Ryan Walters says he's fired 130 people, but public documents say otherwise

State schools Superintendent Ryan Walters falsely claimed on Thursday he has fired 130 people from the Oklahoma State Department of Education since he took office in January 2023.

Following a regular monthly meeting of the State Board of Education, Walters took questions from education reporters for the first time in about two months. He was asked about possibly losing out on federal education funding because he’s encouraged Oklahoma school districts to defy the federal government’s new Title IX guidelines, which say discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity now is covered under the law’s anti-discrimination provisions.

Walters said he rejected the premise of the question after first saying, “We have saved taxpayers a tremendous amount of money by firing 130 staffers.”

When asked by another reporter if he’d fired the agency’s top two attorneys, Bryan Cleveland and Andy Ferguson, or its chief of staff, Jenna Thomas — whose resignations have been widely reported — Walters wouldn’t answer.

“I’m not going to go into individual circumstances,” Walters responded. “But I am going to say I am very proud to cut this agency down dramatically from a bloated bureaucracy into one that I am very proud of the folks that are working here.”

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The Oklahoman reported earlier this month that at least 130 people have left the agency since Walters became state superintendent, with at least 65 of those departures coming since last July. Walters’ claim he fired all those people is at odds with public documents that indicate otherwise.

The Oklahoman has obtained resignation letters for Cleveland, Ferguson and Thomas, along with resignation or retirement notices for 57 other former agency employees who have left since July. None of them indicated in those public documents they were fired. The agency has not released the public documents despite multiple requests by multiple media outlets under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.

Thomas, in her letter, said her “decision to resign has not been made lightly, but after careful consideration, I am confident it is the right one.” She also said, “my family requires more of my time and presence.”

Ferguson asked Walters to “accept this letter as formal notice of my intention to resign as Deputy General Counsel,” while Cleveland said he had “accepted other employment and intend to resign as general counsel of this agency.” Like Thomas, he expressed a desire to spend more time with his family.

Walters joins Stitt in dismissing concerns about mass exodus of Education Department employees

Walters isn’t the only state official to dismiss the mass departure of employees from the agency as a matter of public concern. Gov. Kevin Stitt, asked about the departures earlier this month, responded, “So, you’re telling me we’ve lost 130 bureaucrats up here in Oklahoma City and we’ve still got our education system rolling across the state? Sounds like a good thing to me.”

A former employee of the agency, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal from Walters, told The Oklahoman she’d always been referred to as “an educator, not a bureaucrat.”

The state agency’s website currently indicates there are no attorneys on staff, less than two months after there were four lawyers working at the agency. During a recent Senate committee hearing, the agency’s lobbyist, Lindsey McSparrin, publicly identified Jason Reese — once an attorney for the state House of Representatives and the governor and now in private practice — as the agency’s interim general counsel.

Reese is separately representing the agency, the board and Walters as they defend a lawsuit brought by Edmond Public Schools in the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Asked about the lack of attorneys at the agency and if that concerned him, Walters said it did not and said outside attorneys were capable of handling the work.

“We’ve been able to work very well … We’ve made several hires since then, so we do have some attorneys on staff,” Walters said, despite the lack of attorneys listed on the agency website. “But, look, everything has gone very well from our standpoint of being able to get an interim in, so we can continue with the search. We’ve had no issues over here.”

Asked if the “interim” attorney is in-house or contracted from outside the agency, Walters was vague.

“Both. We’ve got both now,” he said, without offering specifics before leaving the podium.

For a second straight month, the only attorney sitting at the board table during the meeting was the board’s contracted attorney, Cara Nicklas, who also works for a private firm. The “legal services” portion of the agenda — usually handled by an in-house attorney — was handled by Walters, who is a former high school teacher.

State board approves sponsorship of Oklahoma City charter school

In other action, the board approved a sponsorship for a charter school, Proud to Partner Leadership Academy in Oklahoma City, after tabling action on the request in March. The charter school says it will serve parts of southwest Oklahoma City that are within the Putnam City school district.

The Putnam City Schools district twice rejected requests by the charter school for sponsorship, leaving it to turn to the State Board of Education. Charter schools, according to the state Education Department website, are public schools that are allowed greater flexibility for greater accountability.

The charter school’s founder, Dawn Bowles, has said she had worked on other education-related projects with Walters before he became state superintendent, and he has acknowledged that. The school plans to open for the 2024-25 academic year.

“One of our mottos is, ‘We are preparing for greater,’ and I’ll say now, ‘Greater is here,’” Bowles said.

Walters said two other charter schools had withdrawn their requests for sponsorship by the state board. Willard C. Pitts Academy and P3 Montessori Charter School previously both had twice been rejected for sponsorship by the Oklahoma City Public Schools board.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Ryan Walters has not fired 130 people from OSDE as he has claimed