'It seems to be getting worse': Oklahoma Senator calls out State Supt. for funding issues

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (KOKH) — State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the Department of Education are in hot water with the legislature.

More than a dozen Republican House members signed a petition to investigate the agency, and the Senate Education Chair is calling out new funding concerns.

"It seems to be getting worse, even to the point where I'm having state department employees call me anonymously and ask for me to help them navigate the inner agency challenges that they're having," Senator Adam Pugh said.

Teachers, superintendents and even OSDE employees are allegedly reaching out to Sen. Pugh, wondering where and how much money is coming their way.

While he said he's asking those questions of the Department of Education, he's not getting responses.

"Just a lack of communication, the inability to get what I would say is the basic functionality of how a State Superintendent and how the State Department of Education should be supporting our 500+ school districts, and it just doesn't seem to be occurring," he said.

The Senator from Edmond says districts are in the dark over multiple sources of funding, including Title I, of the formula, maternity leave, school security updates and inhaler funding.

"That's correct and there may be more, I'm not saying every school district hasn't gotten it," Sen. Pugh said."Maternity leave, which is something we've been working on for two years, that was a bill passed in the legislative session of 2023, and we still have school districts reaching out to me. I was the bill author saying they haven't received their reimbursement for maternity leave expenditures."

Senator Pugh said if the funds aren't going out the door, the legislature will need to find another way to dole them out.

"As we enter the next legislative year we'll have to very seriously consider as we're funding a new program or giving some sort of statutory responsibility to an agency to implement an education program, what's the right agency to do this if the state department is not willing to be our partner and do this successfully," Sen. Pugh said.

FOX25 reached out to the Department of Education and they said they cannot comment on anonymous employees. They added that Title I funding guidance will be out in the next few days. They also sent this statement regarding maternity leave funding:

As Senator Pugh knows, the legislature did not allocate funds for this program in 2023. Instead, it waited until the 2024 legislative session to make appropriations. Consequently, funds were not available until the OSDE budget was finalized recently. Applications for the program will begin being accepted no later than next week, with distributions following in short order.

FOX25 reached out to a dozen school districts, and majority have not been told what their Title I allocation is. Some said they don't know what to base their budget on and this is later than they'd typically know that information. Many schools didn't know information about a state program to buy life saving inhalers. Some are waiting on thousands of dollars of maternity leave reimbursements and others don't know how to apply for them.

Here are responses from the districts that responded to FOX25:

• Yukon Public Schools said they have not received allocations for any federal programs including Title I, any funds for maternity leave and are not aware of inhaler funding. They also do not have allocations for most state dollars, with Flexible Benefit Allowing being the largest one.
• Stillwater Public Schools said they have not received Title I, II, III, IV, V and IX funding. They believe they have around $60,000 in rollover from last year's school security funds, but their account is showing as zero. They also believe they requested around $70,000 of maternity leave funding but have not received any money.
• Piedmont Public Schools said they have not received anything yet.
• Tulsa Public Schools said they have not received any allocation numbers for Title I or school security funding and the information of numbers they can work with often comes earlier than this.
• Bixby Public Schools said they have no information on how to base their budget, they haven't received any inhaler information or maternity leave information.
• Mustang Public Schools has not received maternity leave funds and does not know about the inhaler fund program, but has not had an issue with Title funds.
• Minco Public Schools has a pretty good idea on how much they'll be receiving in Title I, but doesn't know for sure and said it's late for them not to know. They have received off-formula dollars and don't know about inhaler funding.
• Mid-Del Public Schools said they have received initial allocations of Title I, but have not gotten information on maternity leave or inhaler funding
• Moore Public Schools, Oklahoma City Public Schools, Norman Public Schools, Putnam City Pubic Schools, Edmond Public Schools and Deer Creek Public Schools did not provide any information.