'We can't just read 400 pages in 36 hours': Board members & Walters at odds over social studies standards

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt is questioning the process of how the new Social Studies standards were passed out of the Board of Education, with the newest board members saying they did not get to read the version they voted on.

State Superintendent Ryan Walters says those claims are “simply untrue.”

The board passed the controversial social studies standards at its Feb 27 meeting. That was the first meeting for Governor Stitt’s newly appointed board members — Mike Tinney, Ryan Deatherage, and Chris Van Denhende.

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At a news conference on Wednesday, Governor Stitt told reporters he had seen emails sent to the board members with an old version of the standards from before more than 200 changes were made.

“It’s been shown to me from the board members that they were emailed a copy of those standards, but then there was a different standard sitting on the desk that they actually voted on. Well, that’s very, very odd,” Stitt said. “In a corporate board setting, if a CEO came and sent the board a package and said we’re voting on this policy, but then they slid a different policy they actually were voting on, the board would be very, very frustrated.”

At the April 24 board meeting, Walters said it was a lie that the version emailed to board members was different than the version they voted on. The board members agreed but said they still did not have time to review the standards before voting on them.

New board member Mike Tinney said while the version they were emailed matched the version they voted on, he was not aware any changes had been made from the public version he had studied.

“We can’t just sit there and read 400 pages of standards that we get 36 hours beforehand,” Tinney said. “It would have never dawned on me that someone would change them without telling the board whose duty it is to adopt them.”

The standards are now in the hands of the state legislature. Lawmakers have until May 1 to reject them, or the new standards will go into effect.

Concerns from Board Members

Board member Chris Van Denhende, who joined in February with Ryan Deatherage and Mike Tinney, says he has personally asked multiple state senators to return the standards for review.

In a statement to News on 6, he says he was made aware after the Feb 27 board meeting that the standards had been changed. He says that is when he and the other board members began asking for the standards to be sent back.

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“There is a process that has been established, and it appears that the process was not followed,” Van Denhende wrote. “I have heard all kinds of things about what actually took place, but I can't confirm any of them.”

At the April board meeting, Van Denhende compared the situation to one of his businesses.

“In my business, we have change control over documents, so when we have official documents, we document what causes those to change. I don’t know if that exists, but we could clarify all of this for everybody if you just produce your change control that says here’s where we started, here’s what we changed, and here’s how and why we changed it,” Van Denhende said. “When changes are made, I want to know what changes were made and what caused something to change that we spent ten months creating.”

Tinney also spoke at the April 24 board meeting, where he told Walters he did not know changes had been made to the publicly available version he had read until after the February meeting.

“What was on the posting, what I was studying beforehand had been changed, and that was without my knowledge,” Tinney said. “After public comment, they can be changed, however, it’s the board that changes them, and the board was not, to my knowledge, notified of those changes.”

Deatherage echoed those sentiments at the meeting.

“We didn’t know what was prior, what had been changed. We didn’t have a document that had red line items that ‘this was changed, this one changed,” Deatherage said. “I think this whole issue would have gone by if we would have just slowed the process and let us understand what was in there.”

Response from Walters

Superintendent Walters brought up what he calls the ‘fake controversy’ near the beginning of April’s board meeting. He said the version of the standards emailed to board members was the same version they voted on, and that was sent to the legislature. He said it should be expected that there would be changes made after public comment.

“This is untrue, what we are claiming here from several board members, because now we’ve got the governor who went out and said something that is not true. Now I believe someone told him that. I don’t think the governor went out and said something he knew to be false, to be clear, but someone has told him that what you were given – what you were emailed – was different than what we walked in here and presented to you,” Walters said. “We have created a fake controversy that the legislature is looking at, but we’ve given them all the documents to help clear that up.”

Walters said the process to create the standards took around ten months and included several meetings with focus groups, educators, and legislators.

Walters said he is the one who ultimately makes the decision on what is in the standards and how it is presented. Board members disagreed, saying state statutes say it’s the board’s decision.

Senate Joint Resolution

Senate Education Committee Chair Adam Pugh filed a joint resolution on Thursday to disapprove of both the new social studies and science standards. It would need to be approved by lawmakers before the standards would be sent back.

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