TULSA, Okla. — There are too many bills in the 2023 Oklahoma State Legislative Session to name all at once, but many tackle tax reforms, education funding – and LGBTQ+ issues.
Some stood out more than others to voters 2 News Oklahoma's Samson Tamijani spoke with Monday on the first day all lawmakers met in Oklahoma City.
“It’s very frustrating, you know? We’ve got to have more teachers,” Tulsa Public Schools parent Joshua Hughes said of measures to increase teacher pay in the state.
For Hughes’ family education touches close to home, but he doesn’t feel like recent partisan proposals are the answer. He names examples of several high-profile bills set for voting, including State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ proposed bonus pay structure for teachers changing to a merit-based system, voucher programs like the Oklahoma Education Freedom Act drafted by Bartlesville Rep. Julie Daniels, and SB863 which would eliminate all federal funding for education.
“Whatever you can do, find a way to way to help pay for the Tulsa Public Schools’ funding to better Tulsa schools for the teachers, for the staff that are here that are needed," Hughes said. "For Oklahoma to be at the bottom, low at public education, it’s disappointing. Keep using the federal (funds) that we’re receiving. Just try to use it a bit more wisely.”
Jordan Threatt recently of Tulsa just moved to Oklahoma from the east coast, and worries mostly for women’s reproductive rights.
"(Especially) the health care effects, that if somebody doesn’t receive adequate health care, if they have an ectopic pregnancy for example, that can be devastating - not only to the person, but also just to society in general, just in not understanding the medical ethics when dealing with things that they’ve never understood,” Threatt said.
As of last summer, Oklahomans no longer have access to an abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life in danger.
While that’s unlikely to change in a republican supermajority, Tulsan Taren Wright agrees on the above issues.
“I think it would be awesome if anyone with a reproductive system had reproductive rights to do whatever they want with their bodies. It’s their bodies and it’s their choices," Wright said. "And I think teachers should make livable wages because they are basically (teaching) the future of our next generation.”
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