Restoring Funding to Competitive Grant Pool a Must for Education

All across the state, evidence-based programs have been implemented in our schools to help ensure Oklahoma students are college and career ready when they graduate. These programs have supported literacy education, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education, and professional development for Oklahoma educators, just to name a few. But these programs stopped July 1 when the new fiscal year began.

What happened? A giant budget deficit happened. And state agency directors had to make difficult decisions about what to cut. Unfortunately, some of those cuts lead to the complete elimination of the School Competitive Grants Pool.

Also called the C3 Competitive Grants Pool, this program funds projects designed to support the State Department of Education’s goal of making sure all children graduate “college, career and citizen ready” by 2020. This is also a top priority of the State Chamber of Oklahoma and our more than 1,500 member businesses. We know that 64 percent of jobs will require post-secondary education by 2020, but only 37 percent of working adults currently meet that standard. Making up that difference will require 524,000 more degrees and certifications. Our high school graduates have to be prepared to take on that challenge.

That’s why the School Competitive Grants Pool is so important. It provides money to schools so they can get the highest quality evidence-based programs into their classrooms to help ensure students are truly college and career ready. Because it is competitive, the funded programs are among the most innovative available in the state. It’s a program that has been proven to work.

Due to mandated budget cuts that turned out to be deeper than necessary, surplus dollars have now been released to go back to their respective state agencies. The Oklahoma Department of Education will now have a little more than $40 million of its funding restored. We are encouraged to hear this news and strongly recommend that at least some of those funds go toward restoring the $6 million School Competitive Grants Pool. Given the positive, evidence-based outcomes our students are receiving through this program, it is a bargain—and resource we can’t afford to lose.

We know there are a lot of demands on Oklahoma’s education budget. However, we can think of few things more important than ensuring our students are prepared for college or their career. Our schools need all the tools available to them to live up to this task. The School Competitive Grants Pool is an essential program that needs to be funded again.

Opinion Editorial by Jennifer Lepard, VP of Government Affairs at the State Chamber of Oklahoma, printed in the Tulsa World on September 8, 2016