The state superintendent chairs the State Board of Education and heads the State Department of Education. The officer also chairs the Oklahoma State Board of Career and Technology Education and is a voting member of the Statewide Charter School Board.
Franklin is a 44-year educator who has served as a special education teacher, principal, assistant superintendent and CareerTech associate superintendent. He is currently an education instructor at OU-Tulsa.
The Oklahoma Hall of Fame educator ran on depoliticizing the office — a sharp contrast to the last elected superintendent, conservative firebrand Ryan Walters. Walters made national headlines for policies such as mandating Bibles in classrooms without authority and injecting Christian nationalism into social studies academic standards.
Franklin also served as chair of the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, the predecessor of the Statewide Charter School Board. In that role, he was one of two members who voted against what would have been the country’s first publicly funded religious school — a case that went to the Supreme Court.
Franklin was a registered Democrat until 2022 and garnered bipartisan support from Oklahoma teachers. He has received criticism for not being conservative enough to represent the Republican Party.
His primary runoff opponent, James Taylor, refused to endorse Franklin, citing disbelief in Franklin’s conservative principles. He also pointed to an incident at a camp for students with disabilities in which Franklin allegedly left marks on a child.
Franklin said after the student began hitting people with rocks, he put his hands on his face to tell the child to stop.
“And he yanked. And it did — my nails scratched behind his ear,” Franklin told StateImpact. “And it was one of those things I was sad about and frustrated. … But there was no yanking anybody by the ears and pulling them around. That would never have happened.”
Franklin beat pastor and former Tulsa Public Schools board member, Jennettie Marshall.
Marshall is the founding pastor of Living Sanctuary Evangelistic Ministries and has served as a chaplain for the Tulsa Police Department. She spent 17 years as a probation and parole officer for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and three years as a child welfare investigator with the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.
Both candidates’ platforms included installing regional service centers to train educators across the state.
Franklin will take over for interim superintendent Lindel Fields, who was appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt after Walters abruptly left office last September.
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