AP World History class, for example, he offered to lend her his own copy of the Quran. For another class, he took students to McAlester City Hall, where they took over for the day, playing the roles of mayor and department heads. In a mock council meeting, they voted in favor of allowing residents to own a potbelly pig as a pet.

“When we got done, I was pushing that we needed to do it again,” said Mayor John Browne, a Democrat who is now roundly critical of Walters. “When I found out that he was going to be running [for superintendent], I thought, ‘He’ll be good.’ ” 

During classroom debates — with desks pushed to either side of class — Walters critiqued each side’s argument and expected students to back up their claims with evidence.

Shane Hood, another former student, remembers a classroom discussion of the Indian Removal Act, which President Andrew Jackson signed in 1830. Students split over whether the law was racially motivated and unjust or actually benefited Native Amerians. While giving students their say, Hood said, Walters held firmly that white expansionism caused the suffering and death of tribes as they traveled 1,200 miles to what would later become Oklahoma.

“He was much more nuanced,” said Hood, who, like Edge, took all three of Walters’s AP courses. He now attends Oklahoma State University in Stillwater and credits Walters with inspiring him to study political science. “In his classroom, there was no black and white. It was all shades of gray. Now it’s, ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’”

That reticence in the classroom stood out in a town where 74% of voters chose former President Donald Trump in 2016. Some teachers, Hood remembers, wore MAGA hats in the classroom and let student slurs like “libtard” go unchallenged. But not Walters. Some students even questioned if he was a “closeted Democrat,” Edge said.

Tennis and politics

If his students were ignorant of Walters’s private views, that was intentional, according to those who know him. “No one knew if he was a Democrat or a Republican, and that’s why they loved him so much,” said Chad Waller, a friend and former head coach of the girls tennis team.

After tournaments, Waller remembers the young educator grading papers past midnight. Walters, he said, gets a “bad rap.”

“The man eats, sleeps and breathes education,” he said.

But it was tennis that paved the way for his friend’s foray into politics.

In 2018, Kevin Stitt, a mortgage company owner, became the GOP nominee for governor. At a tennis tournament that year, Walters met Stitt, who was cheering on his .

“We kind of struck up a friendship,” in the Harding alumni video. After his victory, Stitt invited him to be part of an education working group that advised the incoming administration. 

That year, Walters got busy shoring up his conservative bona fides. With no visible prior record of writing for national publications, he gave full-throated voice to views he’d long kept out of the classroom. In for The Federalist, an influential conservative journal known for its vetting of federal judicial nominees, he warned of “runaway district courts” that would “undermine the will of the people.” Foreshadowing some of his future positions, he criticized the establishing a right to gay marriage, saying it demonstrates why justices shouldn’t have final say on constitutional matters.

A year later, he landed a job running Oklahoma Achieves, the education arm of the State Chamber, a commerce organization that, like Stitt, supports school choice. more than doubled his teacher’s salary. As superintendent, he makes over $124,000.

His rise did not go unnoticed. 

“This random, unknown, fresh-faced teacher from McAlester all of a sudden popped into the State Chamber spotlight,” said Erika Wright, founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition, a nonprofit that opposes private school choice. “That is the moment where I first questioned ‘Who is this guy, and what’s the bigger plan?’ ”

‘Isn’t that a woke idea?’

At the time, those with more left-leaning views said they could still find common ground with Walters.

In 2019, Rep. Jacob Rosecrants of Norman, a Democrat and former Oklahoma City Schools teacher, began drafting to preserve a “play-based” teaching approach in early-childhood classrooms. He and Walters agreed on the value of recess and hands-on learning.

“He didn’t spout the far-right talking points he does now,” Rosecrants said. Progress on the bill stalled in 2020, and by the time they spoke of it again the following year, Stitt had appointed Walters as his education secretary. 

This time, Walters seemed skeptical. “I could hear his tone change, and he began to ask questions … like, ‘Isn’t that a woke idea?’ or ‘How is this not indoctrination?’ ” Rosecrants said. “Why? Because the words ‘social and emotional learning’ were in my bill.”&�Բ�����;

What happened? The pandemic, for one. The long closures that followed lockdowns in March 2020 mobilized parents, particularly those on the right. School board meetings became battlegrounds over decisions to keep schools closed and kids tied to their laptops. The timing coincided with a right-wing backlash over many aspects of classroom life. Many parents began demanding restrictions on everything from library books on gender and sexual issues to the teaching of racial discrimination in U.S. history. 

Social-emotional learning — a decades-old practice associated with teaching kids resilience, empathy and self-control — got caught up in the fight. Some conservatives criticized its  and called it “l” and “too intrusive.”

Oklahoma was not immune. In 2021, it became one of the first states in the country to pass a law prohibiting teachers from offering lessons that suggest students should feel guilt or anguish because of their race. The following year, Stitt signed the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which forbids transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

With his young daughter Violet smiling and giving a thumbs up beside him, Walters made one of his earliest to celebrate the law’s passage. “We are not going to fall prey to the far left,” he said.

Making the culture war personal

His November election as state superintendent allowed him to step outside Stitt’s shadow. Many hoped taking control of the department of education would mark a turn to more substantive matters, particularly in a state that saw in student performance nationally following the pandemic.

But if anything, Walters doubled down on his rhetoric.

He a teacher’s license after she protested the state’s divisive concepts law by giving students a link to banned books from the Brooklyn Public Library. She later resigned and is for defamation. More recently, he pressured the Western Heights district to who performs as a drag queen on nights and weekends and launched an into its hiring practices. 

While other GOP education chiefs occasionally wade into the culture wars, Walters spends most of his time there. He’s established a “granular-level focus” on specific districts, and that makes his sharp rhetoric seem personal, said Deven Carlson, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma.

In with conservative talk show host Steve Deace, Walters acknowledged taking the host’s advice to make his campaign “a referendum on groomers.” Typically used to describe sexual predators, the term is often employed by conservatives to describe anyone who supports LGBTQ inclusion — potentially minimizing real threats of child sexual abuse, experts say, while demonizing non-heterosexuals.

In May, he portraying teachers unions as a threat to children’s safety because of their liberal views on LGBTQ issues. 

For Walters, the fight is existential. “The forces that you all are fighting … want to destroy our society,” he said at the recent Moms for Liberty event in Philadelphia. “They want to destroy your family, and they want to destroy America as we know it.”

‘Let’s not tie it to skin color’

The rhetoric has many in McAlester wondering how well they actually knew the man who taught and coached their children for so many years.

Stacy Gorley Williams said her son, Vinny, who played small forward for McAlester High’s basketball team, thought Walters “walked on water.”

Walters’s wife Katie, a therapist, worked for Williams at a nonprofit providing mental health services, and the two often sat together during games. Williams, who chairs the county’s Democratic party and was a charter member of a local LGBTQ advocacy group, said if Walters had given her the impression that he was biased, she wouldn’t have let Vinny play for him.

“I have zero tolerance for people who don’t accept diversity,” she said. 

The questions only compound when it comes to Walters’s handling of his area of expertise: U.S. history.

In July, during a Republican meeting at a library in Norman, he appeared to suggest that one of the most shameful events in the state’s history, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, was not racially motivated. A white mob destroyed the thriving Black business district of Greenwood. The violence led to the deaths of an estimated 300 Black people, an episode that was suppressed in Oklahoma for decades. 

An audience member suggested the state’s divisive concepts law put teachers in a tough spot: How can they discuss the Tulsa massacre without running afoul of its tricky requirement to shield students from distress?

