FOX 25 digs through State Supt. travel records, reveal $27K+ in tax dollars spent
OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — Dozens of trips, all across the country, were paid for with your tax dollars that were meant for public education.
Our previous reporting revealed you're paying a $60,000 contract to help promote State Superintendent Ryan Walters on the national stage.
But that's not all. We poured through travel records to find out what else you're paying for and how much.
Looking at records we obtained through Open Records requests, we calculated at least $27,262.58 in airfare, hotels, car rentals, meals, and more for Walters and his top Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) staff.
All of these trips happened over the course of around a year starting in the Spring of 2023.
Many of them were to amplify the state superintendent's political message.
"These are folks who want to destroy our society. They want to destroy your family. And they want to destroy America as we know it," Walters told a crowd at a Moms For Liberty event in Philadelphia in June of 2023.
The two-night trip to Pennsylvania for Walters and his chief advisor, Matt Langston, ran Oklahomans $1,459.78.
The following month, you shelled out $992.50 more, as Walters spoke at the Teacher Freedom Summit in Denver, which focused on how to decertify and sue teachers' unions.
You forked over at least $5,109.94 for a 3-day trip to Washington D.C. last August for Walters and OSDE staffers Dan Isett, Matt Langston, and Jenna Thomas to meet with the leaders of the Heritage Foundation, which is the architect of the controversial Project 2025.
While there, Walters testified on Capitol Hill warning about China's influence in Oklahoma classrooms and appeared on several national media programs.
"This is the Chinese government absolutely indoctrinating our kids," Walters said on that trip during an interview with the Epoch Times.
It was back to D.C. the following month.
On stage, during a Family Research Council panel discussion, Walters told the audience, "What we see here is a clear attack to push radical gender ideology in the classroom, destroy American history, and take all rights away from parents."
Oklahoma taxpayers paid to fly Langston from Austin, Texas, where the state employee lives, to D.C. and then back to Austin twice within days last September.
You also paid $2,608.04 for a November trip with stops in Des Moines and then Los Angeles for events for the Heritage Foundation and the controversial curriculum creator PragerU.
"We are so excited for the state of Oklahoma to be able to launch PragerU, and I've said I want it in every classroom," Walters said in a video posted online by PragerU.
In December, you paid more than $1,300 for Walters and Isett to head back to DC for more national media appearances.
There was also Langston's trip to D.C. in February 2024, where you paid last minute to change his flight home to add a stop in Nashville to join Walters as he appeared on the Huckabee Show.
"We've seen what I'd call state-sponsored atheism," Walters said on the program.
That trip cost Oklahomans $2,007.55.
Another trip for Walters and Langston took them to NYC in March, costing taxpayers $2,504.37.
That visit included national media appearances to talk about a feet-licking controversy.
"Well Laura, this is not in line with Oklahoma values," Walters said on Fox News. "We're going to get to the bottom of this."
Then it was off to West Palm Beach, Florida for another PragerU GALA, where Walters posed for photos with the creator of Libs of TikTok.
The tab for Oklahomans for that trip came in at $1,428.02.
The $27,000+ in travel FOX 25 analyzed over that period isn't complete.
Through an Open Records request, we are still awaiting more detailed records for certain OSDE employees.
We found the public records turned over from OSDE were incomplete.
We have been able to get more documentation by requesting it from a different state agency, the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services.
Governor Kevin Stitt reaffirmed an executive order last year banning all non-essential out-of-state travel for employees paid for by the state.
On all of the travel request forms submitted by Walters, Langston, and Isett, they listed their travel as essential because it was "critical to the performance of core agency functions."
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