State Superintendent Ryan Walters said Wednesday errant bonuses his administration paid to educators might not have to be clawed back.
In a press conference he called to accuse reporters of lying about the situation, Walters said the Oklahoma State Department of Education is coordinating with the teachers who wrongly received signing bonuses to find another solution. He said that could include longer contractual commitments in exchange for keeping the money.
“There is a path forward that does not require a payback from those teachers,” Walters said.
But at least one affected teacher got no such promise, her attorney, Mark Hammons, said.
Oklahoma County teacher Kristina Stadelman heard from the state agency in the past two days, informing her a Feb. 29 deadline for repayment no longer applied, Hammons said.
But that included no guarantee she would never have to repay the bonus, he said, and that’s why she joined a lawsuit on Wednesday to challenge the demand.
“They extended the time for the deadline and said they were looking into other possibilities,” Hammons said. “We don’t know what that means, and they didn’t explain that to her, but they certainly made no promise that she wouldn’t have to pay back all or any portion of that money.”
Both of Hammons’ clients, Stadelman and Osage County teacher Kay Bojorquez, said they were awarded $50,000 bonuses in the fall from a teacher recruitment program Walters created last year.
The program paid signing bonuses of $15,000 to $50,000 to more than 500 certified teachers who agreed to return to the classroom from other professions or moved to Oklahoma from out of state. Recipients had to commit to work five years in an Oklahoma public school district.
Those who had worked in a public school the previous year were not eligible.
This month, the state Education Department informed Stadelman and Bojorquez they never met the program’s qualifications, though both had been approved and given bonuses, according to court documents.
Their lawsuit states both teachers received letters ordering them to pay the full $50,000 back by the end of February, including tens of thousands of dollars that had gone to taxes.
Bojorquez had not heard from the state agency about any other potential solution as of Tuesday, Hammons said.
News outlets Oklahoma Watch and StateImpact Oklahoma were the first to report the agency’s repayment demands. Their reporting found the agency mistakenly paid $290,000 in bonuses across nine teachers.
Walters said media coverage of the repayment demands have been a “deliberate lie pushed by reporters.”
When pressed for details on which elements of news coverage had been untruthful, Walters said his administration identified only four teachers who had been paid in error rather than nine, as Oklahoma Watch and StateImpact Oklahoma had reported.
Reporters from both news outlets said at the press conference they stand by their reporting. They said the state Education Department confirmed the information they included in their story, including the figures Walters is now saying are false.
Walters said the teachers who improperly received bonuses had gotten past the agency’s “initial round of screening because of some specific situations.” His administration paid the bonuses and later realized certain teachers never met the original criteria after further rounds of review, he said.
Later verification also uncovered that other teachers had been paid less than what their qualifications deserved, Walters said, but he didn’t know the number of underpaid educators.
News reporters aren’t the only ones Walters has accused of lying. He claimed teachers provided “misinformation” on their applications and received payments in error as a result.
Both Stadelman and Bojorquez have sued Walters for defamation for making this claim.
Stadelman and Bojorquez thought they were eligible for the program when the state Education Department approved their applications for bonuses, according to their lawsuit.
They contend that an error by the state agency isn’t grounds to make them repay. Both teachers said they already spent their bonus and it would be “financially impossible” to return it.
Education policy leaders in the state House and Senate urged the Education Department to find another solution.
“We all know that in the end if the state wants to go claw back that money, they will use the heavy hand and the full force of government to do that,” Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, said. “And it’s our job as legislators not to champion that but to step in and say, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t make sense.’”
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