Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected a controversial state Board of Education proposal to ask students’ families about their immigration status and criticized the board’s “needless political drama” in a challenge to the state’s increasingly Trumpian educational direction.
The proposal, which requires parents to report their immigration or citizenship status when enrolling their children in school, came as President Donald Trump and Republican leaders pledged to crack down on undocumented immigrants and carry out a mass deportation plan.
In just over a month in power, the Trump administration has sent troops to the US-Mexico border, deported migrants to Guantanamo Bay and moved to strip temporary protections for certain migrants.
Education and immigration advocates questioned whether the proposal was constitutional and said they believed it will make immigrant families feel afraid and unwelcome at public schools.
“After months of headlines followed by disappointing (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores this month, it’s clear that our education infrastructure has fallen prey to needless political drama,” Stitt, a Republican who endorsed Trump’s presidential bid, said in a statement earlier this month.
The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national exam known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” showed Oklahoma students scored below average on math and reading assessments.
“If we want to be the best state for business, we need to make sure our kids have a path to success. It’s time for some fresh eyes and a renewed focus on our top ten goals,” Stitt said.
Stitt, who is term limited, also announced the replacement of three members of the five-member Board of Education. These new members must be approved by the state Senate.
The announcement came a few weeks after the Oklahoma Board of Education under Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters approved the proposal, which needed to be approved by the legislature and governor to take effect, per state administrative rules.
“When I see our NAEP scores not improving, when I see things that are messed up or wrong, or kids being used as political pawns for some political stunt, it’s just frustrating,” Stitt said at a February 12 news conference.
The governor cited those results and his criticisms of the board’s “political stunt” in explaining his decision to shake up the education board.
He praised Trump’s efforts to crack down on border crossings but said using kids as political pawns was “just unbelievable to me.”
Walters fires back at governor
In response, Walters criticized Stitt’s decision in a post on his X, saying it was “disappointing but not surprising.”
“Governor Stitt has joined the swampy political establishment that President Trump is fighting against,” he said. “The board members that stood with us, working with the Trump Administration to make our schools safer and better, have been fired for political purposes.”
Walters further said he formed a “Trump Advisory Committee” with two of the removed board members to “fight the liberal DC swamp that has now leaked into Oklahoma’s Executive Branch.”
In contrast, the National Immigration Law Center issued a statement praising the governor’s decision.
“We should all heed Governor Stitt’s call that children feel safe at school and not be used as political pawns,” Kica Matos, the center’s president, said. “The Governor’s sound rejection of a radical attempt to undermine the right to education is a result of the concerted advocacy of parents, educators, and advocates across Oklahoma who mobilized to oppose it.”
Under Walters’ leadership, Oklahoma has been at the forefront of a Republican push to transform public education.
Last year, the Board of Education required all schools to incorporate the Bible and Ten Commandments in their curriculums. Last month, the US Supreme Court agreed to decide whether states may reject religious charter schools from receiving public funding in a case out of Oklahoma.
Cracking down on immigration has been a particular focus. Walters announced a $474 million lawsuit against the former leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE seeking “compensation for the severe financial and operational strain that their failed border policies have placed on Oklahoma’s public schools.” The state plans to comply with the Trump administration’s efforts to allow ICE agents into schools, Walters said last month.
The board’s proposed rule change would require the parent or legal guardian of a child to provide proof of US citizenship or legal immigration status at the time of enrollment.
Each school district shall record the number of students whose parent or guardian cannot provide proof of citizenship or legal immigration status “due to the lack of citizenship or legal immigration status of the student,” the rule states. The district then shall submit “only information of the total number of students that lack documentation,” without any personally identifiable information, to the state Department of Education, according to the proposed rule.
The goal of the rule change is “to assess statewide and local educational needs,” according to the text.
Immigration and education advocates questioned the proposal’s legality and argued it would discourage students from attending school.
Tasneem Al-Michael, a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and a representative of the Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice, told CNN he believed the proposal was not about data but an effort to keep undocumented students from accessing public education.
“The idea here is to keep as many young people and to keep as many undocumented people out of public education to keep them from being able to have access to public benefits, even though it has been repeatedly stated over and over again at the federal level that every child has a right to learn, and they frankly want to dismantle that,” he said.
Current US law on immigrants in schools stems from the 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, which held in a 5-4 vote that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education because of their immigration status, citing the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
“By denying these children a basic education,” the ruling said, “we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation.”
More recently, in 2011, the Alabama legislature passed a sweeping law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration, including a measure similar to Oklahoma’s that required public school administrators to collect information on the immigration status of students. The Justice Department and several civil rights groups challenged parts of the law, a federal judge agreed to block some of its most controversial parts, and Alabama ultimately agreed to a settlement, according to the American Immigration Council.
Source: BBC