As a teacher, Walters served that in 2018 confirmed the episode’s place in state , calling it one of many examples of “rising racial tensions” in the 20th century. At the Norman meeting, he insisted the massacre should be taught, but through the lens of individual responsibility. 

“Let’s not tie it to skin color,” he said.

He later called the violence “racist” and “evil,” and said the media twisted his words.

Remembering how skillfully Walters handled the lesson on the Trail of Tears, not flinching from its racial dimensions, Hood, his former student, often wonders if Walters believes what he says.

“It’s too much of a transformation in my opinion to be natural,” he said.

Ryan Walters is not who you think he is.

Branding and performing

For his part, Walters rejects the notion that he’s changed. Responding to a debate question , he said, “The reality is my students didn’t know what my political background was.”

“I didn’t tell them what to think,” he said of his time in the classroom. “I challenged them to think.”

Regardless of his actual views, many of them — like his support for funding a religious charter school with public funds — go down well in a state where two-thirds of Republican voters favor candidates who talk about God and Christianity, according to a poll last fall. 

Some see his tactics, like the car videos and steady stream of audacious statements, as elements of brand building and securing a base — perhaps in anticipation of a  gubernatorial run when Stitt leaves office in 2026.

“He’s very ambitious, and I think that’s what took over,” said Rosecrants, the Democratic representative. “It leads me to believe that all of this is for a bigger purpose.”

Rick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, compared Walters to another high-profile state leader with national aspirations — Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Last year, Newsom paid for in seven red states promoting California as a sanctuary for those seeking an abortion.

“For an elected chief in blue and red states, unfortunately, the incentives are there to become a performer,” Hess said. “Walters is responding to the incentives, no matter how unhealthy they may be.”

But with his star on the rise, Walters faces at home. The state ethics commission fined him for failing to report campaign contributions, including one from the conservative 1776 Project PAC. And two audits criticized of a federally funded program to help poor families while he was secretary of education. Over $650,000 in federal relief funds went toward TVs, arcade games and furniture instead of curriculum and tutoring. The Republican state auditor’s office and the FBI are also .

In a podcast with 1776 Project PAC founder Ryan Girdusky,  the attacks against him “absurd.” Dan Isett, department spokesman, said the Democrats’ calls for an “represent a direct threat to our democracy.”

Supporters say outrage from the left proves he’s been effective. “This is a man of principle. Has he made mistakes? Possibly,” said Burleson, the retired minister. “But when you are attacked by people unjustly, there’s a tendency to come out strong.”&�Բ�����;

Confrontation in Tulsa

This summer, he took his most aggressive stance yet against Oklahoma’s largest school system, the 33,000-student Tulsa district, and its former leader Deborah Gist.

He threatened a state takeover after Tulsa officials reprimanded a Moms for Liberty-backed board member who He later accused Gist of failure to disclose how much the district was spending on , which she’d described as a ”closely-held core value.”

To prevent the hostile action, she Aug. 22. The state board accredited the district, but “with deficiencies,” noting low academic performance and poor financial oversight. fell even more than . But students in the state’s second-largest district, Oklahoma City, lost just as much ground in math, and rank lower than Tulsa overall. 

The intensity of the fight worries observers in other districts, who see in Tulsa a harbinger of where the growing toxicity in education might lead nationally. “We’re now seeing partisan politics become retaliatory politics,” said Susan Enfield, superintendent of the Washoe County schools in Reno, Nevada. “This is ego-driven, reckless leadership.”

As the state board deliberated the Tulsa district’s future, events at the nearby Union Public Schools demonstrated how incendiary Oklahoma’s education politics had become. The district received bomb threats six days in a row after Walters from a far-right account featuring a local elementary school librarian. The threats continued well into September.

The librarian’s original TikTok video seemed to poke fun at Walters, saying her “radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind.”&�Բ�����;

Walters, who once got a kick out of reading his about his tight pants and patchy beard, apparently didn’t see the humor.

“Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it,” he wrote.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation has provided financial support to Every Kids Counts Oklahoma and its predecessor Oklahoma Achieves, and currently provides support to The 74. Ryan Walters led both state advocacy groups.

Shaheen fled Iraq in 1998 during Saddam Hussein’s regime, made a harrowing escape to Jordan and eventually settled in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Shaheen is now a substitute teacher for the Lincoln public schools, but not without the financial burden of enrolling in courses to meet English language requirements and taking student loans because her Iraqi degree wasn’t recognized.

“It was almost impossible for me to start from the beginning, which is very difficult for someone learning a new language,” Shaheen told The 74.

A new program launched by for internationally trained immigrants and refugees who want to become teachers in the U.S. aims to ease the challenges Shaheen faced. 

According to the , more than one in three educators, or 34 percent, are unemployed or not using their degree.

Yet, thousands of teacher vacancies across the country persist — with more than , according to Kansas State University’s College of Education.

“Even as we experience the Great Resignation, which heavily impacted the education sector, there’s still individuals who want to be part of this workforce,” said Mikaela Santos, senior program manager of World Education Services.

“The cultural perspectives and new ideas immigrants and refugees bring to the table becomes wasted talent because of the many regulatory and systemic barriers in the American education system,” she added. 

To combat this problem, three organizations were awarded a $100,000 grant in July 2023 to create pathways for foreign trained teachers to become educators in the U.S.

In the next year, the in Lincoln, Nebraska; the in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and in Chicago, Illinois will place more than 150 teachers trained in their home countries at schools in their communities.

Here is a snapshot of each organization’s effort to help internationally trained teachers and address racial disparities in the classroom.

Asian Community and Cultural Center

Nearly 50% of Nebraska’s school districts had unfilled teacher positions during the 2022-23 school year — with 66% saying there were either unqualified or no applicants, according to the .

Lee Kreimer, the CareerLadder director at the Asian Community and Cultural Center, said the organization is looking to place at least 35 foreign trained teachers into Nebraska’s Lincoln public schools and South Sioux City public schools.

The need for diverse teachers is especially great in rural areas like South Sioux City that have had a high influx of Latino families immigrating partly because of the that has historically relied on foreign-born workers, Kreimer said.

The reported a growing 47.8% Latino population in South Sioux City with more than 63.6% Latino students .

“We see this as a great opportunity to tackle multiple challenges at one time and it’s truly a win-win way to help everybody,” Kreimer told The 74.

The organization recently set up programs at schools in both districts for immigrants and refugees to be mentored as they finish up their U.S. teaching licenses.

“Investing in schools by providing teachers that look like their students helps them succeed,” Kreimer said. “And from a racial equity standpoint, children seeing teachers that look like them and have experiences like them helps with retention, staying out of trouble and getting better grades.”

Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity

In Oklahoma, there were nearly 180,000 unfilled teacher positions in 2022 — more than twice the average a decade ago, according to the .

The Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity estimates nearly 650 internationally trained teachers in Tulsa have education degrees but don’t work in the field.

Chief resilience officer Krystal Reyes said the city wants to hire at least 65 teachers trained in their home countries — largely from Latino, Afghan and Ukrainian backgrounds to reflect the families immigrating to Tulsa.

“Because we have a diverse student body, we need our teachers to reflect that,” Reyes told The 74. “So we know that our immigrant community can help us meet that language and cultural need.”

Programs include expanding job training with ESL courses and creating free courses for those seeking alternative certification.

“We need to do more as a government to make sure that there’s full participation, representation and economic opportunities from all our communities,” Reyes said. “There may be a money barrier or an English barrier, but they’re still trained educators that could be filling a great need in our schools.”

