Oklahoma Senate author defends education bill phasing out federal funding
OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — A controversial education bill that would phase out federal funds is creating shockwaves among educators.
The bill has been getting a lot of attention from teachers, parents and educators across social media.
Many are concerned about what classrooms could look like without the aid of hundreds of millions of federal funding.
The bill's author,Senator David Bullard, (R)- Durant, is defending his bill against the criticism.
"I would not write a bill that just removes $500M from public education, period," Sen. Bullard said.
Clearing up some of the misconceptions, Senator Bullard explained that a sudden cut in federal funding for education is not the intent.
Instead, the language of the bill requires the State Department of Education to create a 10-year plan to phase out federal funding for pre-k through high school.
"The why has to do with the fact that we do not want the connection to the federal government," Senator Bullard said. "We don't want the string and chain approach to being connected to whatever the federal government, some bureaucrat in DC tells us we have to do in Oklahoma."
The bill also requires a plan for replacing those phased-out funds with state money.
"The biggest part of this conversation is going to be about how do you fund that? And that's an excellent question. We have excess money right now, but will we have that 5 years from now?" Sen. Bullard said.
At Professional Oklahoma Educators, the Executive Director, Ginger Tinney, has the same question.
"That is 11% of the education budget, which is $766M. So where is that makeup money going to come from?" Tinney said.
Tinney is also concerned about the programs that money goes towards, like free and reduced lunches for kids.
"The federal money, a lot of that goes to child nutrition," Tinney said. "That is food in our schools that kids count on. And then also the special education budget. So those are serious areas of education."
Senator Bullard is assuring others that this will not be an end to those programs,"Those programs are not going to go away. Those programs are very very necessary. Those are things that we have to have."
Oklahoma is ranked towards the bottom in the nation in education.
FOX25 asked Senator Bullard if he is concerned that the federal money will go towards other states instead of here, where education is struggling.
He responded that his bill could be an avenue for the state to invest more money in education.
For more local news delivered straight to your inbox sign up for our daily newsletter by clicking here.