June 27, Walters announced at a State Board of Education meeting that “every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.”
The announcement was accompanied by a memo that said “all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum across specified grade levels, e.g., grades 5 through 12.”
About a month later, Walters’ office released guidance for the directive, instructing schools that the guidelines, the Bible, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments must be provided to every teacher “as resources in every classroom in the school district.” The guidance also outlined ways to incorporate the Bible into instruction.
But districts have pushed back.
At least 17 districts have publicly said they will not change their curriculum. Many of those districts cite Oklahoma law, which leaves determining “instruction, curriculum, reading lists and instructional materials and textbooks” up to the exclusive purview of school districts.
StateImpact sent a survey to all of the districts in the state to find out how many were implementing changes this year in response to the directive.
Of about 540 public districts and charter schools, 54 superintendents responded to the survey.
Asked if their district was changing the way it offers social studies and/or English Language Arts instruction to require educators to teach on or from the Bible, 46 said no, and two said yes. Superintendents were allowed to leave their own answers. Two responded they were unclear on the guidelines, and four responded:
- “Only as a supplementary resource as the teacher deems necessary to meet the approved state standards.”
- “We will not require teachers to teach from the Bible, but have provided them the OSDE guidance information to follow should they choose to use the Bible as a resource.”
- “Teachers have always been able to use the Bible in relation to the state standards.”
- “I told teachers if they wanted to comply with this edict, that I would stand behind them. If they want Bibles, we will buy them. Most teachers are Christians themselves, and don’t want ANOTHER type of Christian teaching their child anything about the Bible, and are therefore not going near this.”
Asked if the district was providing the Bible, Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments to every teacher in every classroom, 36 said no, and five said yes. 13 left their own answers, including:
- “We are a one-to-one technology district, so students have digital access to these and other documents as needed.”
- “The resources listed are available or will be available in every classroom.”
- “Clarification has been asked for from OSDE if state textbook funds are an approved expenditure for the aforementioned documents. No response to date.”
- “It depends on what is required for the accreditation visits.”
- “These materials as listed are available by a click of the ‘search’ bar on the internet, which makes them available in any classroom.”
The majority of the responses from those not supplying physical copies of the Bible and other documents in the classroom said their decisions were made according to state law, which says districts have the exclusive right to determine instructional materials.
The second most popular response was that physical copies of these materials were not necessary, as their classrooms have access to online materials. Other responses included: lacking the funds to purchase Bibles; concern that spending funds on religious material may violate the law; questions of appropriateness for non-history classrooms; following advice from district legal counsel and concerns about violating the separation of church and state.
The survey also asked, “If your district is not planning to require instruction on the Bible, are you concerned about retaliation from OSDE?” 35 answered yes, six answered no, six answered not applicable, and others answered with custom responses that included:
- “Anything is possible. I certainly hope not.”
- “Waiting to see the fallout.”
- “I think there has been a pattern of rhetoric and a leaning towards retaliation, and as a leader I think I have to be conscious of this as a possibility, but we are not fearful. We are simply trying to state facts and want things to improve.”
- “We will do what the OSDE requires.”
- “The only concern is if the OSDE doesn’t consider more cost effective and common sense ways of meeting the mandate like allowing the use of student [Chromebooks] and/or classroom computers with internet access to meet this mandate.”
Walters admonished “rogue administrators” for pushing back on the Bible directive at the July 31 State Board of Education meeting and threatened to hold them accountable.
“Just because they don’t like it, just because they are offended by it, doesn’t mean they won’t do it,” Walters said at the meeting. “We will enforce the law and they will be held accountable.”
Asked for further clarification of consequences districts could face if they do not comply, OSDE spokesperson Dan Isett responded:
“Districts are required by state law to teach the Oklahoma Academic Standards,” Isett wrote. “Compliance is in the best interest of Oklahoma students and is not optional. Superintendent Walters has a wide range of tools to deal with rogue districts who may try to test this fact and every option is on the table to hold districts accountable.”
StateImpact asked: "Because the standards themselves have not changed, are schools that have not changed their instructional practices this year out of compliance with the standards?”
Isett did not respond.
Superintendents navigate aftermath of Walters’ announcement
Jason Perez, superintendent at Deer Creek Public Schools, said when his district received the memo from OSDE, his first steps were to take it to his legal counsel, talk with other districts and bring in the district’s curriculum team. They concluded the decisions were under local control and legislative action is required for that to change.
“When you look at that memo, there were kind of two big asks there,” Perez said. “And with both of them, the sense really was that, legally, these are asks that we can’t follow through with anyway. … And so that pretty much takes care of it on our part. We look at that and go, ‘Okay, well, these are things we’re being asked to do that we can’t actually do.’”
Perez said teachers reached out with concerns following the announcement of the directive.
