An oil well pumps away where a school once stood. If you know
Oklahoma politics, this is also a good illustration of how big oil
has supplanted education.
A good job has been done of marking the location of
old one-room schools that dotted the landscape since the land runs. Since they needed to be within a distance
kids could walk or ride a horse, schools could be found every couple dozen
miles or wherever clusters of families settled.
This one, the Dane School, operated from 1896 until 1957. Many schools have since collapsed, but a few
still stand in varying degrees of disrepair.
The Dane School is on private property, so we went searching for the
owner to get permission to pass through the fence to get better pictures. The owner was initially very suspicious of us,
but she warmed greatly when she learned our genuine interest. She told us about going to the school
herself, as well as her adult daughter, and how she had aspirations of fixing
it up as a historical site. Much of what
we saw was familiar. I went to a
one-room school as a kid, and Jean was a teacher in an Amish one-room school
for a number of years in Delaware. The
granddaughters were fascinated by the outhouse, coal shed, and the 48-star
American flag still hanging by the blackboard.
The Dane School was well-built of red block, and hands on.
One-room schools were seriously devoted to serving the
needs of local students. Somehow, the
wheels have come off the wagon. The
headline here would be “Oklahoma Leads the Nation---In Failure.” It has led the nation in public education failures
for years, and remains the state with the greatest number of funding cuts to
education in the country. Our
legislature has cut public education per student funding by 26.9% since 2008,
almost twice as much as the next worst state, Alabama. Many teachers have left for work in other
states, and Oklahoma now has a teacher shortage of well over 500, programs are
being cut, and class sizes continue to grow.
Support for higher education has suffered as
well. State funds for higher education
have been cut by 17.8%, again making it the worst in the nation. And again, the cuts for colleges are much
worse than the next worst state, Louisiana.
Gene Perry, director of Oklahoma Policy Institute, states, “We are one
of only seven states that didn’t increase funding over this period, and one of
only three states that cut funding by more than 10 percent.” Education funding has been cut seven out of
the last 10 years.
The school backs to the road. The hidden side is actually
its front, showing coal shed, door, and windows. Note the
beautiful accents incorporated in its construction over a hundred
years ago.
Now, here’s the part that will shock you beyond any
bounds. Gov. Fallin says she is having trouble
convincing businesses to come to Oklahoma.
Imagine that! When they can’t
find skilled employees, where educational standards are continually dropping,
where their own children will be unable to get either a proper public or higher
education, they don’t want to come to Oklahoma.
She just can’t understand that.
Why is there no money for education, or for that
matter for roads, bridges, human services, corrections, public safety, and so
on? Oklahoma law makers have continually
submitted to lobbying pressure from the oil and gas industry, giving them the
sweetest of sweetheart deals in the country.
In one year alone, 2015, the state gave away $470 million to big oil and
gas while at the same time having production tax rates of as low as 1 percent,
while in North Dakota, another big oil producer, the tax rate is 11.5
percent. Between 2012 and 2015, the tax
giveaways to Oklahoma big oil topped $1 billion. So, while per student funding in Oklahoma has
dropped 26.9 percent, funding for students in North Dakota has gone up by 26
percent. Also, while big oil is swimming
in money at the cost of education, they run ads claiming that oil and gas
production funds education in the state.
At Continental Resources’ headquarters, a poster in their lobby showed a
smiling boy with the caption, “Oklahoma Oil and Gas produces my education.” Ironically, the statement only becomes true
if read backwards. “My education
produces Oklahoma oil and gas” would be far more accurate. In the last oil boom of 2008 to 2014, oil
rich states like North Dakota and Texas took advantage of the opportunity to
set aside a chunk of oil tax revenue for education. At the same time, Oklahoma not only didn’t
save, but allowed oil revenue to slide 32 percent.
Not many would have lingered in the 'rest room' during the winter.
The ice storm this past winter left broken tree limbs all around.
The argument for the huge giveaways to big oil and gas
offered by Republican legislators is that oil and gas bring jobs to
Oklahoma. That’s a shallow argument at
best, and only then if you are seeking part time/short term employment. A family’s breadwinner needs to count on
secure employment with a consistent income.
It needs to be the kind of income that insures the mortgage will get
paid, the lights will stay on, and a savings plan will provide for their
retirement and insure the kids can go to college. The oil business is a boom or bust cyclical
enterprise. When the boom is going
strong, yes, oil jobs provide salaries 84% above the national average. But, when the bust comes, as it must, men are
let go without notice in the hundreds and thousands. In a 12-month period between June, 2015, and
June, 2016, 10,000 jobs were lost in Oklahoma alone. Many workers who lost their jobs in the last
bust moved into wind and solar renewable energy. At least the wind and sun don’t operate on a
boom/bust schedule.
The other argument is that incentives draw oil
drillers to Oklahoma. Wow! Are we to assume that oil companies not
getting handouts will, out of spite, stop drilling in Oklahoma so they can move
and drill where there is no oil?
Fishermen can pretty much be counted on to spread their nets where there
are fish, and oil men can just as reliably be counted on to drill where there
is oil. Having given hundreds of millions
of dollars of Oklahoma tax revenue to the oil companies, legislators try to
fill the void with really stupid schemes, like higher cigarette taxes, or
requiring Oklahoman’s to buy new license plates, or suck blood from agencies
that have experienced year-after-year cuts in operating revenue and manpower,
or increase income tax or add another ‘temporary’ additional penny tax, all to
come out of the pockets of the working middle-class. After failing to create a proper and balanced
budget, and passing fund-raising legislation that was illegal, the legislature
then needs to be called back in special session to do the job they have already
failed to do, and at the cost to the taxpayer of an additional $30,000 per
day. While this continues, the state is
still shelling out money for low-producing and non-producing oil wells to
supplement the incomes of farmers and ranchers who have wells that just suck
air and water.
While the glass has been broken out, peeking through the window
guards, one can see the 48-star flag still hanging near the blackboard.
There’s that old saying, “Stupid is as stupid does,”
so in spite of their greed, all the blame can’t be put on oil and gas. They have a sweet deal going, and they know
it. They can buy, sell, and trade
legislators like stock, tear up roads with their heavy equipment with no
responsibility for repairing them, enjoy the total eminent domain the
legislature has given them so they can drill or lay pipeline anywhere, anytime,
at their whim, suck natural resources from the ground with no concern for
conservation, cause thousands of fracking earthquakes and just shrug and walk
away, sell the oil anywhere, in the state, across the country, or to China,
wherever they see the most profit, all with no responsibility or concern for
the state they are victimizing in the process.
Why not? If they are dealing with
lawmakers dumb enough to cater to tycoons that just get richer and richer at
the expense of the state’s own citizens and their children, then where is the
fault? Is it with the greed of the oil
industry that gets everything it wants, or with the voters, legislators, and a governor
dumb enough to allow them to get away with it? Voters reap only what they sow!
Sources: Enid News & Eagle, Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-oklahoma-bust/)
