Stitt vs OK Dept of Ed

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Dale00

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Re education superintendents and related positions
The core problem is we have too many counties. Rural populations are declining in most counties. Local people are desperate for jobs. Govt jobs of any type are highly desired. Every tiny school and post office will be fought for tooth and nail.
 

27Man

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Re education superintendents and related positions
The core problem is we have too many counties. Rural populations are declining in most counties. Local people are desperate for jobs. Govt jobs of any type are highly desired. Every tiny school and post office will be fought for tooth and nail.
I was told once that the number of counties in oklahoma was determined by how far a man could ride on horseback from one county seat to the next. Hence 77 county seats with 77 sheriffs, court houses, treasurers, and other elected personnel. There are around 500 school districts in our state with their own superintendent and assorted office personnel. SE Oklahoma is rife with dinky school districts within a few miles of each other. They could be consolidated but politically that won’t happen. To vote for consolidation in SE Oklahoma is political suicide. Western Oklahoma is a different matter. Because of the density factor, consolidation would mean very long and early bus rides for kids living in the outlying areas. Do we have too many counties and school districts? Yes. Is it going to change. Probably not.
 

Dorkus

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All State Departments should be audited every five years, if not earlier. Audits allow for operational effectiveness and efficiency, and provides the opportunity to make organizational changes management may not see or be willing to make due to politics.
Texas does this every ten years. They call it a Sunset Study and we should at least do it that often.
 

TerryMiller

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Does the state education system truly need all of the school superintendents we currently have? Simple answer is no.

Split the state into 4 regions, along the I40/I35 corridors, each region would have 1 superintendent. With Zoom and Skype available each region could conference call as needed with the schools and principals and other staff. The State Superintendent then could do the same.

Eliminate the pork in the Oklahoma education system, take the excess funds and divert back to the classrooms.

I mean does a small school district need a new office building for the superintendent and staff and new chevy tahoes. They could do the same with a couple of Camrys, and maybe a remodel of the offices they had.

Just my .02 as a tax payer in this state.

I doubt that a 4-region plan would work. That would be too many principals and other staff that weren't really being supervised.

As for a small school district having new offices and vehicles, what is in that district that is a tax boon? It used to be that a school district wanted such things as electric generation facilities or active oil drilling in their district because each would increase the taxes available to that county.
 

DavidMcmillan

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And what district is going to be happy giving up their superintendent? It all sounds great until it is your district that is going to be merged with that low-income district.
 

jakeman

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All State Departments should be audited every five years, if not earlier. Audits allow for operational effectiveness and efficiency, and provides the opportunity to make organizational changes management may not see or be willing to make due to politics.

Once a year, minimum.

I work for a 20+ Billion company with over 4000 locations. They are all audited every single year, points awarded for audit infractions, and if they score high on the audit they’ll be audited again in 3-6 months. If they fail 2 in a row they’re fired.

That’s stockholder money. Willingly invested. I believe our tax dollars unwillingly given should be subject to the same level of oversight. At the very minimum.
 

GC7

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Teachers have sure went from hero to zero quickly. I remember in 18 when they were worshipped and practically decided every election that year with their pay demands.

I'm glad to see people have woken up.

I said it in another thread here, but I'll never forget the teacher's strike where they held our state government hostage. Aboslutely despicable behavior.
 

Okie4570

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And what district is going to be happy giving up their superintendent? It all sounds great until it is your district that is going to be merged with that low-income district.
There will be many districts with parents willing to combine superintendents. You don't have to combine districts, you assign more than one district to a superintendent. Actually as much as I hate to say it, there are a dozen schools in NW OK that do need to combine. When there's less than 70-80 students from prek-12 there's no justification for keeping them open imo. HS kids are traveling 60+ miles to play sports with other schools because their school doesn't have enough and their neighboring school doesn't have enough, and combined they still don't have enough. Those schools have had 4-7 kids per class for years.
 

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