Richard J. Daley College

In Illinois, 73% of districts report teacher shortages — with 30% saying positions remain unfilled or filled with someone less qualified, according to the .

Janine Janosky, president of Richard J. Daley College, said the school aims to connect at least 50 foreign trained teachers to schools across Chicago.

“We’re seeing many immigrants and refugees coming with professional experiences already from their home country,” Janosky told The 74, adding how more than 10% have teaching licenses.

Trish Aumann, vice president of academic and student affairs at the college, said the need to hire diverse teachers is especially great because of the influx of immigrant families — particularly Ukrainian refugees.

“We need multicultural and multilingual individuals in positions in our schools,” Aumann told The 74. “So it’s that bigger picture of supporting K-12 schools that will in turn help immigrants and refugees with their economic mobility.”

Janosky said the college is creating a pilot program for internationally trained teachers to fill vacancies in Chicago’s schools.

“Within the middle part of the United States, there’s very few of us doing this work,” Janosky said. “That gives us a huge responsibility, but also a huge opportunity, to make a big difference for Chicago, Illinois, and the entire country.”

“I had them when they were infants,” said Barraza, who has worked for the Long Beach-based Educare since 2017. Compared to the other state-funded program she used to work for, Educare fosters more trusting relationships with parents. “They become like a family.”

A modern facility tucked into a residential neighborhood, the program is part of a network of 25 Educare centers nationwide. In a field with high turnover, Educare is known for keeping children with the same teacher until age 3. Other features — small class sizes, a full-day schedule and strong family support — further set the model apart from most early-childhood centers serving young children from poor families.

Those elements pay off once children enter school, according to who spent their early years in the program entered kindergarten on pace academically with students from more affluent families, the study found.

“It wasn’t their elementary school experience that was different; their early-childhood experience was different,” said Diane Horm, director of the Early Childhood Education Institute at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa and part of a nationwide network of researchers evaluating Educare. “There was no evidence of fade out and no evidence of catch up.”

‘A strong model’

Even the best preschool programs have faced a common criticism: Gains made by participants frequently during the early grades. Republicans in Congress have repeatedly used such results to argue for budget cuts to

The Educare results, Horm said, suggest that the achievement gap can be avoided if children start preschool before age 2.

The size of the Tulsa study sample wasn’t large — just 75 children — but other researchers say it’s an important contribution to the early education field. 

“You have a strong model [over] multiple years and strong persistent outcomes,” Steve Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, said about the Tulsa study. 

A previous , focused on the first Educare center in Chicago, showed that former students continued to perform well in elementary school and that parents stayed engaged in their children’s education. But the Tulsa study is considered more rigorous because Horm compared the students’ achievement to those who didn’t attend Educare.

The study’s results, experts say, support the argument for more federal spending on high-quality programs for infants and toddlers, especially since now provide some funding for pre-K.

“If the states are going to put money into pre-K, maybe a better use of federal resources is for birth to 3,” said Linda Smith, director of the Early Childhood Development Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. 

Educare, which Horm called an “enhanced” version of Head Start and Early Head Start, could even serve as a blueprint for the future of those programs, which are long overdue for , Smith said.

Head Start began in the 1960s’ as part of the War on Poverty. Early Head Start followed in 1995 to serve infants and toddlers. Housed within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, they are two separate programs, but Smith would like to see that change.

“It’s time to make this a birth-to-school-entry program and let communities determine their needs,” she said.

‘The kids are ready’

Educare prefers to locate its centers as close to an elementary school as possible to help ease the transition into state-funded pre-K or kindergarten. The Long Beach center even shares its property with an elementary school.

“The Tulsa results confirmed the work that we do,” said Maria Harris, who served as an Educare principal until becoming Head Start director for the Long Beach Unified School District. “What we’re hearing from our receiving elementaries is, ‘The kids are ready.’ ”

Most Educare classes have three teachers — a lead with a bachelor’s degree and two assistants — providing children more individual attention and opportunities to talk about their routines throughout the day.

Janet Rosales, whose 10-year-old son attended Educare in Tulsa, thinks the consistent structure he experienced during his earliest years is why he’s doing well in school now. He’s in the gifted program at Eliot Elementary, is quick and accurate with math problems and loves to draw. 

When her youngest, now 10 months, got a slot at the same center, with the same teacher who taught her son, Rosales said she “cried with happiness.”&�Բ�����;

“It’s just hard to find a place that is so engaging with your children,” Rosales said. 

Much of what the world knows about the Tulsa massacre, one of the most consequential events of state-sanctioned racial violence and displacement in America’s history, started with the work of one woman. Although Mary E. Jones Parrish’s name has made a resurgence in recent history, the impact of her book about the disaster still isn’t fully recognized — a situation one of her descendants is looking to change.

From May 31 to June 1, 1921, Tulsa’s thriving Greenwood district — dubbed “Black Wall Street” by Booker T. Washington — was decimated. One of the most affluent all-Black communities in the country at the time, Greenwood had an estimated 10,000 residents, many seeking refuge from the racial violence in other parts of the United States. Its 35 blocks boasted 121 Black-owned businesses and the nation’s largest Black-owned hotel.

Over less than 24 hours, hundreds of people were killed, more than 800 were injured, and over 1,200 homes and Black-owned businesses were burned and bombed to their foundations, leaving the community with damage amounting to over $27 million in 2021 dollars.

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The events leading to the massacre began on May 30, 1921, when unfounded allegations that a 19-year-old Black boy, Dick Rowland, had assaulted a 17-year-old White girl, Sarah Page. The allegations energized White residents of Tulsa as rumors of and plans for his execution spread.

Many argue that the impetus of the massacre was not the allegations, but the way the Tulsa Tribune, a White newspaper, sensationalized the events, weaponizing the afternoon’s headline as more a call to action: “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator.”

A mob of White Tulsans, estimated to be in the thousands — at least 500 of whom were deputized by the police chief and given weapons — took to the streets of Greenwood.

In the days after the massacre, White media remained complicit in hiding its true nature, naming it a riot and obscuring details. The full number of people killed and true nature of the economic impact remain unknown, but what historians have been able to uncover is due to the work of Parrish, a journalist and typewriting instructor whose 1923 book, “Events of the Tulsa Disaster,” was the first book to be published accounting the massacre.

“Parrish’s work became a vital primary source for other people’s writings,” wrote in his recently released book, “Built From the Fire.” “Yet her life remained unknown, even as the facts that she had gathered — such as several firsthand accounts of airplanes being used to surveil or attack Greenwood — became foundational to the nation’s understanding of the massacre. She was, quite literally, relegated to the footnotes of history.”

Parrish’s great-granddaughter Anneliese Bruner is following in her footsteps as a writer and editor but didn’t learn of her connection to Parrish — or the events of Tulsa — until she was in her 30s.

A routine visit to her father, William Bruner Jr., for the holidays was all Bruner had set out for. She arrived at her dad’s expecting the usually jovial and lighthearted man she’d grown up with but found him uncharacteristically serious as he waved her into his room and closed the door behind them.

He produced an envelope and out of it pulled a small, red, cloth-wrapped rectangular book that wore its age well and had the words, “Events of the Tulsa Disaster by Mrs. Mary E. Jones Parrish” embossed on the front in gold lettering.

“This is a book your (great) grandmother wrote,” Bruner’s father said, revealing to her for the first time the depth of her ancestry, who her grandmother, Florence Mary was, and why the events of the Tulsa massacre were such an integral piece to her bloodline’s story. “I’m giving this to you. I want you to see what you can do with it.”