“Our response was simply, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” Perez said. “What we want you to worry about right now is getting ready for this new school year. … And I didn’t want them to lose focus on being prepared for our students to come back into class. And so I told them, ‘We’ll work on this on our end, you just worry about getting your classroom ready, because that’s where the main event is.”
He said parents who reached out about the directive said they didn’t want their children to “have a Bible study” in class. He reassured them the district wasn’t making any changes in response to the directive.
Other superintendents also noted the confusion Walters’ directive has caused. Bartlesville Superintendent Chuck McCauley said even though he serves on a statewide superintendent advisory group for Walters — a committee he said hasn’t met since January — he doesn’t have definitive answers about the Bible policy.
McCauley said once the directive came out, he emailed Walters and his staff, requesting the group meet again to facilitate communication with the department. He didn’t hear back on the first request.
A staff member responded to his second request that a meeting would be scheduled for the first week in August and he would receive more information. He said that information never came.
“What’s unfortunate to me is, from my end, is that we haven’t had the ability to have this conversation, to ask questions,” McCauley said. “All that I have to go on is the same thing that you have to go on — whatever you see in social media or a press conference. … Not having the opportunity to be heard, I guess, that’s my biggest concern.”
McCauley said it’s unclear what the fallout will be for straying from the directive.
“What is the [consequence] on this? Is this going to be something that’s tied to accreditation? Or is there somehow going to be some administrative rule passed that’s going to require it? Is someone going to file a lawsuit?” McCauley said. “So it’s in the back of my mind. However, at the end of the day, my job is to do what I think is the right thing to do and follow the law. And to me, the law clearly says what we’re doing is right. So that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Cache Public Schools Superintendent Chad Hance said the guidelines Walters sent to districts weren’t clear, and it’s still “hard to tell” what exactly is required.
“We’re not sure, you know, what that is supposed to look like,” Hance said. “We kind of feel like, you just don’t give a teacher a mandate and ‘you’ve got to use this,’ without giving them some type of guidance or understanding of what they’re supposed to cover. … So that’s part of the reason why we’re not implementing the mandate until there is, like I said, more legal guidance.”
Outside of the guidelines released in July, the state department has not released more information. Over a month ago, StateImpact sent OSDE a list of questions for further clarification on the directive. Those questions included:
- Is it mandatory that teachers teach about the Bible in the ways specified in the guidelines? Or is Walters providing the option for teaching the Bible, and guidelines for doing so if they choose, and schools and teachers will decide whether to actually do so?
- Oklahoma law says only school districts themselves may choose instructional materials. Is there legal authority to mandate these instructional materials be provided to teachers?
- Will districts be required to pay for the physical copies of the required resources?
- Will teachers who do not teach to the social studies academic standards be required to have these materials provided as well?
The department did not respond.
Walters’ guidelines address Oklahoma Academic Standards for social studies. Those standards are up for review, and revised ones will likely be adopted in time for the 2025 to 26 school year.
In July, Walters announced he was looking to prominent conservative figureheads — including Dennis Prager of PragerU, David Barton of the Christian nationalist organization Wallbuilders, and the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts — to head up a committee for a “complete overhaul” of the standards.
Superintendent Rick Cobb of Mid-Del Public Schools said while he anticipates proposed changes to the standards, he hopes the legislature will intercede.
“I do expect that we’re going to see some developments in the standards that our teachers — our trained, professional teachers — push back against. And so we’ll take it from there,” Cobb said. “Nothing that the standards committee does has the weight of law until the legislature adopts those standards. And maybe they’ll surprise me and come back with some updates that make sense.
But if they don’t, then we’ll push back through the legislative process, with the relationships that we have with our local senators and representatives.”
Standards are set by the state department, receive a public comment period and must get approval from the State Board of Education. But similarly to OSDE’s administrative rule changes that were signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt in May, the legislature could also choose to take no action and the changes would still go through.
As for potential retaliation from Walters, Cobb said while he wasn’t concerned about it, he would not be surprised if the state superintendent struck back.
“I’m not losing sleep over thinking how he might retaliate. I’ll address it when it comes up,” Cobb said. “Because he’s so unpredictable. Everything out of the state department is so unpredictable right now that I think you just have to address things as they happen and not anticipate them.”
Deer Creek’s Perez said he also wasn’t concerned about retaliation and felt the need to be open with his community about the district’s stance.
“I haven’t really been quiet about it. I’m not trying to be disrespectful in any way, but I’m going to speak the truth of how we’re doing things in this district, and it is supported by our school board. It’s honestly supported by our community and our teachers too,” Perez said. “So I don’t feel like there’s a need to be disrespectful to anybody, but at the same time, I don’t feel like there’s a need to also mute what our stance is here in the district because, again, what we’re doing is in full compliance with the law.”
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