Edmond Public Schools Discriminates and the OTA Good Ole Boy System Wins Again

ROPE Report LIVE for Friday, December 6th included our interview with Edmond attorney, Richard Lebarthe, who talked about his lawsuit against Edmond Public schools and a bit about his fight with the Oklahoma Transportation Authority.

December 5th, Richard joined Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation at a meeting of the Oklahoma Council of Bond Oversight.

Check out this post from ORT “Too Many Red Flags to Approve a 1.5 Billion Dollar OTA Bond Issue Without Due Diligence“, it covers the entire issue! It also has Richard’s letter to the Council at the bottom. Please read it, but I’d like to add the last paragraph here:

Accordingly, Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation and Oklahomans for Transparency in Government request that the Council of Bond Oversight postpone any decision on the proposed OTA bond offering until a full feasibility study and compliance review can be completed by an outside third party. We also request that any future OTA bond offerings be postponed until the State Auditor completes the investigative audit ordered by the Attorney General.

Seriously? Both groups – through their attorney – were only asking for the Council to WAIT A MINUTE WHILE A FEW FACTORS WERE REVIEWED FIRST. Yet the Council voted unanimously to grant the bonds to the OTA. Wow.

Here’s what Richard says about the meeting:

Please, PLEASE, go the the Oklahomans For Responsible Transportation website and follow them on social media. Oklahomans MUST stop the OTA and the Good ‘Ole Boy system propping them up or we’ll get to the point where we can’t afford to travel in Oklahoma, period.

The other topic Michael and I covered with Richard on Friday was a recap of the lawsuit Richard filed for Michael and numerous other parents of Edmond Public Schools, arguing that they had discriminated against their children because of their vaccination status.

If you’ll remember, during the COVID YEARS (eye roll), schools could – and would – arbitrarily tell parents that their kids had to stay home if they ‘contact traced’ them and thought they were at risk of developing COVID. Edmond parents filed suit against EPS because they were discriminating against kids who hadn’t had the vaccine with their policy. So, if you were vaccinated, you were neither contact traced nor sent home, but if you hadn’t been vaccinated, you were contract traced and sent home for 10 days if EPS believed you had been near a COVID positive person within 10 days.

Thanks to Richard, Edmond parents prevailed against EPS in court – demonstrating that EPS’ policy WAS flawed and discriminatory. Hilariously, EPS literally put out a statement to the press after the ruling that they were disappointed with the decision, though the court essentially said what Richard says in his comments below – EPS essentially coerced parents to vaccinate their kids for them to go to school.

It’s a shame parents have to pay an attorney to sue their own schools, but many parents today are having to do just that.