Common Core Oklahoma Back in the News

Oklahoma has made national news again!  Our governor-appointed School Board and a few others have filed a lawsuit over HB3399 to repeal Common Core.   The claim is that it is unconstitutional for the legislature to tell the board what standards to implement…even though it was apparently okay for the legislature to tell them to implement Common Core.  Confusing, I know–but Jenni White, President of Restore Oklahoma Public Education, helps make sense of it:

Oklahoma State School Board Of Education member Amy Ford claims she joined the lawsuit because having the legislature involved makes the process political. This comment shows the depth and breadth of her lack of understanding of “representative” government. Oklahomans do not have direct representation by their Board Of Education because the members are governor-appointed – they serve “at the pleasure of the governor”. This means that the governor can appoint and remove all BOE members at any time. If Oklahomans had not wanted representative government in education at the state level, they would never have framed our state constitution to read (Section XIII-5) “Board of Education. The supervision of instruction in the public schools shall be vested in a Board of Education, whose powers and duties shall be prescribed by law.”

So we are back at it again.  It is like drinking water from a fire hydrant, I know.  I will go more in-depth about the inappropriate and disdainful behavior of the State School Board as they mocked parents, teachers and our legislators in an upcoming blog.  Grassroots against Common Core are trying to raise funds to pay for attorneys to file amicus briefs on our behalf.  No doubt, this will be the model for how they intend to proceed in every state that gets an effective bill passed, so it is important to every state fighting Common Core that we win it here in Oklahoma.  

Today I received a phone call from Emily in the Office of the Attorney General. The AG’s Office will be defending the respondents against the HB3399 lawsuit.  (This does not negate our need for the other attorneys to file our amicus briefs.) 

I am sure there will be more to come very soon.  We are looking for a silver bullet for this monster, or whatever weapon will kill Freddie “Common Core” Krueger for good!