When “Events of the Tulsa Disaster” was first published in 1923, it was done so privately by Parrish out of an abundance of caution. Today, few copies of the original work exist.

In 2021, Bruner answered her father’s call, promising to spread Parrish’s work, and worked with the Trinity University Press to secure wide release of the book, titling the new edition, “”

“I want people to know this work,” Bruner told The 19th. “As well as the person who did this work. I want people to see her courage. Her motherliness. Her agency and certainty in herself. Her spirit. … I want them to see her humanity.”

Just two paragraphs into the book, Parrish writes, “How recent seems the beginnings of this little book!” For Bruner, aside from its stature, there was nothing small about the book. She pored through it in one sitting with what felt like a sense of urgency, learning of the horrors of those two days and those that followed, uniting with her great-grandmother all the while.

After the massacre, against the wishes and caution of her friends and loved ones, Parrish stayed in Tulsa to accept a job from the Inter-Racial Commission to report on the events. The commission, created not even a month after the massacre, was an amalgam of what Parrish describes as “fair-minded white” and “no less representative” Black people with the common goal of creating a “greater and better Tulsa.”

Parrish used this opportunity to take a microscope to the events, contextualizing race relations in Tulsa as she interviewed scores of eyewitnesses, cementing the accounts of survivors, salvaging photographs of the ruins and lives lost and even creating a list that would become the foundation of what is known of the economic loss.

Parrish begins her book with her own account. Her knowledge of the massacre began when her 9-year-old daughter, Florence, said, “Mother, I see men with guns.” After waiting for the sounds of the violence to diminish, Parrish wrote that she “breathed a prayer to heavenly father for strength” and escaped with Florence.

The book then details survivors’ accounts, including James T.A. West, a local high school teacher, who recalls being rounded up with other men.

“They (the Home Guard) told me to line up in the street. … They refused to let one of the men put on any kind of shoes. After lining up some 30 or 40 of us men, they ran us through the streets to Convention Hall forcing us to keep our hands in the air all the while. While we were running some of the ruffians would shoot at our heels. They actually drove a car into the bunch and knocked down two or three men.”

“When we reached Convention Hall we were searched again. There people were herded in like cattle. The sick and wounded were dumped out in front of the building and remained without attention for hours,” West said.

Parrish intersperses her own recollections as well. “I can never erase the sights of my first visit to the hospital,” Parrish wrote. “There were men wounded in every conceivable way, like soldiers after a battle. Some with amputated limbs, burned faces, or bandaged heads. There were women who were nervous wrecks, and some confinement cases. Was I in a hospital in France? No, in Tulsa. One mother was so thoughtless as to burden her infant for life with the name of June Riot.”

“There were to be seen people who formerly had owned beautiful homes and buildings and people who had always worked and made a comfortable honest living all standing in a row and waiting to be handed a change of clothing and feeling grateful to be able to get a sandwich and glass of water,” Parrish wrote.

“Dreamland,” as Greenwood was called for the exceptional economic and social potential it held for Black Americans, was no more. “Soon we reached the district which was so beautiful and prosperous looking when we left. This we found to be piled of bricks, ashes and twisted iron, representing years of toil and savings.”

“We were horror-stricken but strangely we could not shed a tear.“ Parrish writes, “We did not enter there through the section of town, but they brought us through the White section, all sitting flat down on the truck looking like immigrants, only that we had no bundles. Dear reader, can you imagine the humiliation of coming in like that, with many doors thrown open watching you pass, some with pity and others with a smile?”

“It is my sincere hope and desire that this book will open the eyes of the thinking people of America.”

Quality of schools in the region, which encompasses Boise, could be a factor, according to a from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation that identifies the nation’s best and worst metro areas for educational effectiveness. 

“Literally, you see the houses springing up like mushrooms,” said Terry Ryan, CEO of Bluum, a nonprofit supporting charter and district schools in the area. 

The region is among those where schools made above-average academic progress prior to COVID-19, the report shows. With the pandemic now accelerating toward suburbs and smaller metro areas — and often away from high-priced coastal cities — the authors say families and business leaders looking to relocate should factor in school quality when deciding where to settle down.

Michael Petrilli, president of the Institute, cautioned that there’s no guarantee the pandemic hasn’t stalled progress in areas where student performance once trended upward. Some experts, for example, have called recent “staggering.” But he said the message to districts and charter schools that were effective before the pandemic is to stay the course, and those that are ineffective “cannot just go back to normal.”

“I would assume that school districts and charter schools that were doing well by kids before the pandemic are probably largely the same ones doing well by them during the pandemic,” he said.

Using the — a national database of student performance — and graduation data from the U.S. Department of Education, the Fordham-Chamber project focuses on 100 large and mid-sized metro areas. The top locales include Miami, which recently received back-to-back from the state; Memphis, where Black, Hispanic and low-income students have shown above-average academic growth; and the Atlanta region, which ranks fourth in the study.

Atlanta has been ranked among the best places to start a new business, attracting tech leaders like . Collaboration among districts across the metro area is one reason why students were making progress before the pandemic and are “well-positioned to return to growth,” said Kenneth Zeff, executive director of Learn4Life, a nonprofit working to improve education outcomes across the metro Atlanta area. “Substantial inequities still exist, but the gap in several key indicators has been slowly eroding.”

Smaller metro areas, such as Jackson, Mississippi, and Brownsville, Texas, also emerged as places where schools performed better than expected based on demographics.

Those on the lower end of the spectrum include the Salt Lake City area, Las Vegas and Tulsa. Average achievement in math and English language arts has improved over the past six to 10 years in the Las Vegas metro area — essentially the Clark County School District — but schools still perform below average nationally, according to the report. 

Eighty percent of the population

The researchers focused on the nation’s metro areas because that’s where 80 percent of the U.S. population lives and where economic activity and labor market trends tend to have the most impact. Issues such as school choice and racial segregation also affect multiple districts. 

In addition to identifying areas with above- and below-average academic growth, the researchers factored in progress among Black, Hispanic and disadvantaged students, a region’s improvement over the past six to 10 years, and high school graduation rates. They combined these indicators into a measure they call “student learning accelerating metros” — or SLAM. The report includes interactive features so users can isolate results for specific indicators, subject areas or demographic groups.

The authors stressed that while achievement scores might seem to be an obvious indicator of high-quality schools, achievement alone often reflects students’ family backgrounds instead of a school’s effectiveness.

That’s why “Best Places to Live” lists should provide families a more comprehensive view of school quality instead of relying on standardized test scores, the authors wrote.

The SLAM rankings show that a metro area in which students have high achievement scores overall might not perform as well on the other measures. 

In North Carolina, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools, in the state’s Research Triangle region, has among the highest ACT scores in the state, but also large in achievement between Black and white students. 

That hasn’t stopped the region from attracting Google, Apple and Nike, which are in the area.

And the Raleigh area ranks fourth in raw achievement scores, but falls to 48th in the report when the other indicators are considered. On the other hand, the McAllen, Texas, area — which includes the Sharyland, Edinburg and Hidalgo school districts — ranks 41st in raw achievement, but third based on the report’s SLAM measure.

Brenda Berg, president and CEO of BEST NC, a nonprofit organization of business leaders in North Carolina, praised the report for providing relevant data for her state, where countywide districts include both urban centers and higher-performing suburbs. 

She said in an email that she’s “most concerned” about Wake County, which includes Raleigh, and is “most eager” to see where the Guilford and Charlotte-Mecklenburg districts go in the years to come.Those two districts, she said “have some really interesting promising practices emerging” around literacy and teacher recruitment in high-needs schools.

