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Oklahoma education department proposal would track immigration status upon enrollment

State Superintendent Ryan Walters, center, and Chief Executive Secretary to State Board of Education Terrie Cheadle, left, listen to public comments during the Oklahoma State Board of Education's monthly meeting, March 28, at the Oliver Hodge Education Building in Oklahoma City.
Lionel Ramos
/
KOSU
State Superintendent Ryan Walters, center, and Chief Executive Secretary to State Board of Education Terrie Cheadle, left, listen to public comments during the Oklahoma State Board of Education's monthly meeting, March 28, at the Oliver Hodge Education Building in Oklahoma City.

A new Oklahoma State Department of Education proposal would track the number of K-12 students whose parents don’t have legal immigration status.

Under the proposed administrative rule, Oklahoma schools would have to ask students’ parents or legal guardians to provide proof of their own citizenship and a student’s upon enrollment.

If they can’t do that, the students will be counted. The state would then receive the aggregate number from each district “of students enrolled within the district for which a parent or a legal guardian of a child, or the emancipated minor could not provide proof of citizenship or legal immigration status…due to the lack of citizenship or legal immigration status of the student.”

It’s unclear exactly who would be counted in this arrangement based on the language of the rule. The immigration status of a parent does not indicate the status of their child. In other words, if a parent is in Oklahoma illegally, that does not mean their child is.

The rule does state individual identities would not be revealed in state department data.

State Superintendent Ryan Walters had said he would take action in July to determine the cost and burden of students without legal immigration status attending public schools in Oklahoma.

“The federal government has failed to secure our borders, our schools are suffering over this, and where the federal government has failed to act, Oklahoma will step up,” Walters said in July. “We will make sure that we understand the cost to taxpayers so that our kids can get the best education possible.”

Walters has been a critic of federal border policy and a supporter of House Bill 4156, which was paused over the summer. That measure would have allowed local police to arrest unauthorized immigrants and jail them — a job usually reserved for federal authorities.

He sent a “bill” to the presidential candidate Kamala Harris in October for almost $500 million, claiming that’s how much it cost for Oklahoma to educate students who were in the country illegally.The proposed rules changes are now open for public comment, and there will be a hearing in January. The State Board of Education can then approve or deny them. After that, the rules will be up for review by the legislature.


This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.

Lionel Ramos covers state government for a consortium of Oklahoma’s public radio stations. He is a graduate of Texas State University in San Marcos with a degree in English. He has covered race and equity, unemployment, housing, and veterans' issues.
Robby grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and graduated from the University of Nebraska with a Journalism degree. Robby has reported for several newspapers, including The Roanoke Times in southwest Virginia. He reported for StateImpact Oklahoma from 2019 through 2022, focusing on education.
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