Ashley Rolen submitted statements to the Little Axe school district in 2002, describing the sexual abuse that had been perpetrated on her by several coaches employed by the district.
Nothing was done either done to help Ashley, or remove the coaches. Ashley moved on with her life.
But as Ashley tells us in the full podcast (YouTubeRumble), the day she heard about Olympic physician, Larry Nassar, and the stories of the brave gymnasts who told of their sexual abuse while under his care, she knew she had to make it right – for herself and for the other girls to whom this had happened and ones to whom it might be happening now.
As an adult, Ashley filed a complaint with the Oklahoma State Department of Education under Joy Hoffmeister. She was told that they had no investigators for her case and that she’d have to do her own investigation – which she did – and returned it to the OSDE under Ryan Walters.
Still – a full year later – and nothing has been done about the coaches who abused her, nearly all of whom are still employed by the State of Oklahoma in a public school.
In the video below, Ashley talks about what needs to happen for these reports to be taken seriously by school administration and the OSDE – which she doesn’t believe is really happening now.
In the video below, V1SUT Vantage blogger, Mary, Ashley, Michael Grande and I discuss how schools are getting around mandatory sex abuse reporting laws, allowing public school employees who have abused students to just disappear from the school and wind up at another without ever being made to pay for their crimes. The level of protectionism among school staff makes it nearly impossible for reporting to occur outside the school and even then, if a school resource officer shows up to talk to the complaining parties (the student and his/her parents or guardians) with school administration, it appears that school administration feels as though that kind of scenario IS the reporting.
If Ashley’s story teaches us anything, it’s that if we’re to save Oklahoma children from sexual predators operating inside Oklahoma public schools, we have to force schools to properly INVESTIGATE and REPORT and for the OSDE to put actually put parents and students first, by having any claims investigated by the OSDE promptly and teaching certificates removed so that the perpetrators can no longer harm CHILDREN.
Sorry to disappoint – that was a click-bait title (LOL) – but no one ‘won’ the debate. In fact, it was one of the best discussions we’ve had on the ROPE Report.
Chairman of the Libertarian Party and Bethany City Council Board Member, Chris Powell, joined our friends Amber Evans and Wendi Montgomery Dial (OK State Director of Restore Liberty) to talk about whether or not voter rolls in Oklahoma need to be archived and all voters re-registered. We gave each of the three 5 minutes in a round robin to talk about why – or why not – the voter rolls should be re-registered.
You can find the entire live broadcast on our YouTube and Rumble channels, but below is a wrap-up of the pro-position by Wendi.
In the video, Wendi references a candidate challenge – of which Chris was a part, because the candidate was a Libertarian – adjudicated by the Oklahoma State Election Board during candidate filing earlier this year. Amber, Wendi, Michael and I talked specifically about this issue in our ROPE Report LIVE from April 26th of this year, starting at about 31 minutes in. It’s well worth the watch if you’re so inclined – very interesting information.
Below, Michael and I talk about our specific experiences with the voter rolls in Oklahoma County. Michael from a candidate’s perspective during his run for Edmond School Board, and me from the time the Town of Luther (where I was Mayor for a term) decided to send out letters to ALL prospective voters, alerting them to the date of an upcoming vote to increase the sales tax. Unfortunately, both of us had the same experience with the voter lists we received.
Michael got a list of the voters in his district to knock doors and send literature, and I got a list of voters in my district to send letters to, from the Oklahoma County Election Board (OCEB). Michael had loads of voters on his ‘walk’ list that door knockers found to be not living at the addresses identified by the OCEB and I had a stack of about a quarter of the total letters I sent returned to me because of wrong addresses.
It makes sense that a candidate with nefarious purpose, might be able to ‘test’ a list by sending out mailers to everyone on the list given him/her by their county election board. They could then check addresses returned to make sure people don’t live at the listed address, wait until election time, apply for an absentee ballot with that person’s information and vote like the person is still on the rolls at that address. In this way, people could illegally vote absentee – and how would they be caught doing so?
From my time on the Oklahoma County Election Board (OCEB), I can tell you that there would be no way for ballot counters to have any idea if the person voting absentee lived at the address listed on the envelope – absentee ballots are notarized to signify that the voter is who he/she says they are – but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that anyone can apply to be a notary.
