Over the past couple of weeks, the legitimate local media has been paying special attention to the mass exodus of employees who have fled and / or been catapulted out of the Oklahoma Department of Education by State School Premiere Ryan Walters and his gang of Texas gentlemen.
According to a recent story by The "new and improved!" Oklahoman, over 130 people have departed the agency since Walters took over in 2023. During that same timeframe, only 33 people have been brought aboard. This includes Walters' communications chief, Dan Putzit.
Here’s what he said when The Oklahoman asked him about the biblical-esque employee exodus:
"The Oklahoman is fake news. They continue to lie about SDE and throw a fit that Supt. Walters has brought accountability to a dumpster fire of an agency led by their darling Democrat, Joy Hofmeister."
I’m not going to give Putzit too hard of a time for that canned, lame, totally unoriginal response. I can only imagine what it’s like to have your PR career fall so low to the ground that you have to report to a guy like Ryan Walters for a living. I guess we can’t blame him for giving up.
Anyway, I know I’m a product of Oklahoma public schools and everything, but I’m pretty sure 130 minus 33 is close to 100, so that's a lot of people who aren't working at the Oklahoma Department of Education since Ryan took over.
As a result of this disturbing stat, some local news sleuth thought it would be fun to ask the person who helped launch Ryan’s political career and shares his vision to destroy Oklahoma public education from the inside—Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt—for his thoughts on the agency being understaffed at a recent press conference.
Stitt and his eyebrows were surprisingly candid, and could barely contain their glee:
Even though Stitt and Walters have made it very clear they want to sabotage Oklahoma public schools from the inside and make our schools and districts so inept and under-funded that Oklahoma parents are all but forced to send students kids to grifty private and online charter schools, the local media seemed caught off guard by Stitt’s honesty.
Well, at least the legitimate media was.
We’ve actually been warning people about Stitt and Walters' plan for a couple of years, so the only surprise to us was Stitt being so forthright and honest. I guess he’s taking that dignity pledge to heart!
The Tulsa World, on the other hand, considered Stitt’s honest answer front-page news for the remaining 20 or so old people who still read the newspaper…
Listen, Stitt has a mild point. Although government is more accountable and efficient than most corporations, there’s always going to be some form of waste. And yes, bureaucracy sucks. Nothing kills an erection more than filling out some form or waiting on hold for some government agent to then put you on hold, but these people had jobs for a reason!
You know, people like Pamela Smith-Gordon.
She was that right-wing gun lover that Ryan Walters hired as his Program Manager of Grant Development and Compliance way back in 2023.
Pam was gullible and naive enough to think Ryan and his team of saboteurs actually wanted her to do the job she was being hired to do, and not just sit around all day playing Freecell on an old state computer while making sure nobody applies for grants.
Frustrated and probably unable to solve Freecell Puzzle No. 11982, she resigned from her position after only four months on the job and leaked a scalding resignation letter to the press.
Six months after the fact, KFOR reminded everyone about it so, I assume, we could see just how good of a job Ryan and Kevin are doing at sabotaging Oklahoma public education:
"Every federal department that offers grants has its own unique grant program where you apply for the grant, check for compliance, do reports for the grant, look at funding for the grant, and draw funding down," Smith-Gordon said. "And then, of course, you close out your grant through that unique program. It’s unique to each federal department. But in order to get access to those, it had to be requested by the State Superintendent. I did not have access to those. Therefore, I could not do my job. And so, they did agree to let me meet with the Chief of Staff who assured me that I would get access, but only was able to get access to one of those programs."
She didn’t hear from Walters.
“It affected my job greatly,” she said. “I couldn’t get a signature. And it wasn’t just my department. There were many departments that couldn’t get signatures on time. And that’s great angst when you are waiting ‘til—not even the 11th—but the 12th hour to get a signature, you’re going to lose some funding.”
She said that exact fear ended up coming to fruition. Weeks without access to the software, turned into months.
“We ended up losing a couple of million and that concerned me,” Smith-Gordon said.
Yep, the state lost a couple of million dollars in much-needed federal education funding, but hey, we have less bureaucrats! They suck, right?! That’s obviously a fair trade-off… especially if you’re trying to destroy education from the inside.
Anyway, now that it appears the legitimate news media is aware of Stitt and Walters plans to destroy public education from the inside, it will be interesting to see what else they discover? Let's hope they never learn about the quality of the Harbor Mountain Coffee House brews!
I guess we’ll wait around and see.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
