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Norman school to teach elementary students to identity “misinformation”

Written by guest-poster, Shane Smith

An email sent out by McKinley Elementary in Norman last week, informed parents that the school has been selected to participate in an “innovative research study examining how school librarians can help students learn to detect and avoid misinformation by developing their information literacy skills”.

While participation in the study itself is voluntary, all K-5 students will be taught the misinformation program curriculum from August to April.

The program itself, entitled “Awareness and Critical Thinking (ACT) Program: How School
Librarians Can Teach Children to Detect and Avoid Misinformation”, was developed by Tara Zimmerman, assistant professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Women’s University. Her sole specialty for the past few years has centered around “misinformation”, and she’s received a $400,000 grant from the Laura Bush 21st Century
Librarian Program to fund her research.

A few of the papers she’s published on misinformation provide the trajectory of her target.

In 2020, she published a paper entitled, “COVID-19: Mask Misinformation and Social Noise”. The paper begins with this statement:

“Disinformation and misinformation are pervasive in unregulated social-media environments, which are used habitually for obtaining news.”

I think we know where this is going.

Further into the article she says:

“Facebook on July 20th, 2020 removed a group called themselves Unmasking America that had more than 9,000 members for spreading COVID19 misinformation (Lynos 2020). The group claimed that masks obstruct the flow of oxygen and have a negative psychological impact on wearers. Facebook responded to an inquiry from the Verge and stated that “We have clear policies against promoting harmful misinformation about COVID 19 and have removed this group while we review the others,” according to the Verge article. This is one of many groups on social media spreading lies and conspiracy theories about COVID19 and against wearing masks for various reasons. In the US, wearing masks has become a partisan issue and represents more of a political statement than a safety and health care guidance issue. Most social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others are coming under pressure to encounter such negative messaging and take steps to minimize the spread of COVID19 misinformation.”

Yet another paper, published in 2022, “Misinformation and COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy”, reads just as you’d expect:

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccine beliefs have been at an all-time high, and vaccine hesitancy has become a major threat to public health [1]. The World Health Organization has labeled the increased virulence of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic an “infodemic” [2]. Throughout 2020, scientists, healthcare professionals, and politicians speculated about vaccine timelines, distribution, and effectiveness; and media platforms presented widely varying opinions as well as misinformation that negatively influenced people’s attitudes about COVID-19 vaccines [3]. By the end of 2020, the self-reported likelihood of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 had declined sharply from 74 % in April to 56 % in December [4]. While the availability of COVID-19 vaccines improved between the fall of 2020 and late spring 2021, indications of public distrust in vaccines continued. This public distrust contributed to waves of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US, increasingly among those who were not vaccinated.”

There’s something archaic about Zimmerman’s papers, her attitude prevalent at the height of COVID hysteria, and later, her vaccine mandate hysteria that rings hollow today.

Masks didn’t prevent the spread of COVID. Neither did the vaccine. It’s almost common knowledge now, but both facts were branded as misinformation during the dark days of the COVID pandemic.

In fact, her continued study of “misinformation” feels like a discarded relic of the past. It might have held weight in 2020, or 2021, when any opinion not perfectly aligned with the official narrative surrounding COVID-19 was branded as misinformation, and censored. Even scientific research that failed to dovetail with the pronouncements of the public health establishment was blacklisted. We all remember it, and we’d rather not return to those dark days of censorship.

Zimmerman might, though. What else explains her passion for routing out or dismissing
altogether non-approved opinions?

“Misinformation” is not a neutral term.

It’s shown itself to be nothing more than a bludgeon used to silence right-wing criticisms of left-wing orthodoxy. During the authoritarian days of the pandemic, it was a powerful weapon used to silence critics by the thousands with one fell swoop. We remember the social media behemoths enacting a scorched earth policy of censorship at the behest of the Biden White House. But now, in the age of Elon-owned X, the term “misinformation” has lost its power. Like a T-Rex transformed into a chicken.

Professor Zimmerman clearly isn’t a neutral actor, and the ACT Program isn’t an objective
study. I fear that the goal of her program is less to teach children to think critically, and more to teach them to hold up a crucifix when confronted with unapproved opinions. “Get them while they’re young” is the new strategy among activists embedded within the public school system.

The ACT Program appears to be yet another attempt to cloak the wolf of left-wing orthodoxy in a sheep’s coat of scientific objectivity.