The authors note that while charter growth and district reform efforts have often focused on the cities at the heart of a metro area, the “suburbs are where many of the kids — and much of the action — are at, and they often explain a metro’s grade.”

Looking at broad trends across metro areas, however, can hide “meaningful variation” from one district to the next, said Alex Spurrier, associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners. In October, the think tank released a report showing how a lack of affordable housing in some of the nation’s most sought-after districts limits educational opportunity. 

“Even if families decide to move to a metro area with higher-performing public schools,” Spurrier said, “their access to specific public school systems may be limited based on where they can afford housing,” Spurrier said.

On Oct. 19, a group of educators and civil rights groups backed by the ACLU sued the state of Oklahoma over , alleging that the law violates students’ and teachers’ right to free speech by tamping down on classroom discussions of race and gender. 

“There is a pretty good chance that students can show their First Amendment rights have been violated,” Frank LoMonte, director of the University of Florida’s Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, told The 74.

The Oklahoma law, which took effect in May, prohibits teaching that anyone is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” or that students should feel “by virtue of his or her race or sex, (he or she) bears responsibility for actions committed in the past.” Observers described the rule as an “.”&�Բ�����;

Though the bill text does not expressly mention critical race theory, the state legislature quickly took up and passed the law while a wave of similar legislation swept through Republican-held statehouses nationwide, some of which did explicitly prohibit CRT. 

Critical race theory is not an ideology, but a lens of thinking that considers how political institutions may perpetuate structural inequities, experts previously explained to The 74.

As a result of the law’s approval, according to the ACLU, school districts in the state have told teachers to avoid using terms such as “diversity” and “white privilege” in their classrooms, and have removed To Kill a Mockingbird, Raisin in the Sun and other seminal books from reading lists.

When schools restrict academic content, it can amount to a First Amendment violation if the court concludes that the censorship was politically motivated, said LoMonte, referencing a 1982 Supreme Court precedent in a case over . The ruling established students’ right to receive information, he explained, but also gives school boards some latitude in choosing to pull books.

“If the complaint is right, that classic books like To Kill a Mockingbird are being removed from the curriculum for no reason other than political ideology,” said the legal expert, “then that is a First Amendment injury to the students.”&�Բ�����;

Bill sponsor Oklahoma Rep. Kevin West, however, does not believe that H.B. 1775 contributes to classroom censorship.

“The law ensures that all history is taught in schools without shaming the children of today into blaming themselves for problems of the past, as radical leftists would prefer,” he wrote in an email to The 74. “The legal complaint is full of half-truths, and in some cases blatant lies.”

West did not specify which of the case’s arguments he considered inaccurate, and did not respond to questions asking whether he had intended for the bill to result in book bannings.

Plaintiff Regan Killacky, a public school teacher in Edmond, a city on the northern edge of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, said he was instructed to steer clear of certain concepts and phrases in his curriculum, and is no longer allowed to engage his students in educational conversations on race and gender.

“H.B. 1775 limits my ability to teach an inclusive and complete history within the walls of my classroom, ultimately restricting the exact type of learning environment all young people deserve — one free from censorship or discrimination,” said Killacky.

Discussions on race in Oklahoma schools are especially important, advocates say, because of incidents of racial violence in the state’s past, including the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. In a larger effort to grapple with “hard history,” Tulsa Public Schools began teaching that episode more comprehensively last spring, weeks after H.B. 1775 was signed into law.

In addition to free speech claims, the ACLU lawsuit also argues that the state has committed a 14th Amendment violation because of the vagueness of the legislation. Innocent misunderstandings, says the legal team, can place teachers’ jobs in jeopardy. 

“H.B. 1775 is so poorly drafted — in places it is literally indecipherable — that districts and teachers have no way of knowing what concepts and ideas are prohibited,” said Emerson Sykes, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

including Oklahoma have enacted laws to restrict teaching on race and gender, according to a tracker from Education Week, many using near-identical wordings.

With similar legislation in force across the country, LoMonte doubts the case against the Sooner State will be the last of its kind.

“I’m sure more lawsuits are coming,” he said. 

Just your typical summer vacation shenanigans, but with a twist: It’s all at school.

This July, over 11,000 students in Tulsa, Oklahoma — about a third of the district’s total enrollment — have returned to academic buildings for fun-filled programming that explodes the typical conception of summer school.

“I did summer school before and it was really boring,” said Tulsa rising sophomore Jesse Skocny. “This one isn’t. It’s a lot of fun.”

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At his North Star Academy, students tend to an organic garden every morning complete with cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. Twice a week they take field trips, including a recent visit to a local Mexican restaurant where, in addition to sampling the tacos, students learned what it takes to run a small business.

“It’s a different animal, it’s not all academic,” Mike Easley, assistant principal at North Star, told The 74.

That shift in emphasis is by design, says Tulsa Deputy Superintendent Paula Shannon. After a year that’s been challenging for everyone, the district’s top priority this summer is to help reignite students’ enthusiasm for learning.

“Academics are important. We want to help kids with unfinished learning, but that’s not what we’re leading with,” she told The 74. “We’re leading with fun.”

As national leaders including U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on the heels of a year marred by the pandemic, and with earmarked for summer enrichment activities, Tulsa Public Schools has seized the moment, delivering learning opportunities to students in tandem with community building and joy.

Its “Ready. Set. Summer!” initiative includes programs at nearly every campus in the city, available at no cost to families, with meals and transportation provided. Over 4 in 5 students served by the school system are economically disadvantaged, and 37 percent of all students are Hispanic, while 23 percent are Black, another 23 percent are white and 17 percent are Asian, Indigenous or multiracial. Enrollment has when the district last held in-person summer school, with a focus on remediation.

‘Connection before content’

With the district’s all-new summer camp-style approach, the goal is to “develop relationships and help [students] ease back to in-person learning in the fall,” Twanna Johnson, a social worker at Memorial High School, told The 74.

At her site, activities range from strength training and yoga to leadership development and writing rap music, on top of opportunities for students to make up credits. One particularly unusual offering, however, stands out: medieval fight club.

With rules similar to tag, students dart after one another bellowing battle cries and chopping with padded swords in a semi-controlled chaos — delighting youth who initially doubted whether they would actually be allowed to joust on school grounds.

“My expectation was to sit down in front of a whiteboard and just learn about history on medieval sword fighting,” rising sophomore Trevor Wilhite told The 74, breathing heavily after coming off the battlefield. “I didn’t know we would actually grab swords and go out.”

With about two weeks under his belt, his feelings toward the activity are not ambiguous. “If you ever have heard the expression of a child in a candy store, it’s basically that times 1,000,” Wilhite said.

In the midst of the melee there’s room for learning, says Heath Miller, band director and fight club faculty lead. Every so often, he pauses the combat to offer a fact for context on the activity and “trick them into learning something about medieval history,” he said.

As unconventional as the approach may seem, it actually aligns with best practices for summer learning. A 2018 study from the RAND Corporation recommends districts to make sure, first and foremost, that students are engaged and enjoying themselves.

That also reflects the needs expressed by families, says Jennifer Peck, chief executive of the Partnership for Children & Youth.

“It’s been loud and clear from parents,” she told The 74. “They want their kids to have fun.”

Especially coming off a year that took an unprecedented toll on teens’ mental health, schools should work to meet students where they’re at, says National Summer Learning Association CEO Aaron Dworkin. His mantra, he told The 74, is “connection before content.”

Tulsa, it seems, has done well on that front — even among its teenage “knights” and sworn enemies.

Coming in after a session of spirited combat, “we’re still all like a giant dysfunctional family,” Wilhite said.

