Republican lawmaker pushing back on Oklahoma BOE, Superintendent authority with new bill
TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — Tulsa Public Schools is one of two districts last year that lost a bit of accreditation due to violations of the state's critical race theory bill.
But now the new Oklahoma State Superintendent is facing criticism from his Republican colleagues in the legislature.
Just a couple of weeks ago State Representative Mark McBride of Moore, Okla. said that Superintendent Ryan Walters threatened the accreditation of a couple Oklahoma school districts because they supposedly had pornographic books in their libraries.
That was pointed out by a Twitter account called "Libs of TikTok".
That later turned out not to be true, and so this is now part of McBride's and several other Republicans push to create a little bit more accountability within the school board and with the Superintendent.
"I'm worried that that he can that we can just whomever it is say you know, the last incident we had two pornographic books supposedly and in two different schools," said Representative McBride. "Well they weren't there but we but we had this big you know presser little tweet deal you know and uh he's gonna do this, you know, take their accreditation with well it's a non story. I mean there was nothing there you know? Why do the fear mongering and threaten school districts teachers and things like that. That's what's scary."
McBride introduced a bill that would make it so you couldn't just lower the accreditation of school districts based off standards that have not first been passed through the legislature.
That adds a layer of accountability here and makes it so, in his mind, the school board wouldn't be as susceptible to influence from social media rumors over how they run schools across the state.