Oklahoma House rejects plan to add extra instructional day for every $25 million in new funding

OKLAHOMA CITY — House lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that would have required schools to add an extra instructional day for every $25 million more the Legislature appropriates to common education.

Supporters of Senate Bill 409 said that having students in the classroom for an extra day would help improve lagging student outcomes by providing additional face-to-face instruction time, and give taxpayers and lawmakers something concrete to show for their extra investment.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers panned the idea, questioning how much benefit an extra instructional day would provide relative to its cost. They also questioned how far a $25 million investment would go amid soaring costs related to maintaining school property, inflation and the growing list of unfunded legislative mandates.

Rep. Danny Sterling, R-Tecumseh, said requiring schools to add an additional day solely because they received a level of new funding does “nothing but make a mockery of the public education system.”

He said lawmakers would be wasting taxpayer money on a strategy that has no valid data indicating it will produce benefits.

Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, the House author of the measure, said lawmakers in the past four years have put more money into Oklahoma schools than ever before, but outcomes have not kept up. In fact, he said, they’ve gotten worse.

He said he hopes something like this will reverse the trend.

“If our teachers spending more time in front of our students isn’t helpful, isn’t impactful for the outcomes in their education, then man, we’ve got to have some other conversations because something must be wrong with the system somewhere,” he said.

Caldwell said most data will show that probably the single greatest determining factor in a child’s education is a quality teacher.

“So it just stands to my simple brain that if we give that teacher another day or two or five or 10, that’s going to be better for the child,” he said. “And when the senator, (Adam Pugh, R-Edmond), asked me to run this bill, I just never thought that I’m going to have to really fight to say teachers in front of our kids for an additional day that that’s actually a good thing. I felt like that was pretty universal.”

He said one extra day isn’t going to “drastically change the trajectory” of poor academic outcomes, but maybe it will get the state a step closer.

“We get asked every single year to invest more money in our schools, simply just giving it there and hoping that we get something out of it hasn’t seemed to be working,” he said.

Caldwell said taxpayers have a right to expect a return on their investment.

Rep. Forrest Bennett, D-Oklahoma City, said the concern is that one extra day isn’t going to move the needle and spending legislative time fighting over adding a single day is distracting from bigger priorities.

“We could be spending today on curriculum,” he said. “We could be spending today on reining in the state superintendent, but we’re instead spending it on this one piece of legislation that might add an extra day and cost extra money.

Rep. Andy Fugate, D-Oklahoma City, said he’s concerned about the impact of inflation and the growth of expenses on schools. He said property and casualty insurance is increasing in cost. Student enrollment is growing as are the number of programs and tests lawmakers are asking districts to implement.

“What does this bill do about those kinds of increases in expenses that might eat up to $25 million?” he asked.

House lawmakers voted 22-63 to reject the bill.

Oklahoma Voice (oklahomavoice.com) is an affiliate of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, supported by grants and donations. Oklahoma Voice provides nonpartisan reporting, and retains full editorial independence.