We all know of and despise Ryan Walters, the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Oklahoma. He’s a Christo-Fascist of the worst kind who has been striving to destroy public education in his state.
He has tried to purchase Trump Bibles for public schools, eventually settling for sending a few hundred to AP Government teachers who don’t need them.
He rewrote the social studies standards to indoctrinate children with revisionist pro-Christian mythology, got the state’s Board of Education to approve those standards without telling them he made additional changes, got sued over it, and got blocked from implementing those standards by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
He used public money to fund a religious charter school, a decision the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court later voted not to overturn that decision.
Despite a statewide teacher shortage, he said that teachers transferring from blue states like California had to take a special “America First” test to gauge their level of patriotism. The whole charade was just a publicity stunt for the right-wing group PragerU.
He sued an atheist group for warning public schools that they needed to follow the law and not allow staffers to push religion on kids. A judge dismissed that frivolous lawsuit with a blistering takedown of his pathetic arguments.
He also tried forcing teachers to make the Bible part of their curriculum, tried to put Christian chaplains in public schools, tried to mandate displays of the Ten Commandments in those schools, claimed the Tulsa Race Massacre had nothing to do with race, falsely insisted that President Joe Biden wanted “to destroy our Christian faith,” formed a faith committee to examine prayer in public schools, appointed the troll who runs Libs of TikTok to a statewide library advisory board, and sent out a “sample prayer” for teachers to use for the people of Israel (and definitely not the innocent people living in Gaza).
He pissed off Republicans in his own party, too. They said he was withholding $150 million for security enhancements that had already been allocated to public schools, hiding information about how he spent taxpayer dollars for his office’s travel budget, failing to fulfill open records requests in a timely manner, and refusing to spend money that he was legally obligated to spend on asthma inhalers for students. (Alas, there were not enough votes to impeach him.)
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Just this week, he announced that every high school in the state would have a chapter of Turning Point USA in honor of Charlie Kirk, even though Walters has no actual ability to force schools to launch extracurricular groups and even though high school students already have the ability to start their own chapters if they want to.
But wait, I said this was good news. It is! Ryan Walters is resigning!
Walters, 40, said Wednesday night on Fox News that he is stepping down as state superintendent of public instruction to become the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit that says it assists educators “in their mission to develop free, moral, and upright American citizens.”
“We’re going to destroy the teachers unions,” Walters said on Fox. “We have seen the teachers unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools.”
It is fitting that he is stepping down to join a fanatical, conservative, anti-teacher organization. May he wither away in his new bubble of contempt and hatred for education — it’s where he belongs.
Now the big question: will he be replaced by someone sane? It’s Oklahoma, so probably not.
He’s probably just disappointed because he didn’t get raptured the other day.
I’d want to suggest that every state has somebody like this. They may not be famous enough to be noticed yet, and they may not have had the power (compliance) to implement the agenda items (particularly ‘blue’ states or counties), but they’re there in every state, all just like him in their goals and practices, their hypocrisy and their utter corruption, and all trying to find supporters in order to get the power to implement this agenda of destroying public education.
Uh the article about his resignation doesn’t say why (the REAL reason why, that is).
Seems he got caught in a meeting with porn images running on an office TV…
…and it wasn’t the first time.
Why do they even care?
Compared to everything else he has done or tried, that is a minor event.
I’m also sure that the other Oklahoma officials also have…porn running on their TVs, internet computers, and phones.
The 3 sacraments of fundie xianity are hate, lies, and hypocrisy.
They are very good at all three of these.
Contrary to what j morales thinks, there is a superabundance of these xtian terrorists infecting our society. When caught in their bs they are shuffled around but, like cockroaches, they are never really gone. Prime example, catholic cult child molesting priests moved around and hidden but almost never punished.
Oklahoma rates 50th out of 51 states and territories in education.
You can easily tell that Ryan Waters could not care less and did nothing to improve that ranking.
I always wonder if the residents of Red states ever get tired of being poor, backwards, sick, and ignorant.
Red states have significantly lower life expectancies than Blue states. The difference can be as much as 6 years.
Maybe, who knows? I’ve never seen it. They voted in Trump after all and look how that is working out.
Hey, raven @6, i’m sure oklahoma is proud it is 50 out of 51; almost the top of the pile. What they will never admit is, it’s a Pile of xtian terror Crap.