How a single penny could bankrupt public education

By Mark Faulk
Op-Ed

It's only a penny, right? This Tuesday, Oklahomans will go to the polls to vote on SQ 779, a permanent, constitutionally mandated 22% state sales tax increase to fund education. At first glance, it seems to be a moral decision.

On the plus side, it will give Oklahoma teachers their first across the board raise in eight years, something desperately needed in a state that is nearly last in teacher pay.

On the negative side, it's a regressive tax that will unfairly fall on the shoulders of our poorest citizens, increasing homelessness and poverty, and literally taking food out of the mouths of children. Oklahoma will have the highest sales tax in the nation, costing us new industry, jobs, and taking away the ability of cities to use sales tax for local needs.

But, pull back the curtain and a darker, more nefarious picture emerges. Follow the money behind SQ 779, and it leads to charter schools. This permanent sales tax isn't a moral dilemma, it's the next step in a complex scheme to gut public education and create a charter school cash cow for billionaires.

Stand for Children, the largest pro-charter, anti-teachers' union organization in the nation, is the driving force behind SQ 779.  Stand for Children Executive Director Jonah Edelman famously bragged at a conference in Illinois, that they had decimated the teachers' unions there, saying that they were able to "jam this proposal down their throats the same way that pension reform had been jammed down their throats six months earlier".

In Oklahoma, Stand for Children teamed up with OU President David Boren to write, collect signatures, and, according to recently released ethics reports, has already spent $1,444,205 promoting SQ 779 to unsuspecting voters.

In 1997, legislation to allow charter schools in Oklahoma failed by one vote before being publicly endorsed by Boren, opening the door for charter schools in the state.

Boren has donated $167,000 of his own money to the cause, and Stacy Schusterman, who is on the Board of Directors of Charter Schools Growth Fund, has spent $1,000,000 promoting it. In all, over 70% of the money behind SQ 779 can be traced to entities with direct ties to charter schools.

Why are these organizations spending so much money and effort trying to convince Oklahoma voters to vote yes on this horribly flawed, regressive tax? According to estimates compiled by the Oklahoma State School Board Association, $9.5 million of the money raised from SQ 779 each year will go to charter schools in Oklahoma County alone.

As an example, $3.7 million will go to Epic One on One, a virtual charter school under investigation by the OSBI for alleged fraud, with an abysmal graduation rate of only 28%, compared to an 82% average statewide.

Epic has tripled their enrollment in the past three years. At that rate, in 4 years Epic will surpass the total enrollment of the OKC Public School District, and in 10 years, Epic's share of SQ 779 taxpayer money would be over $100 million.

Even if they (and other charter schools) don't sustain that astronomical growth rate, tax money from SQ 779 will help fund and feed the charter school frenzy that is just beginning across Oklahoma, starving public education and ultimately costing thousands of teachers their jobs.

If these organizations were truly pro-public education, they would have written a state question that gives money only to traditional public schools, and funded it with an income tax increase on the rich. Well-funded organizations like Stand for Children and the Schusterman Foundation need to do the right thing for Oklahoma, instead of lining their own pockets.

We only get these horrible choices because they want us to only have horrible choices. They are asking us to either throw teachers under the bus, or shove the poor off a financial cliff. In reality, neither choice is acceptable. Teachers desperately need a raise, but the poor have nothing left to give.

Copyright The Gayly - 11/7/2016 @ 11:11 a.m. CST.