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.