At the OCEB in 2023 when I was a Board member, the way absentee ballots were processed, we never even knew if there were notaries notarizing more than the lawful maximum of 20. The ballots were never laid out in piles per notary, they were simply checked to make sure all lawful information was present on the envelope and removed to another room for removal of the envelope.
Many of the elections in Edmond (Ronda Peterson, Michael Grande, Margaret Best – to name a few) that I’ve followed have had Republican candidates win at the ballot box, but then lose the race by a few absentee ballots. It certainly seems plausible and one reason Oklahoma needs to clean up our voter rolls.
Because I didn’t make a video clip of Chris’ perspective, I asked him to send me some of his suggestions for making sure Oklahoma’s voter rolls are as clean as possible. Here’s what he sent:
Some of the things I would change are things we didn’t get into. I’d get rid of partisan registration (and so also straight party voting) and in fact I’d favor doing away with partisan primaries altogether. But that’s probably a different show that could also talk about open primaries, Top-Two jungle primaries, ranked-choice voting, election calendar reform, and that kind of stuff.
To be specific to the voter roll, I think it’d be really easy to add a question of “has your address changed?’ when voters sign the book at the polling place on Election Day and get that new address. I’d also like to see an interstate voter roll integrity organization, but I’d like it to be limited to providing information for states to use as they see fit rather than dictating either to include or exclude voters. But a major point that Wendi and I alluded to but didn’t really state straight out is that the voter rolls are always going to be heavily dependent upon the actions of individual voters. All the laws in the world only work as well as people choosing to comply and if things are made too cumbersome it fuels the argument for a more wide-open system which is something I’m sure many people don’t want.
Wendi also sent me a follow-up with her ideas:
SHOW PHOTO ID when reregistering.
Reregister over 2 years and then archive the old rolls.
Issue the State Election Board funds to advertise the reregistration, including mailers, commercials on local tv and radio networks.
Allow provisional ballots at the polls for the first presidential election after the reregistration deadline for those who still wish to vote but missed the above advertising.
Have special nursing home teams to get out and reregister the elderly and infirmed.
And here are Amber’s:
Election laws should be changed so that registered voters & candidates – through canvassing – can report voters not living at the address for which they are registered. The State Election Board should then go through the appropriate steps to verify the findings and remove the voter from the rolls once verified.
The voter rolls need to be cleaned more often, and the State Election Board needs to look at the rolls and go through the proper process to get correct lawfully physical addresses for voters on the rolls and remove any addresses violating O.S.26
After reading the blog and watching the videos, take some time to have a discussion with your duly elected Representative and Senator about this issue – even forward them this article. As Wendi pointed out so well in her closing, clean voter rolls containing only lawful entries are of upmost importance to – not only the security of Oklahoma elections – but the electoral process itself.
What in the world IS Non-Public education? We’ll get to that in a minute, but first a recap…
At the end of the Oklahoma legislative session in 2023, the House and Senate passed HB1934, a bill which created ‘Universal School Choice’ in Oklahoma as described by organizations like The State Policy Network which have long-championed giving public tax dollars to private education.
All of Oklahoma’s Republican legislators voted for the bill (House, Senate; excepting those ‘excused’).
Afterward, the legislators we spoke with about the vote couldn’t understand how we were against the bill since it was a ‘tax credit’ – the form of ‘school choice’ for which ROPE has advocated against the concept of vouchers.
In fact, these legislators either argued with us about how the bill WAS a tax credit, or about how a voucher would – insert ‘school choice’ talking points – like those asserted in our interview with the Executive Director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, Brett Farley.
Farley, who was instrumental in the creation of Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, the school choice organization for which now-state Superintendent Ryan Walters was made head, actually admitted in the interview that yes, school choice advocates want voucher bills. In the ‘school choice’ mantra, the state already funds [failing] public education, so the only way to create the ‘competition’ necessary to make public schools ‘no longer a viable option’ is to divert state money to private schools.
This ‘logic’ has always been a head-scratcher to me, because the state legislature holds the budget appropriation strings and can choose to fund public education or not, yet every year they complain about how awful public schools are and then award them ‘historic’ appropriations (see 2023 and 2024 for example) while refusing to tie public school results to funding. Make that make sense.