‘This summer is part one’

The focus on connection with students was enough to entice Branden Grimes, science teacher at Booker T. Washington High School to come back for the summer.

“It’s for the kids,” he told The 74. “I didn’t have to think twice.”

But another key incentive certainly didn’t hurt, added his colleague, English teacher Tametra Jamison: extra pay.

She’s making twice as much as she does during the school year, the educator said. Even after Oklahoma teacher walkouts in 2018 protesting the state’s low wages and poor working conditions — part of the nationwide “Red For Ed” movement — resulted in , Jamison normally has to pick up a second job during the summer to make ends meet. But funding from the CARES Act changes that, allowing the district to boost teachers’ summer stipend rate from about $30 to $40 per hour, Dept. Superintendent Shannon told The 74.

Many teachers volunteered to staff the summer program, says Jamison, but because the school got a late start on promoting the offerings to students, their enrollment did not reach full capacity and they ultimately cut back on certain planned activities.

“It would be really awesome if we’re able to do this again next year, but also kick start the promotion of it earlier so that we have more kids who are signed up,” said Alison Campbell, math teacher at Booker T.

Fortunately for the team of high school instructors, some key players think similarly.

“We will continue to apply the lessons we learned this summer through our afterschool component as we enter the school year and then that will set us up for next summer,” said Shannon, noting that relief funding is designed to last three years. “This summer is part one.”

Into the future, the district is investing in partnerships with community groups, all through a “quarterback organization” called the Opportunity Project that serves as a liaison, so that it can deepen afterschool and summer options for its student body, she said.

In Tulsa and beyond, Peck, of the Partnership for Children & Youth, advocates for the fun-first summer learning model to stick around.

“This shouldn’t be a one-time thing how we’re doing things this summer,” she said. “This should be here to stay.”

At the start of the award-winning television series Watchmen, there’s a of destruction and terror, as a racist mob destroys a Black town. Civilians are shot, homes are bombed from planes overhead, and stores are set on fire. While Watchmen is fictional, this story is true.

“That really did happen,” says Phil Armstrong. “They just put visuals to what it must have been like, based on eyewitness accounts.”

Armstrong is project manager of a charged with commemorating the 100th anniversary of one of the largest racial massacres in American history, a two-day rampage by a white mob that devastated the all-Black community of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission is also the guiding force behind , an interactive history center scheduled to open later this year. Created in partnership with (the design firm behind the , in New York, and the , in Alabama), Greenwood Rising will tell the story of the historic neighborhood before, during, and after the carnage.

A preview of the site suggests that visitors are in for an emotional journey. Much of the information will likely be new to them. Until recently, it was possible to visit Tulsa and remain unaware of the that began June 1, 1921, after , a Black 19-year-old, was accused of assault.

The center’s dual focus on both the past and the vital present spotlights the real people who were, and are, affected by historic actions and inaction, says Greenwood Rising project director Lorraine Arthur Mensa.

“Right now, in this nation, there’s a lot of talk about Black trauma and focusing on stories of oppression versus telling the whole story,” says Mensa, who says it was equally important for all involved to “show Black joy at times and to show the resiliency, the work ethic, [and] the communal spirit, and to get the visitor to connect to that.”

Black Wall Street

Before the massacre, was a place of economic opportunities, with theaters, groceries, confectionaries, and restaurants lining its main street, dubbed Black Wall Street. “By 1880, there were 30 all-Black towns in Oklahoma,” says Armstrong. “They actually began having discussions with the government to just declare Oklahoma to be an all-Black state.”

The “Black Wall Street” moniker derives from a comment made by on the proliferation of Black Oklahoma towns (Muskogee, Langston, and Boley, among them), a year before Greenwood was established. On the other side of the tracks from downtown Tulsa, Greenwood was founded on segregationist beliefs and cemented with . But while racist ideas set the soil, Black businesses did the planting, and success quickly took root.

By 1921, an estimated 12,000 African Americans were living within the 35 city blocks of the neighborhood. Homes and businesses were all owned and operated by Black people, says Armstrong.

But over the course of a few days in 1921, all of it disappeared. Most homes were destroyed, along with dozens of buildings, including churches. An estimated 300 people were killed (although still being uncovered suggest the number could be much higher). When it was over, the Black community was financially and physically decimated.

Since the massacre was labeled a “riot” at the time, insurance claims were denied, and courts dismissed all cases without hearings or reviews, says Armstrong. To date,

The only silver lining was that legal attempts to force families to adhere to newly created, expensive building regulations (an attempt, Armstrong suggests, to dissuade reconstructing the community altogether) were thwarted by an unprecedented Oklahoma State Supreme Court decision.

Here’s where the resilience shines through: The community rose phoenix-like from the ashes. Within five years, and with the support of Black communities across the country, Greenwood was able to host delegates from the 1926 National Negro Chamber of Commerce. And by 1943 the economic activity of the area doubled, says Armstrong.

“It’s an incredible American story,” he says. “Not only [did] they stay. They built it back bigger than it was the first time.”

The Third Wave

Urban renewal programs in later decades (including the routing of Interstate 244 through the heart of the community) and eventual gentrification continued to change the community makeup. Today, the neighborhood includes the , whose mission is to preserve African American heritage in the area and promote cultural exchange. The center is partnering with park on the Tulsa Riverfront this summer to co-host the —one of the largest collections of historic art and artifacts of its kind.

Although there is only one commercial building remaining on Black Wall Street that is Black-owned, the strong heartbeat of the community continues. This is where opened in July 2020, “a space where children and adults can walk in and see themselves reflected on the shelves,” according to owner Onikah Asamoa-Caesar. Also here, Venita Cooper founded , a vintage fashion and high-end sneaker shop and art gallery, which recently raised enough through community donations (including their own) to pay the rent for more than 25 local families who were in need. Other Greenwood Black businesses include spas, cafés, and galleries.

“It’s about the reclamation of a legacy that was interrupted,” says Asamoa-Caesar. “We’re the third wave of the rebuilding of Black Wall Street. We are carrying a torch for that entrepreneurial spirit that was here in Tulsa.”

“The destruction, the hate, the racism, all that stuff in the past, it prevented us from reaching our potential for all of these decades,” says Cooper. “There are so many cool things that are happening in the city now, especially from Black artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs. I wouldn’t be here if I felt like there was no hope.”

Black-owned businesses are also hoping the increased tourism to the neighborhood results in an economic win for the community.

A collaborative “Buy Black Tulsa” handbook, launched in February, is being developed into the website BuyBlkTlsa.com, as a resource for visitors looking to benefit the community through their shopping dollars.

“My greatest fear, especially for this year, is that people are going to go to Greenwood Rising, see the signs, and look at the plaques in the ground, but nothing is going to sustainably and tangibly change for the community that’s here,” says Asamoa-Caesar. “People need to be very critical and intentional about how they spend their time and their money once they’re here. It’s great to go to a museum but think about your impact while you’re there.”

Additionally, for putting money and resources toward cultural tourism rather than ensuring reparations. Others are focused on fulfilling the original promise of Black Wall Street.

Inside Silhouette Sneakers, Cooper keeps a framed picture of Grier Shoe Shop, which once stood in that very spot. Destroyed in 1921, it reopened against the odds a few years later, and now a plaque on the sidewalk identifies it for passersby.

By establishing Silhouette here, Cooper says she feels a responsibility to honor those whose own dreams were cut short. “It’s like a natural progression,” she says, “from what had already begun.”

