BIXBY, Okla. — Parent Legislative Action Committees, or PLACs, came together to start a statewide coalition this spring.
It now consists of 13 groups across Oklahoma, all unified in their goal of improving schools. The group plans to continue that mission this year.
"We definitely need to keep working on teacher retention and recruitment and making sure that Oklahoma is an attractive place for teachers to come back to teach, and for young people considering the profession we want them to stay," said Melissa Abdo with the Oklahoma PLAC.
PLAC members tell 2 Works for You they're proud of the teacher pay raise and increased classroom funding they advocated for during the last session. But as the number of emergency certified teachers go up some say they continue to see a need.
"On the one hand it's good news that people want to be in the classroom, that's great. But we also need to make sure that they're prepared and trained and can do the very best job for our kids," Abdo said.
Lisa Kramer with the Oklahoma PLAC said what parents see in the classroom can be used to help the legislature determine how to make Oklahoma a top ten state for education.
"We think that we might be able to provide the state legislature and possibly Governor Stitt some ideas on what we think it is. We're actually parents of public school students. So we probably would know best what we want in a public school system," she said.
Members are currently brainstorming, looking at priorities like additional classroom dollars and transparency.
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