After the Universal Voucher bill passed, I did a full breakdown on the associated rules and found that, as Farley described, the first two tax categories listed provide – not a tax credit as the legislature promised – or was lead to believe – but a ‘voucher’; a grant of Oklahoma tax dollars to private schools for children whose parents applied to the program because they couldn’t otherwise afford private education tuition.
One more time, let’s break down the school choice options afforded to parents in Oklahoma even prior to the ‘Universal Choice’ bill:
Public school;
Traditional public schools – Oklahoma has 509 school districts in Oklahoma. None have requirements for entry.
Charter schools – according to the Oklahoma State Department of Education website, Oklahoma had 24 of these in 2022. All are taxpayer-supported. Some have requirements for entry, others are a ‘lottery’ system where if the child’s name is randomly chosen, the child may attend, others have no requirement for entry.
Virtual Charter Schools – the OSDE records six of these schools which operate either solely on the internet, or a combination of in-person and online, such as EPIC charter schools. There is no requirement for entry
Magnet Schools – I could find no information about ‘magnet’ schools on the OSDE website, but an online site called Niche claims there are five in Oklahoma. Magnet schools provide a specific field of study along with ‘typical’ educational requirements for the state. An example would be Classen School of Advanced Studies where students have the opportunity to have in-depth study in the Arts while completing their Oklahoma educational requirements. There are entry requirements for attendance and all are taxpayer-supported.
Private Schools – According to Private School Review, there are 106 K12 private schools in Oklahoma with an average tuition of $7,293. These are private schools because families use their own household dollars to afford the school.
Homeschooling – The Homeschool Mom has an amazing list of homeschool coops and ‘enrichment’ classes available in Oklahoma. This is probably because Oklahoma is the MOST FRIENDLY homeschool state in the union, having written the ability for citizens of Oklahoma to educate their children at home in the state’s Constitution. This is also a private educational form because families pay out of their own pockets to afford this type of education.
So what is exactly the ‘choice’ School Choice proponents are talking about then? Oklahoma has LOTS and LOTS of choices that parents may choose to provide an education for their child/children. What choice did we not have that we had to have last year with Universal School Choice? Oklahoma taxpayer dollars funding private education for parents who can’t afford it – that’s it. That’s all. The ONLY thing our organization has ever objected to in the ‘choice’ menu – publicly-funding private schools.
Last Wednesday (6.5.24), our guest on ROPE Report Live was my friend and fellow homeschooling mom from Broken Arrow, Sarah DeNeui.
Sarah has become increasingly concerned about what would happen to homeschooling and private schooling since the passage of HB1934 and private schools began to receive state money. She talked with us about several of her concerns, mainly that once PRIVATE schools begin receiving PUBLIC money, they would no longer be PRIVATE schools.
Why? Because once tax dollars are involved, the government must maintain some control of the dollars in order to provide accountability and transparency to the public from whom it was taken (by force).
In addition, schools that receive funds from the Federal Department of Education, are required to comply with federal dictates, including, for example, President Biden’s decree that boys enrolled in schools taking federal funds and wanting to be girls, can use the girl’s bathroom. Though many states wrote laws to get around that particular dictate, the Biden Administration then proceeded to write a rule to keep states from placing a ban on the practice. How’s THAT for government control?
The full live video of Sarah’s interview with Michael and I can be found on our Rumble and YouTube channels, but here is the most concerning issue Sarah raised. In this short video segment, she tells the story of reaching out to her contact in the OSDE questioning a press release concerning the creation of an “Office of School Choice” in the Department. She was interested in exactly what the ‘office’s’ duties would entail.
Essentially, when the answer to her question was returned, it included a phrase she’d never previously heard – non-public education. Sarah wanted to know more, so she went out onto the internet to find that the federal government has an Office of Non-Public Education. Here’s their mission:
ONPE fosters maximum participation of nonpublic school students and teachers in federal education programs and initiatives. Since the initial passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965, private school students and teachers have been eligible to participate in certain federal education programs.
So, the definition of ‘non-public education’ then, relates to private schools that take federal (and/or state?) funds.
The Office of Non-Public Schools even has a list of “private elementary and secondary schools, and/or home schools (?!?!) with which the U.S. Department of Education (Department) regularly communicates regarding the participation of nonpublic elementary and secondary school students and teachers in federal education programs and initiatives”.