This article originally appeared at and is published in partnership with

More than 100 years ago, a white mob attacked Tulsa, Oklahoma’s thriving Greenwood District, home to the city’s African-American community, killing hundreds and destroying businesses.

Now, a group of young students are bringing some of those businesses to life in a project that links coding and history.

Ahead of the centennial commemorating the Tulsa Race Massacre earlier this month, Urban Coders Guild was working with local students to build websites for the businesses destroyed during the horrific event a century ago, as if those businesses were still around today. The project can’t undo the horrors of what came to be known as the Tulsa Race Massacre — one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history — but the people behind it hope that it will help spur knowledge around the horrific event as well as teach students an invaluable skill along the way.

“While a good many of the businesses were rebuilt after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, none of them exist today,” says Mikeal Vaughn, founder and executive director of Urban Coders Guild, a nonprofit organization providing STEM education opportunities to underrepresented communities in Tulsa.

So the students are reimagining what they would look like today by building the websites. Along the way, they are learning coding skills and learning about a historic event that has only recently been talked about in mainstream media.

“The students were given some creative license to use their combined skill sets to create an awesome website for each business that tells that business’ story as if it were an existing business today,” he says.

Erina Katoh, 14, is among a group of students focusing on , which was destroyed during the massacre.

“This and other websites that the Urban Coders Guild is creating represent what could possibly have been these stores’ online sites if [they] had not been destroyed during the Tulsa Race Massacre,” Katoh says. “Through this project, I have been able to learn more in depth of what occurred and caused the Tulsa Race Massacre.”

The site, Katoh says, was created to look like it might if it was still around today, meaning it has a variety of pictures and hairstyles that customers can choose from. It also includes information about the barber shop and location and the owner of the business.

Katoh says Urban Coders Guild is a “prep” course for the future because she has learned how to interact with others as well as listen to and accept input from others.

Urban Coders Guild offers web and mobile app development courses and lessons in the fundamentals of project management and entrepreneurship, Vaughn says. To date, more than 60 middle and high school students have been involved.

In past projects, students worked on prototypes for a Black business directory. “In everything that we do, we try to instill a commitment to using technology to address the needs of the community,” Vaughn says.

The first semester of the course was instruction, says Jeremy Benedik, the program’s web development instructor, while the second semester has focused on the creation of the sites, . Urban Coders Guild also partnered with Tulsa Community College students to create the content and logos as part of their coursework.

Like with many things, the pandemic has produced challenges for the program. The students turned to online lessons, which, according to Benedik, many of the students were already familiar with due to their student classwork turning virtual last spring.

However, Vaughn says the hurdle has been recreating teacher-student relationships and peer relationships in a virtual setting.

“Struggling at times to keep the students engaged after a day full (day of) Zoom classes and learning to code became a second hurdle, really a by-product of the first,” he added.

Emilia Nguyen, 11 and in sixth grade, says she was aware of the Race Massacre before the project but wanted to get involved to learn more about her community.

Nguyen says she was nervous going into the class but soon realized it was a very friendly and inviting atmosphere in which learning and asking questions is paramount.

“I was scared that it was going to be something where everyone kind of already knows coding and they’re looking at me weird when I’m trying to ask a question because I’m confused and I’ve never done this before,” she says.

“But no matter if you’ve done it before or you haven’t, they still include you and they ask you to reach out if we need to ask any questions, because they know that this is a very hard concept that we’re learning. They show that they’re very proud of us that we’re taking it all in and we’re working hard at it. So they definitely understand.”

She and some other classmates are currently working on creating the online presence for their second business, she says.

She adds that the coding has been challenging and they might do some back-and-forth with the instructor to get it to work.

“I’m not going to say that it’s super easy, but it’s definitely a good learning experience and it’s super fun because you get to spend time with other people and interact with them and ask them about their different opinions on things,” she says. “You get other people’s insight on your work and they’ll tell you what they know and you tell them what you know.”

This article originally appeared at and is published in partnership with

Oklahoma on Friday became the first state to enact legislation . and lawmakers have advanced bills to do the same — marking the start of a trend vaccine policy experts say is largely symbolic, but could still hamper the campaign to conquer COVID-19.

Oklahoma’s prohibition on vaccine mandates covers not just K-12 schools, but colleges, universities and career and technical centers. While more than 400 higher education institutions across the country have announced an immunization requirement for the fall, Oklahoma is one out of only 15 states without a college or university on .

Unlike post-secondary institutions, K-12 school districts do not have the legal grounding to mandate vaccines. Even before Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed , no public schools in his state — or any other, for that matter — were able to mandate COVID vaccines.

“The list of vaccines required for school is already set in the law. So you’d have to change the law anyway [before adding COVID vaccines],” UC Hastings law professor Dorit Reiss told The 74.

Top Oklahoma school districts confirmed that the recent bill will not change their plans.

“[It] does not impact our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of our students and team members,” Tulsa Public Schools spokesperson Lauren Partain wrote in an email to The 74. Though the district is providing opportunities for eligible students and staff to receive vaccinations, she said, “we are not requiring students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at this time.”

In Oklahoma City Public Schools, the state’s largest school system, media relations manager Crystal Raymond told The 74 that “COVID vaccine requirements have never been on the table for students or staff.”

Nationwide, the power to add shots to schools’ lists of required vaccinations, experts say, rests with state officials who will be unlikely to make any changes until vaccines receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, a clearance for which both and have applied. The federal agency authorized youth aged 12 to 15 for shots based on their existing emergency use approval in mid-May.

The value of the Oklahoma law, which goes into effect July 1, or similar bills pending in Michigan and Pennsylvania may be more symbolic than functional, Reiss says. Once vaccines gain full approval from the FDA, the legislature could theoretically add coronavirus shots to the list of vaccines required for school entry, such as those that protect against measles, mumps and rubella — if the political will exists.

“[This bill] indicates that it’s unlikely that Oklahoma will pass a COVID-19 vaccine mandate anytime soon,” said Reiss.

Also included in the bill is a provision against “vaccine passports” and a ban on any school policies that require only non-vaccinated populations to wear face coverings.

The University of Oklahoma, which in May, now asserts that face coverings for unvaccinated community members remain “strongly recommended,” but not required, spokesperson Kesha Keith told The 74.

Oklahoma joins a range of states including Georgia, Alabama, Arizona and Florida, which have already . Elsewhere, however, vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals increasingly have access to two separate worlds.

New York City has rolled out its Excelsior Pass, the nation’s first government-issued vaccine passport, which allows residents to show proof of vaccination via an app and QR code — often as an . Outside the U.S., a digital record of vaccination on Tuesday.

Such efforts reflect policymakers’ confidence in coronavirus vaccines, which scientists agree are safe and . In Ohio, schools have seen a as inoculations have become more widespread. Even Republican Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy touted his state’s high vaccination rates as a selling point to entice tourists this summer.

“Having one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, our people are safe and you will be, too,” Dunleavy said in the ad. (Alaska has since fallen to the in COVID-19 immunization.)

In Florida, the vaccine passport ban has put Gov. Ron DeSantis on a with cruise lines, one of the state’s top industries. While cruise executives seek to comply with CDC guidelines by ensuring that nearly all staff and passengers are fully immunized, given the inherent vulnerability of packing thousands of individuals into tight quarters at sea, DeSantis has largely dismissed their concerns.

“In Florida, your personal choice regarding vaccinations will be protected, and no business or government entity will be able to deny you services based on your decision,” he said. In response, at least one major line has threatened to leave the state.

For Oklahoma state Sen. Rob Standridge, one of the authors of the law prohibiting vaccine requirements in school, the logic behind the legislation follows a similar throughline.

