Blake Colston
sports@piedmontnewsonline.com
OKLAHOMA CITY – Piedmont head softball coach and computer science teacher Keith Coleman has a message for those that criticize teachers for walking out of their classrooms this week to rally with thousands of their colleagues at the state Capitol for better education funding.
“I agree with you. We would prefer to be in our classrooms,” he said. “But we’re doing this for our current and future students.”
Coleman has 17 years teaching experience in Oklahoma, 15 at Muskogee and the last two at Piedmont. He walked out Monday to take a stand against a decade worth of cuts to education funding and a lack of investment in Oklahoma schools, he said.
Piedmont head boys track and field coach and head cross country coach Kelly Beck was also at the capitol and echoed Coleman’s sentiments.
“The number one thing you should focus on is education,” Beck, a fourth-year history teacher at PHS, said. “You have to have educated kids, because without that, everything else will fall apart.”
After the state legislature passed a bill last week that would give teachers a one-year $6,100 pay raise, some thought a walk-out would be averted. Gov. Mary Fallin even tweeted that teachers could use the proposed strike day to come say “Thank You” to state legislators.
“You want to scream and get mad when you hear things like that, but that’s just a reflection of the tone-deafness of this place,” Beck said referring to the state legislature.
Rep. Bobby Cleveland, R-Norman, responded to the thousands of teachers rallying this week during a phone interview on television Monday by saying that ‘they were hired to teach. They’re paid to teach. They should be in the classroom.’
“There are 40,000 teachers in this state and we have a say-so,” Beck said.
Beck admitted the raise was significant, but said it did not address an overall lack of funding for public schools in the state. Use of outdated textbooks is common, so are leaky roofs, drafty windows and dilapidated facilities.
“You hear horror stories like that all the time,” he said.
Oklahoma teachers ranked 49th in teacher pay in 2016, according to the National Education Association, a leading union. In 2015, Oklahoma spent a little more than $8,000 per student, far below the national average of $11,400.
“It’s about getting the funding back up where it needs to be,” Beck said. “This isn’t really about Piedmont. We’re lucky to have a strong income-base (in Piedmont). We have what we need. Other school districts don’t.”
Piedmont’s teachers went to the Capitol with the full support of their administration led by Superintendent James White, and Beck said teachers in Piedmont are prepared to be out of class for an indefinite amount of time, if necessary.
“That’s very possible,” Beck said. “You can’t cut millions and millions for years, then throw a few million back in and say everything is fine. That doesn’t work.”
Though cuts to academic funding were paramount for Beck and Coleman, athletic budgets haven’t been spared from the funding crisis.
Coleman has friends at other high schools across the state that are hampered by small operating budgets which make it difficult to provide basic essentials like adequate practice gear, equipment and uniforms.
Coleman said he’s lucky in Piedmont to have a strong group of boosters that step in to provide private funds to help supplement what the school district provides for uniforms, equipment and trips to games and tournaments.
“Other districts aren’t as fortunate,” he said.
Coleman has seen that firsthand. While in Muskogee, an intermediate school and two primary schools were closed due to cuts, which ultimately had an impact on academics as well as high school athletic programs.
“We saw a huge decrease in kids coming out for athletics in the years that followed as a result of an entire middle school athletics program being gone,” he said.
Athletics were only a small part of why Coleman, Beck and a group of eight other high school coaches and many other teachers from Piedmont headed to the capitol. Their own raises weren’t a major factor.
“Class sizes have risen, staff and support personnel have decreased and schools have been forced to go to four-day weeks,” Coleman said. “Enough is enough.”