It might behoove parents sending their children to ‘private’ schools to find out if the organization under which their private school is sanctioned, or accredited, is on the list provided here. And beyond that, to check DIRECTLY with their private school to find out whether or not they are truly PRIVATE – taking only private funds, no tax dollars.
This is HIGHLY problematic. It should go without saying that the more education becomes funded by a governmental entity, the more controlled it is by the government and the less free parents are to decide what is truly best for their child/children’s education. And we’re not the only organization to believe that.
“We don’t want private schools to accept money, no strings attached initially, get dependent on it and then the government starts throwing down these regulations in exchange for the funding. Then they’re stuck having to make a choice of either closing their doors or compromising their values in order to continue to accept the federal and state funding.”
Alex Newman of Liberty Sentinel told us the exact same thing in his interview with ROPE last year.
As did Robert Bortins, CEO of the worldwide homeschool organization Classical Conversations:
So how again then, does a school choice VOUCHER create freedom for parents? How is putting a school under federal ‘rule’ EMPOWERING for parents?
Sarah asks these types of questions and more in the video below. If you are a Republican FOR vouchers before you watch this segment and are still for vouchers afterward, I’m going to suggest you change your political affiliation – none of the questions asked by Sarah here, result in answers that follow the small-government, personal responsibility/liberty model of Republicanism. In fact, they could all be considered LEFTIST ideals, so how are Republicans buying into them?
The idea of every American parent choosing the form of education they want for their child is fundamental to the concept of personal freedom enshrined in the Constitution and I’ll fight with all I have to preserve that ideal.
HOWEVER, the ideal of ‘school choice’ that includes bringing in the government AT ANY LEVEL of a child’s education while asserting that as a ‘free market principal’ or freedom in any way, is a flat out lie and I’ll fight for that lie to be exposed for what it is and the detriment it will become to actual educational freedom in the long run, every day of the week.
I remember a song from the ’60’s whose chorus says, “I fought the law and the law won” (here is a version by the Clash for you younger folks LOL). It reminds me so much of public education in Oklahoma – and probably across the nation, actually. Here’s why.
April 12th, 2022, Brice Chaffin – a taxpayer in the district of Stillwater Public Schools – attended a school board meeting to discuss his concern about allowing boys to use the girl’s bathrooms.
Addressing the Board from the podium, Chaffin began his remarks by discussing the forms of law – natural law, physical law, spiritual law. What happened after that really requires viewing, so check out the original video below. It’s only a bit over 3 minutes.
If you haven’t watched the video by this point in the piece, you really have to. It’s the only way to understand the derision with which Brice was treated by nearly every single member of the Board. As he’s being told he has to actually leave the building, the Board is laughing and carrying on as though Chaffin (not with a long A, but a short ‘a’ as is the correct sound for a vowel before two consonants – but this is a school board, what would they know about English rules?) a piece of gum stuck to their shoe. It’s simply gross.
After this egregious act of silencing a district taxpayer before he had even completed speaking for the time allowed by the Board, ROPE and Maria Seidler of Legal Overwatch for Parent’s Rights, filed a suit against each member of the Stillwater School Board citing the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act in May.
Please note; all that Brice and ROPE were asking, was for the SPS Board to apologize to Chaffin for the way he was treated. THAT’S ALL. No monetary damages, no compensation for time, no payment of our attorney fees. We asked only for an APOLOGY.
The Judge appointed to the case was Payne County Associate District Judge, Steven Kistler, appointed by Brad Henry (D) to the position in 2008.
In July, Judge Kistler ruled against RFR’s request for dismissal and scheduled a pre-trial hearing for November, that was moved to October.
Unfortunately, Kistler denied Seidler’s motion, but after hearing the arguments of both side’s attorneys, refused to rule from the bench, saying instead that he was going to review the video again and, following, supply a written ruling to the parties through the court.
In April of 2023, Maria Seidler was a guest on our podcast, ROPE Report Live, where she updated us on the case. You can find that video on our Rumble and YouTube channels.