“To force kids … to be vaccinated against their parents’ wishes … I don’t think we should be doing that as a government,” he said in a press conference.

On the Senate floor, however, before the bill was passed, Democratic state Sen. J.J. Dossett made the case that the ban represented a government overreach — an argument frequently voiced by Republicans.

“Why in this body are we telling local entities what they should or shouldn’t be doing?” he asked fellow lawmakers.

When The 74 posed that question to Standridge, he did not offer a response.

These debates, says Reiss, of UC Hastings College of the Law, represent divisions that have emerged time and again throughout the pandemic.

“It shows us that the pandemic has been politicized,” she said, arguing that, ultimately, legislation discouraging vaccinations will extend the public health crisis.

“The virus needs hosts to survive. Less vaccines, more hosts, more room for the virus to stay around and keep hurting us.”

When Tulsa, Oklahoma fifth-grade teacher Akela Leach began her lesson this May on the race massacre that took place in the city’s Greenwood District 100 years earlier, her young students knew they were entering contentious curricular territory.

The state of Oklahoma had recently passed a that observers described as an “,” part of a across the country to scale back discussion of systemic racism in the classroom.

At the outset of the lesson, a student raised her hand. A family member had told her that the new law might prevent them from talking about the Tulsa Race Massacre in school. It wouldn’t, Leach told her students, explaining that the 1921 event was a key element of their city’s history.

“They literally cheered that we were going to still learn it,” remembers the social studies teacher.

Further, it seemed the political milieu deepened students’ interest in the lesson.

“I’m learning something that someone doesn’t want me to learn,” Leach’s fifth-graders thought, “so this must be really, really important.”

“We know forbidden information,” one student exclaimed with glee.

Educators in the city have been preparing to tackle the topic for over a year. In February 2020, state lawmakers moved to . Last summer, Tulsa Public Schools held a in collaboration with the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission to help teachers learn to confidently lead conversations on the grim event. And the district recently rolled out new resources for educators, complete with .

As of this May, Tulsa public school students in grades 3 to 12 now learn about the violent episode in social studies class.

As those lessons were first beginning to unfold in classrooms across the city, and as the race massacre’s June 1, 2021 centennial was fast approaching, state lawmakers took up and quickly passed a bill to ensure that no teacher would make a student feel that “by virtue of his or her race or sex, (he or she) bears responsibility for actions committed in the past.”

“Unfortunate is really much too weak a word” to describe the timing, Erica Townsend-Bell, associate professor at Oklahoma State University and director of the school’s Center for Africana Studies, told The 74.

“It’s really troubling … that it is signed as we come to the 100-year commemoration and remembrance of the Tulsa Race Massacre.”

Over the Memorial Day weekend, the city marked the anniversary with a ribbon-cutting to the Pathway to Hope at Greenwood and a Monday night candlelight vigil. On Tuesday, to visit with living survivors and descendents.

Back in the classroom, as Leach ventured into this history, she said, her fifth-graders rose to the occasion. They discussed Jim Crow segregation and why Black Tulsans, in order to prosper, had to create their own thriving community. One student analogized the roiling racism of early 20th-century Tulsa to a volcano with pressure building up and up until it finally erupted in 1921 in white violence and destruction.

“They were able to tackle something that many people would think would be too heavy for them,” said Leach. “But it really isn’t.”

Teachers, she says, have a responsibility to address difficult topics — “hard history,” Leach calls it — even if it’s uncomfortable. In the 1921 massacre, a white mob killed hundreds of residents in Tulsa’s Greenwood district and , erasing years of Black success.

It’s about “teaching the truth of what happened and not just the surface level,” she said, even if it shows our country or our ancestors in an ugly light.

District leadership seems to agree.

“There is hard history that we need to confront,” Tulsa schools Deputy Superintendent Paula Shannon told The 74, adding that the recently signed statewide legislation “doesn’t impact us at all.”

“We’ve worked very hard to build a culturally responsive curriculum that is not mired in politics,” she said. “And so we’re going to continue to do what we believe our kids deserve.”

Superintendent Deborah Gist, a Tulsa native who grew up attending the city’s public schools, said that she didn’t learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre until she was an adult living halfway across the country in Florida. “Our team will never let that happen again,” Gist wrote in a .

Critical race theory, the controversy du jour , is not an ideology, said Townsend-Bell, the Oklahoma State University professor, but a lens of thinking that considers how political systems are “racialized and exclude certain populations.”

The Oklahoma law does not expressly mention critical race theory. It also specifies that no content laid out in the , as the Tulsa Race Massacre lessons are, would be prohibited.

While Townsend-Bell sees how the bill may have been intended to “chill” educators’ efforts to teach the uglier sides of the state’s past, she says the actual content of the law does no such thing. Its focus is on ensuring students don’t feel guilty or culpable for historical events, but Townsend-Bell said teachers looking to grapple with such episodes ought to focus “primarily not on individuals, but on institution, systems and policies.”

In other words, explained Leach, the Tulsa fifth-grade teacher, the law is “more about how you’re teaching something, versus just the topic itself.”

She says the bill seems to be “written for a problem that didn’t really seem to exist.”

“I don’t think that it’s the norm that teachers are going around and telling students that they’re responsible for racism, or telling them that they are inherently racist, because they’re white,” she told The 74.

The elementary educator was part of the team that developed lesson plans on the 1921 race massacre, and she emphasizes that the content is age appropriate and thoroughly vetted.

In fifth-grade classrooms, discussion focuses on resilience and rebuilding Greenwood. The predominantly African American district was known as thanks to its prosperity. Students learn about how its residents salvaged elements of the neighborhood and rebuilt their livelihoods, albeit with untold lasting damage, after the violent episode that reduced it to rubble.

Leach explained that a team of teachers, district leaders and curriculum experts carefully reviewed each unit. They considered how lessons would feel for people from every imaginable perspective: a new teacher, a white teacher instructing mostly Black students, a Black student, a Latino student, a white student and more.

“[The curriculum] was designed to be inclusive,” she explained. Her classroom has a majority of white students, but also includes Black and Latino students.

Thanks to the district’s careful planning and the training opportunities offered to staff, Leach feels confident that Oklahoma’s new law will not affect how she or other Tulsa teachers approach their lessons. But she could imagine that educators with fewer supports or less confidence in the content area might feel differently.

“Someone who was hesitant to teach this or doesn’t feel comfortable teaching it … it can make them fearful,” said Leach. “It kind of gives people an out.”

Oklahoma state Representative Kevin West, the bill’s sponsor, told The 74 that it will be up to the state education department to implement the provisions of the bill. They will specify who decides whether a teacher is acting in violation of the law and what the repercussions might be, he said. That rule-making process will begin in the fall, Annette Price, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, wrote in an email to The 74.

“Until then, the bill stands on its own for districts to follow,” she said.

But while Leach worries that the threat of repercussions could deter some teachers from covering tough topics like the Tulsa Race Massacre, Townsend-Bell wonders whether it might have the opposite effect and actually motivate teachers to prepare more thoroughly for such lessons, out of fear that tactless classroom leadership could land them in violation of the law.

“I could imagine a world in which, because of this bill, folks feel a little bit more compelled to make sure that they know what they’re talking about, to inform themselves a little bit better, before they walk into the classroom to share that with the student population,” said the professor.

“What we could actually ironically see is some better teaching around these histories because of this concern that, ‘I don’t want to mess it up.’”

Lead Image: The Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a prosperous Black enclave, was reduced to rubble after the 1921 race massacre. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)