Community Schools Are The Marxist Solution For Oklahoma Schools – Vote NO on HB1467 by West

Wednesday of this week (2.12.25) Representative Tammy West’s bill to “authorizing the State Board of Education to assist in establishing Community School pilot projects” is once again being heard in the Common Education Committee.

This is a national move to create schools that are all things to all parents – they would include everything from health care to psychological counseling. Here is a screenshot from the front page of their website.

Below is a one-pager I wrote when this bill first came up in 2022. In fact, that should say something in and of itself. Representative West keeps introducing this bill and it keeps getting voted down. Is it because our schools are already socially Marxist? Why does she keep bringing this up?

But then what do we know? When we wrote to the Common Education Committee members to ask them to vote against the bill, Former Senate author for West (and no longer in the senate) Dewayne Pemberton, assured members that he had been to a Community School in Tulsa (which made one of our points by the way) and that he hadn’t seen Karl Marx hiding behind the shrubs.

What Are Some Concerns With Community Schools?

HB3374 – Tammy West and Pemberton (Senate) – Community schools; authorizing the State Board of Education to assist in establishing community school pilot projects

(2025 BILL IS HB1647)

1.  President Obama placed Full Service Community Schools into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2016.  They are called “full service” schools because they provide every need for a child that a family/parent would including education, counseling services, healthcare and nutrition. (https://www2.ed.gov/programs/communityschools/index.html)

2. The Biden Administration provided grants for Full Service Community Schools programs (https://oese.ed.gov/offices/office-of-discretionary-grants-support-services/school-choice-improvement-programs/full-service-community-schools-program-fscs/) through President Obama’s reauthorization of ESEA – the Every Student Succeeds Act. 

3.  There are two national organizations which help support the Community Schools model – Community Schools (communityschools.org) and the National Center For Community Schools (nccs.org)

            a. Community Schools have an agenda called “Policy by The People” the tenets for which they are lobbying Congress (https://www.communityschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/01/2021-01-13_IEL_PolicybythePeopleagenda_FINAL.pdf).  Here are a few points from their agenda which essentially involves expanding government programming and funding of every service involving children:

                        – Prioritization of populations that have historically experienced systemic racism, discrimination, and/or disinvestment

                        – End the school to prison pipeline/school pushout crisis through stronger enforcement of civil rights protections and incentives for a restorative approach including restorative justice, trauma-informed practices, and hiring additional school counselors, social workers, and psychologists

                        – Raise the minimum wage to $15/hour and/or establish a universal basic income

            b. National Center For Community Schools follow three principles: Transformation, Equity and Excellence.  The ‘Equity’ portion of the website says the following:  Strong community schools counter systemic racism, increase opportunity, and move society toward equity and justice.  Too many children are expected to overcome structures designed to diminish them. Schools should model anti-racism, not perpetuate systems that divide us and limit opportunity.  We want students to feel not just welcomed, but valued for their race, religion, identification, origin, family, and community.

4.  Community Schools follow the model proposed by John Dewey (a socialist with Marxist views often considered the father of modern education) of a ‘democratic school-based social center’ where the school provided every possible need for students.  An article in the AFT’s American Educator Magazine in Summer of 2009 – “The Enduring Appeal of Community Schools” – provides a quote from Dewey’s 1902 address, “The School as Social Centre”, “The conception of the school as a social centre is born of our entire democratic movement. Everywhere we see signs of the growing recognition that the community owes to each one of its members the fullest opportunity for development.”  This, a quote which can’t help comparison to the quote of Marx, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.

5.  Enshrining a Community Schools pilot program in law while allowing the OSDE to create rules for that program is a recipe for creating further progressive, leftist inroads into the education of our children.

6.  Oklahoma communities HAVE BEEN creating their own Community Schools independent of state law.  The only reason to pass a state law, then, would be to allow the growth of the Community Schools movement throughout Oklahoma and provide the necessary validation for the Federal Government to provide tax dollars for these schools.  Federal/State tax dollars should NOT be provided for socialist, progressive education efforts in this country, let alone this state.

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Please write the members of the Common Education Committee and ask for their NO vote on HB1467 by West. Just copy and paste the block of addresses and put them into your ‘to’ field.

dick.lowe@okhouse.gov, danny.sterling@okhouse.gov, chris.banning@okhouse.gov, chad.caldwell@okhouse.gov, rob.hall@okhouse.gov, molly.jenkins@okhouse.gov, ronny.johns@okhouse.gov, cody.maynard@okhouse.gov, ellen.pogemiller@okhouse.gov, jacob.rosecrants@okhouse.gov, mark.tedford@okhouse.gov