Watch for it in your child’s school RIGHT NOW. This is a national movement occurring BEFORE our elections. Check out: Media literacy is more than spotting fake news. How one librarian gives teens the tools to decide what to trust

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Statewide Charter School Board President Talks St. Isadore And Raising The Bar On Education In Oklahoma

Wednesday, August 28th, Michael and I talked to Brian Shellem (who’s name I KEEP mispelling and changing the second “e” to a “u” – sorry Brian!), who was recently named the Chair of the recently-created Statewide Charter School Board. Once a separate Virtual School Board and a Charter School Board, the NEW board has combined BOTH virtual and brick and mortar charter schools into the one Board.

This was a significant change ordered by the legislature in order to create more taxpayer transparency of the publicly-funded charter school model thanks to the horror show that became EPIC Charter Schools. (I’m not going into all of that here. If you’re unfamiliar with the EPIC mess, just search the interwebs for “Epic” and you’ll get the whole story in a relatively short time!)

Oklahoma charter schools are publicly-funded schools to which any student can apply – many have a lottery system for entry – that function by a “charter”, making them different than a ‘regular’ public school. They are created by private entities, not the state, but are approved and funded with state tax dollars. The job of Brian Shellem – and the rest of the Statewide Charter School Board – is to approve (or disapprove) applications submitted to the Board for charter school renewals and new charter schools attempting to operate in the state.

In the clip below, Brian talks about the fact that, now that the new Board is functioning, they will also have a NEW job – sponsoring a charter school. As Brian explains, it used to be the public school in the immediate area of the proposed charter that could sponsor a charter, but – as you can imagine – the charter schools that were getting sponsorships, were having to get them from public schools of higher education, not k-12 schools, most of which have never been supportive of competition for dollars from charter schools.

This change could allow for many more charter school applications to be made – to a Board full of appointed people. This initially alarmed me because, as you know, I detest the lack of accountability usually had by appointed Boards and Commissions. Hearing Brian talk about the way he intended to have the Board do business and the transparency he was going to expect from the Board made me much less suspicious and more inclined to see the positivity in this change.

Charter schools have private boards though they receive public money, yet if the Board seated to oversee them is doing their job and is transparent about the way in which the schools are functioning, having the same Board sponsor the charter schools over which they are tasked with approving could actually create greater transparency. In the end, it’s still a Board with appointed – not elected – individuals whose job should be overseen and checked by the public to ensure they are correctly performing their duties.

In the short clip above, Brian talks about the fact that public school leadership has fallen down on the job. Brian wants to raise the bar and make sure charter schools are performing to the best of their ability.

Although the full live video went on for 2 hours (!), we had more people watching the whole two hours than we’ve had watch some of our shorter videos all the way through. People are truly concerned about the issue of education in Oklahoma and wanted to hear our discussion. You can find the full video on Rumble and YouTube. I suggest you watch the entire thing when you can.

I don’t agree with Brian on everything – like authorizing religious schools to be funded by taxpayers and offering ‘school choice’ to homeschoolers – but I agree with a whole lot of what he said and the discussion surrounding our disagreements were instructive.

Again, as I’ve said hundreds of times, ARGUMENT IS NOT A BAD THING! It is if you’re going to scream and yell and throw things, but you shouldn’t. We should all be able to talk to one another about our differences calmly and respectfully, because we might just learn something from each other. I think we all did that here.

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Ageism Dominates Comments On OKC FOX Reporter Payton May’s Post From August State School Board Meeting

I swear, I shouldn’t be surprised by absolutely ANYTHING today, but this one got me.

This was a Tweet from reporter Payton May during Thursday’s (8.22.24) state school board meeting.

I can’t see the comments on the post anymore. I’ve apparently been blocked for repeatedly commenting, but if you go through them, you’ll see a pattern – older people need to sit down and shut up about what’s going on in schools.

Here are the specific comments to which I actively replied:

My predictive text decided to use “funded” for “fined” and I hit sent before I saw that…

This guy actually responded that, yes, he was an ageist, but he hadn’t said anything about drag queens or kindergartners. SMH, RME…

I believe I’ve made my point (and not always nicely, but my dander was up) but I have to say – not that Twitter is an indicative replica of all Americans – we’re in trouble.

The people who commented about the age of the people there for Walters were ugly about it. I mean, why even say something like that? They obviously have absolutely no idea how property taxes work (you don’t own your property because the state forces you to pay taxes on your property that fund local public schools, libraries and technical schools and if you don’t pay them, the state comes in and takes your property from you to pay the bill for those things) and that people on fixed incomes (many collect only Social Security having been propagandized to believe that would take care of them in their old age) are more susceptible to having their property confiscated for lack of funds to pay their property taxes.

