Walters, staff's explanations in meeting revealed even more concerns | Opinion

It was in the June 20 meeting between the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT), the Oklahoma State Department of Education, and selected legislators that the state Education Department inadvertently made surprising revelations concerning data security. In the desperate attempt to avoid the truth and instead pass blame to others, the state Education Department revealed glaring errors that are of major significance. In an effort to explain the discrepancy of $101 million between what is shown on the state’s ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) fund dashboard and the information from the U.S. Department of Education, the “blame game” the state Education Department was playing backfired. 

After state Sen. Roger Thompson questioned, “Why do you not have access to your own website?” the state Education Department representatives finally decided to use the opportunity to blame former employees for not leaving passwords to the site. But in placing the blame on former employees, the department made it obvious that the state Education Department's human resources department did not perform what is required by any responsible HR department when an employee leaves. No matter the reason, passwords should be immediately removed from every possible area. So, in spite of more excuses offered by the state Education Department, it was obvious that even though the agency did not have passwords to update the website, former employees still had active passwords that would allow them to make changes to the site.  

This revelation indicates incompetence at its best and data security control at its worst. And what is even more concerning is that the state Education Department staff is totally oblivious to the fact that they should even be concerned about this. 

We get another peek into the workings of the department when an employee identified as the “grant writer-ish” was attempting to answer the question about how the “process” worked. She stated that other departments wrote the grants and she simply oversaw them and then uploaded them on “whatever website that particular grant required.” But those with grant-writing experience state that ALL grants are uploaded to “grants.gov.”

One would have to question how many grants have been uploaded if the one responsible for doing so was not aware that there is only ONE website. Grant writing is a very exacting process, so to allow “whatever department” to be responsible certainly does not give it adequate priority. According to grants.gov, the state Education Department qualified to apply for over $50 million in federal grant funding since March 2024. It would be very enlightening if the department or LOFT would make it public which, if any, of those grants were applied for.

For a year and a half, state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters has stated that the reason grants were not applied for was that they involved strings to the Biden agenda, even though particulars have never been presented. It is worth noting that the STOP grant that Walters was questioned about was started in Trump’s administration, so how could Biden have attached “his strings?” But, in any case, in a media interview after the LOFT meeting, Walters decided to change his “tune” and blame former employees for not leaving detailed instructions ― in spite of the fact that several employees have declared they tried but were told by HR it was not necessary. A reputable HR department would realize that they have the ability to add and remove passwords with the appropriate agencies.    

The LOFT meeting and report reveal concerns. However, the explanations offered by Walters and his staff gave unintended information on even more concerns dealing with lack of policies, procedures and direction of the agency.  What was revealed should be of major concern to all about the future of public education in Oklahoma.

Janis Blevins is an Oklahoma City resident.