The ‘scoop’ on legislator’s profanity
In Sunday’s edition, we published a letter on Page 5 from Jonathan Small, president of the prestigious Oklahoma think tank, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, about the ill treatment he received from a leader of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
The tirade, including invectives and profane language was hurled at him because Small revealed details of a bill the member submitted which could have well been improved. That response is embarrassing to Republicans, the Oklahoma House and the state of Oklahoma.
Anyone who knows Jonathan Small knows that he is a gentleman, highly educated and ethical.
Our research indicates the leader who did this was Mark McBride of Moore. He is assistant floor leader and House appropriations subcommittee chairman. We point it out here because Small (ever the gentleman) didn’t identify him by name in his letter.
McBride is a Republican and it makes us ashamed to think that a person who should have appreciated Small’s efforts to make the bill friendlier to conservative values would have indulged in such a profane, public spectacle.
It reminds us of something the late Sen. Ralph J. “Butch” Choate said:
“When Republicans gain control of the Legislature, I may have to change my registration to Democrat.”
Just because one party has a majority does not make it above the law or decency.
In case you’re interested, this is what Small wrote a month of two ago, and the apparent cause of the inappropriate behavior of Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman McBride.
Parents justified in student privacy concerns
Recently, thousands of Oklahoma students’ names and home addresses were obtained from the Oklahoma Department of Education and used for mailers. Parents were understandably upset.
In Arizona, the state Department of Education released parent names and individual account information for more than 7,000 student-beneficiaries of a school-choice program. Parents were understandably upset.
But now Oklahoma lawmakers are telling parents not to worry about student privacy, even though newly passed legislation mandates reporting requirements that experts believe could allow identification of individual students.
House Bill 1230 imposes new regulations for the Lindsey Nicole Henry (LNH) Scholarship Program that include releasing LNH data by school site and recipient demographics including race, income, and disability. Families are rightfully concerned by those requirements because the legislation did not include student-privacy safeguards typically included in other reporting mandates.
It’s not unreasonable for parents to worry that it won’t take long for people to identify students by name if a report shows a private school has just a handful of LNH recipients and one is a low-income black child with autism.
Children served by LNH private-school scholarships either have special needs, such as autism, or are foster and adopted children. Many are survivors of abuse–including, at times, severe bullying in public schools that prompted suicide attempts before the LNH program provided an alternative. Why should the state make it possible for those children’s former tormentors to identify them and their new school? And why should the state allow antischool-choice radicals to identify specific families? If you don’t think there’s reason for concern on that front, you have not seen the vitriol school-choice opponents aim at low-income families online.
LNH recipients are not unreasonable in expecting privacy to be safeguarded because those protections are given elsewhere to other students. For example, when state testing results are released by school district, the data is withheld in instances where the number of test-taking students is so low that reporting on results could allow identification by inference.
The children with special needs targeted by HB 1230 deserve comparable protections.
The Republican Party often presents itself as a champion of deregulation in the name of individual liberty and job creation. President Trump has slashed regulations at the federal level, which experts agree has contributed to strong economic growth. At the state level Gov. Kevin Stitt wants to cut regulations by 25 percent. So why has a GOP-controlled Legislature chosen to head the opposite direction when it comes to a program that serves needy children?
The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs believes in accountability. But the troubling provisions of HB 1230 do nothing to deter or identify potential fraud. They only create potential hardship for families that already face more than their fair share of challenges. To make Oklahoma a place where more families can thrive, Oklahoma policymakers should stand up for those families, not add to their burdens.