More than likely, these people live in apartments and take money from the government for different things on a regular basis, so they could care less what happens to people who don’t pay their property taxes, but I think there’s a bigger issue here.

Democrats/leftists, want abortion on demand – they always have. I can’t make a case for it because it’s never made any sense to me why anyone would want to kill a pre-born infant – not even when I was a young moron who thought she was an atheist. You either don’t have sex, or you use birth control if you’re gonna have sex – you don’t kill babies because YOU were too much of an idiot to protect yourself from getting pregnant.

Soon, it will be old people.

I could wax on about why and how and all of that, but it’s been reported for many years – especially since COVID and so many old people were simply put on ventilators and left to die. The important part of even putting this into a blog for public consumption is to understand that AGEISM – like so many other horribly destructive social trends – is here in Oklahoma.

We must push back against the Democrat death cult. We do it with abortion, but we’ve ignored the looming specter of ageism.

When you hear or see this kind of conversation on social media, or anywhere else, remind people how school funding and property ownership works. Remind them that old people have more skin in the game than the young. Remind them that older folks should be cared for and how much we still have to learn from those who are older.

Don’t let the young demonize the old, because if we do, we’ll end up with the same problem we have with the pre-born now – we’ll be having to figure out how to stop euthanasia programs like those invented by the Nazis to get rid of the medically infirm. It’s happened before, it’s happening in other countries now, it can happen here too.

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Author Joy Pullmann Joins Michael and Jenni To Discuss Her New Book

Wednesday, August 7th, 2024, Executive Editor of The Federalist, Joy Pullman, joined Jenni and Michael to discuss her new book, False Flag; Why Queer Politics Mean The End Of America.

You can find the full live video on our YouTube and Rumble channels.

Truly, this book needs to be purchased by as many people as possible and distributed to people in your circles who think gender politics are ‘not that big a deal’ – particularly to your pastor and those in your church who have no idea that the Pride movement is absolutely a ‘regime change’ meant to DESTROY FAMILIES AND CHRISTIANITY.

Why? As Joy writes in the Introduction to her book:

Stable families are a core societal precondition for limited government and self-rule. By destroying families, the identity politics state uses welfare to undermine the natural family’s private provision of human needs. When half of America’s citizens grow up in sexually chaotic homes, and all of us marinate in a sexually chaotic culture, only a minority of citizens will have the capacity for self-government. Thus a widespread lack of sexual virtue is an existential threat to both economic and social freedoms.

The book is a fast 300+ pages of 8 chapters. It is HEAVILY cited. Joy mentions why in her interview. She says she put a lot of time into documenting her statements because some of the subject matter can be so unbelievable, she wanted to make sure readers knew how to source her material in order to better earn their trust and understanding.

Chapter 8 is called, “Strategies For Counterrevolutionaries”. In this chapter, Pullmann gives example after example of what can be done to reverse the rainbow tide threatening to swallow not only Christians, but anyone who doesn’t want to bend the knee and kiss the ring of Marxist gender politics.

In the clip below, Pullmann encourages Americans who want to force the “love wins” brigade to keep to themselves and away from children and families.

At the end of our interview, I asked Joy to tell us about a book she wrote several years ago, “Classic Books For Young Children“, upon which she has expanded since its original publishing. Why, I asked her, is it so important for children to read classic literature and not the books written in the last several decades. Her answer is in-depth and specific. Please give it a listen and pass it on to those in your life who might need a little nudge to help find better literature influences for their kids – and/or grandkids.

As usual, please take the time to share these short videos with family and friends and visit our Rumble and YouTube channels for more videos on everything from education to the Green Agenda!

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OK Rep. Sherrie Conley Talks Broken Trust – Her New Non-Profit

Wednesday, July 24th ROPE Report Regular, Representative Sherrie Conley, talked with Michael and I about her new non-profit Broken Trust.

After working with numerous former students who had horror stories about being molested or abused by public school employees, Sherrie decided that something needed to be done and she was going to do it.

The Broken Trust website is a place where people can contact Sherrie with tips and/or reports of abuse occurring within public education.

In the clip below, Sherrie talks about her desires for the organization and shares its first event.

If you would like to attend – or share this event with others who might be interested – click here.

It’s honestly sad to realize that this kind of event is needed today, but it is. So few parents understand what could be happening after they drop their child off at school – and fewer seem to understand what to do if their child comes forward to report abuse.

