student safety

Our friend, author ‘Mary’ of the V1SUT Vantage Substack joined the podcast at a SPECIAL TIME – at 1pm on Friday, March 21st to talk about some very unsettling things going on in the world of Oklahoma Education Reform. This is another one of those videos (I know…I write that all the time!) for which you’ll want to watch the full video and you can do that here on our YouTube and Rumble channels.

Mary talked about a number of bills, but the one we talked about arguably the most was HB1937, the bill that would change the law passed last year authored by Sherrie Conley, that prevented Oklahoma public school employees from communicating with students without a parent on the call/text/email/etc. HB1937 – a bill by two former public school employees – now allows parents to opt out of the law. Mary talks about what a bad idea that is in the clip below.

We also talked about HB1491 – a horrible bill that I can’t imagine wasn’t a request bill from the Governor. Don’t forget, back in February, Governor Stitt fired three Oklahoma State Department of Education Board members because of ‘political drama’. We found out later that Stitt fired them because he didn’t want anyone counting the number of illegal alien students here in Oklahoma (then we produced evidence that that information is collected for the Oklahoma State Longitudinal Database called The Wave, anyway).

And so the newest installment in the story is that, suddenly, and out of thin air, Representative Ronny Johns and Senator Aaron Rheinhardt gutted HB1491 – already a bad bill because it essentially watered down the requirements for removing teaching certifications from Oklahoma teachers – and inserted language that would allow State Board of Education members to add items to the agenda. Below, Mary explains why this is a very, very bad idea.

Who knows how poorly the state is really doing in educating our youth. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has us as 48th in reading and 45th in math for 8th graders. What’s going on at the state capitol right now is not helping. Let your Senators know that you don’t like EITHER of these bills and you want a big fat NO vote when they reach the Senate. Stay tuned and watch Mary’s substack for more!

Wednesday, January 22nd, our friend “Mary” from V1SUT substack was on the podcast to talk about former Wetumka Public Schools teacher and Coach, Brent McGee. You can find the full live video here on Rumble and also on our YouTube channel.

As Mary talked about in the video clip below the Wetumka Board of Education is NOT protecting kids, they’re protecting Brent McGee’s wife, who also happens to be the Superintendent of Wetumka. I would say I couldn’t believe it, but we’ve heard the same story over and over and over.

But here’s the thing – as we say in the video – it HAS to be up to Wetumka residents and parents to make the Board do the right thing. It’s clear that unless parents and community members are there in force watching everything they do and pushing back, students of the district won’t be protected from sexual abuse.

This fact is illustrated by another story Mary tells, about Cody Barlow, the middle school Principal at Wewoka Public Schools. In fact, despite an eye-witness account of sexual misconduct with Barlow and a 7th grade student and a civil trial in which Barlow was found guilty and the school forced to pay nearly 2 million dollars in restitution to the families of four boys, the outcome of the criminal trial was much different.

How can that be? How can the outcome be so very different? The civil trial was moved out of Seminole County, while the criminal trial was adjudicated in the county.

This should upset every taxpaying citizen who cares about children. This absolutely has to stop.

Again, though it’s really up to parents and taxpayers in these districts to make this stop, so few will speak out in small towns. This is a comment left on our Facebook account under our live video feed that explains:

Small town corruption is nothing new. No one in this small town in that school system will turn on each other because to do do would make them guilty [of] not doing anything. They were there and they knew what was going on. When you are someone who grew up in [this] town, with your mom as a teacher, and your dad as a business owner and, now you are infiltrated into that system, no one is going to believe you are the villain! Just because he didn’t do it to your kid or grandkid, doesn’t mean he didn’t do it to someone else. Teachers are mandatory reporters and if they know and do nothing [they] should be held as accountable as the one who was doing the harm to the child. This should be moved out of the county and prosecuted elsewhere.

There is safety in numbers and beyond that, there’s CHANGE in numbers! DA’s can be unelected and good ones elected, school board members can be voted out, or in – it all depends upon what people in the community set their mind to doing – but no matter what; we must ALL set our minds on PROTECTING KIDS!

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V1SUT Vantage Substack Author Discusses The Ways In Which How OK Legislators Are Sabotaging Ed Reform

Are Rural Oklahoma Courts Inept Or Corrupt?