Essentially, Judge Kistler ruled against us and Brice and for SPS, literally providing no support for his decision. It was simply something to the effect of, “I’m ruling for Stillwater Public Schools”, period. If we wanted to have any notion about his thinking as to why, we weren’t going to get it. (You can find that specific information at 33 minutes almost exactly on the live video)
Following Kistler’s (bizarre) decision, SPS’ attorneys then file a lawsuit against Chaffin and ROPE for court costs and attorney’s fees. Because we filed our suit under the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act, this was a real surprise. The Act does not allow for court costs or attorney’s fees to be collected UNLESS the suit is won and the attorney’s fees and court costs are to be paid by the governmental entity that was found at fault. The private citizen or organization suing the governmental entity is not to pay court costs or attorney’s fees for the other party, even if they lose.
Here are the costs submitted to Stillwater Public Schools by Rosenstein, Fist an Ringold TO KEEP FROM APOLOGIZING TO A COMMUNITY MEMBER!
Yet and again, however, ROPE and Chaffin were back in court with the intrepid Maria by our side, trying to defend ourselves – when we shouldn’t have had to – from paying nearly 45 THOUSAND dollars in attorney’s fees and court costs.
Fortunately, the judge actually HAD read the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act and ruled against Rosenstein, Fist and Ringold (and SPS) and for Chaffin and ROPE, but it was at that court proceeding that Seidler and Chaffin learned something interesting.
The two were approached by several attorneys who told them they were sorry about the first ruling and that they believed we had a case. In fact, the attorneys identified Judge Kistler as an ‘activist’ judge who would have never ruled with us because of the subject matter and defendants. This information, led Maria to expound strenuously against ‘activist’ judges in this ROPE Report Short from that April’s interview.
We went on to file an appeal in Payne County, but our appeal was lost. Though we thought about filing an appeal to the Supreme Court, the costs are prohibitive and made little sense to any of us (from an AI answer to a search for Oklahoma Supreme Court costs: The total estimated cost of appealing to the Oklahoma Supreme Court can range from $2,750 to $14,000 or more, depending on the complexity of the case and the number of briefs filed.)
So here are your takeaways:
Listen to what Brice says here; Stillwater Public Schools LIED to pastors and other members of the community about the policy of allowing boys in girl’s bathrooms by telling them nothing was going on. They only found out for certain, when a woman went to her pastor and told him what she had personally seen!
If a public school offends your Constitutional – or other – rights, and you decide to sue them, you will pay for YOUR attorneys AND THE SCHOOLS ATTORNEYS because your tax dollars go to the school and the school is PAYING A FIRM OF ATTORNEYS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO KEEP FROM HAVING TO APOLOGIZE TO A COMMUNITY MEMBER. We discuss that in this segment:
But it only gets worse. What happens if we had sued SPS for tens of thousands – or millions of dollars? Does the school have to pay that? What about the employees that caused the issues?
A Kingfisher Public Schools family sued Kingfisher Public Schools for some horrible hazing incidents that happened under the watchful eye of the KPS coach. The court awarded the family a 5 MILLION dollar settlement for the case. Will the Coach pay that? What about the school board that hired the Coach and allowed him to continue on in his position after numerous complaints from the community? What about the Superintendent? Nope.
A Daily Oklahoman article sums it up just in the title alone: “Angry taxpayers to confront Kingfisher school board about $5 million settlement of hazing case”. Why are Kingfisher taxpayers angry about a lawsuit that didn’t involve them? “Property owners in the Kingfisher school district are mad because they’re being told their taxes will go up for three years to pay $3.75 million of the settlement. Estimates are the increase could be as much as 12%.” You read it right! Yup.
Kingfisher school district taxpayers will pay the cost of the lawsuit settlement against the district.
Now tell me. Where in the world is the accountability for any public school TO the taxpayers whose money they take – either in property taxes or in appropriations by the legislature?
So let’s discuss that as well. Oklahoma’s academic scores are in the toilet. Across Oklahoma, less than half of ALL students are proficient in English and math, yet the Oklahoma legislature – again this year, after what they termed an HISTORIC INVESTMENT of tens of millions of dollars in education in 2023 – have done it again.
This is the website that contains the budget for Oklahoma for 2024. A total of $13.2 BILLION dollars. Education? Yeah, that’s a NEW appropriation of $45 MILLION dollars to a total $7.9 BILLION dollar budget. Who says public education is underfunded? Why would we fund them at all? We have ZERO control over them and the people we elect to take the reigns of control over them, simply throw money at the problem and move on.
Share this far and wide – every single Oklahoma taxpayer should know exactly where there money is going and what they are, or are NOT getting for it.