Sherrie reminds EVERYONE that, according to state law, EVERYONE is a mandatory reporter of abuse any time they find it.

For parents, the very best thing to do, should you suspect abuse, is IMMEDIATELY CONTACT LAW ENFORCEMENT – and that doesn’t mean your school’s School Resource Officer. SROs are employees of the school first and foremost. Their contracts are with schools, not with the police department to which they are attached and certainly not with parents. If school administration is told, the school will investigate – not law enforcement. Consequently, the first call if any parent suspects abuse from a public school employee is to your nearest LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICE.

In the clip below, Sherrie talks about the abuse taxpayers receive after a school is found guilty of abusing a student or students. In this case, 2 Kingfisher Public School’s coaches were accused of knowingly allowing students to abuse one another in the high school locker room. One family sued and won a judgement of 5 million dollars, of which the Kingfisher school district taxpayer will be required to pay.

As Sherrie explains, the school asks the county assessor to raise their millage rate to cover costs over their budget and this results in higher property taxes for the home owner while the school’s administration and board, get off scot free.

Please take a moment and share this article – and the videos – with others. The only way we FIX this problem is to educate others who can help us demand change!

You can find the FULL video on our Rumble and YouTube channels!

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We Need To Protect Children From Public School Predators – V1SUT Vantage On ROPE Report Live

For her regular Wednesday appearance on ROPE Report Live, our V1SUT Vantage blogger, ‘Mary’, Michael and I talked about yet another incident where a public school teacher had molested a child. This time while he and his husband were on vacation on a cruise ship.

How in the world does this happen?

One good piece of news ‘Mary’ gave us, was that State Superintendent Walters had spearheaded an investigation into Ashley Rolan’s sexual assault case, causing at least one of the perpetrators to come forward and VOLUNTARILY relinquish their license. One down. Many more to go.

In the short video below, ‘Mary’ talked about Statute of Limitation laws in Oklahoma and how they must change if we’re to protect children and make abusers pay for their crimes.

Since 2017, the Statute of Limitations on reporting sexual abuse is age 45. That seems awesome until you find out that this date is NON RETROACTIVE – meaning that no DA will file charges against someone who has abused this person IN THE PAST. How can that be? So the abused can REPORT the crime, but the abuser can’t be held accountable if the abuse didn’t happen in the same year?

Watch the short video below to see why.

The only way to solve this problem is by changing the statutes to allow for prosecution of sexual crimes against children even though the victim could be reporting the crime as an adult. Oklahomans should absolutely do all we can to protect our youngest citizens and we’ll be helping where we can on this issue for 2025 in the legislature.

In the next short video, ‘Mary’ talk about how it is that members of the LGBT community seem to have some kind of immunity when it comes to prosecution for crimes involving minors. Check out the short video below to hear ‘Mary’ talk about a situation she’s reported on from Bartlesville involving not one, but TWO children put into foster care with a same sex couple. One child ended up with a broken arm that was never investigated and a subsequent child died. This is simply not okay, yet it continues to happen over and over again.

We must pass on this information to everyone we know. Public outcry could make legislators act, but we need to spread he word so that awareness of these situations grow.

Continued to stay tuned every third Wednesday to hear what ‘Mary’ has for us next and check out her substack as well!

Take an hour or so to watch the full video on our Rumble or YouTube channels. You won’t be sorry. ‘Mary’ is always so informative!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Moms 4 Liberty, Yukon area, is hosting an event in conjunction with Sherrie Conley’s new non-profit Broken Trust called, “A Guide to Protecting Students from Predatory Behavior”, Tuesday, August 6th at 5:30, location to be announced. This event is free, but please sign up so they know to expect you.

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Ashley Rolen; Fighting To Have Her Abusers Removed From Oklahoma Public Schools

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 (YouTube Rumble), 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.

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This Is How Government-Issued Private School Vouchers Will Help Turn Private Education Into ‘Non-Public’ (Public) Education

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

Sherri Few, President of the organization USPIE (United States Parents Involved in Education) said this in a recent interview with FOX News:

“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.

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Public Schools Have Zero Accountability To Taxpayers – Just Look At What Happens When They Are Sued!

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.

You may view the entire Stillwater Board meeting for April 12, 2022 here.

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.

Press statements and the filed lawsuit can be found here.

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.

The lawyers for Stillwater Public Schools, Rosenstein, Fist and Ringold (RFR), are well-versed in education law – it’s one full subset of their entire practice. Of course, they asked the court to dismiss the suit.

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.

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