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We had some very good news.
There was a breakthrough yesterday and we will

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be delivering on teacher pay raises,
school choice, more money into the school

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funding formula, more money to rural
schools with pilot programs for maternity leave,

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school security, and a robust school
choice plan that was passed earlier this session

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and that the House held onto until
we could get agreement on public education spending.

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And it is historic. I'm told
that when you add together the teacher

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pay raises of five years ago and
what the teacher pay raises will be this

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time, and all the other dollars
in the public education that it's an historic

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high. Not as much money has
been put into public education in the last

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twenty five years as today. So
cause of our economy, because we did

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well during COVID and didn't shut down, because of the energy industry and the

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diversification of Oklahoma's economy, we are
sitting on substantial revenues that make it possible

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for us to do this big plan
in public education funding. The big thing

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for me was teachers. We wanted
to put as much into teacher pay raises

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as possible. That was the sentence
plan. And so now if you are

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if you're a devote to four years
experience, you're going to get a three

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thousand dollars raise, four thousand for
five to nine years, five thousand for

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ten to fifteen years, and any
teacher with fifteen or more experience, we'll

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get six thousand dollars pay raise.
There's also about one hundred and fifty million

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dollars going into the formula. This
gives superintendents and school boards flexibility about where

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they spend those dollars. Could they
could add to those pay raises, or

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they could do support stack pay raises. UH. These pay raises that are

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in UH that will be in this
bill go to all certified staffs, so

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this would be teachers and librarians UH
and others who work in the field.

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Then we have a ten million,
three year literacy program. We are still

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way behind in teaching our children how
to read and be at grade level,

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even though we have the Reading Sufficiency
Act, So we're putting more money into

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UM a literacy program. There will
be a literacy literacy instructional UH person at

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each school districts. There will be
teams, there will be ways to spend

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these dollars. There will be a
school security piece of course. Um,

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you know in Barrowsville we do an
excellent job with school security. Uh,

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this could be used resource offersers,
it could be used for other security infrastructure.

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And I believe ninety six thousand dollars
it's going to go to each school

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or school district. I can't remember. Let's see Public school District ninety sixty

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thousand. That's the one hundred and
fifty million for three years, fifty fifty

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and fifty into school security. And
then for the smaller schools who don't have

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the advalorum collections that we are fortunate
to have in Washington County, there will

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be an increase in funding to the
Redbud Fund and there so that's one hundred

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and twenty five million. We help
those schools that don't have the bonding capacity

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that others do. And then in
the funding formula, we made changes to

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the weights. Now outside the legislature
and the school public school world, most

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people don't understand these. But rural
school to get a transportation weight because they

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have to transport kids among much wider
areas. That hasn't been increased in nineteen

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eighty six. So we're going to
increase the transportation rate. We're going to

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increase the economically disadvantaged student weight.
Of course, we have those kinds of

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kids everywhere in the state, but
more of them are concentrated in the rural

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area, so that will be another
bump to rural schools. And been thirdly,

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I can't remember what. Thirdly what's
what's thirdly? Well, I'll get

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back to that. Oh, the
small school set aside, we are raising

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the number of students in a school
that make it qualify as a small school

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under the formula, and it will
capture about seventy two to seventy five percent

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of our school district. Now we'll
go up from five hundred and twenty nine

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kids to I think seven hundred or
seven hundred and fifty kids, will push

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some additional formula dollars through to those
schools. All told, it's about a

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six hundred and fifty million dollars investment
six hundred twenty five in recurring revenues to

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public school. And then on the
other side, on the school choice side,

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the bill that was already passed.
If you have a just a growth

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income of seventy five thousand dollars or
less, a parent will get a credit

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or may access a credit of seventy
five hundred per child or the tuition at

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the school that you have selected,
whichever is less. If you make seventy

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five to one fifty, that credit
will be seven thousand, one hundred and

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fifty to two twenty five, the
credit will be sixty five hundred, and

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at two twenty five to two fifty, six thousand, and then two fifty

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or more can access up to five
thousand dollars per child credit. There's also

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I'm very glad to say homeschooling parents
who want to keep receipts and report expenses

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may access a tax credit of up
to one thousand dollars per child. Very

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important to me to include those groups
of parents in the program. I know

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that's a lot of data, Tom, but it is very exciting that we've

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pulled this off. Honestly, when
we didn't hear back from the Speaker last

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Wednesday afternoon and everybody else was celebrating, my heart sank, and then the

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Speaker basically said nothing's going to happen
till Monday. What I wasn't aware of

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is there were negotiations all through the
weekend, so that gave us the opportunity

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to come together on Monday morning and
the negotiators to be able to seal a

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deal. So now we're in a
sprint. We are going to get all

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these education funding bills done this week. It's important to do that so they

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get to the governor's death and should
he want to veto woman he's not,

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we would have time to override his
veto the other eleven twelfth of the budget.

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Think about that. Education is still
where we spend the most money,

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followed by healthcare, but you have
billions of dollars still yet to appropriate for

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all these other agencies. But we
could act on that till we knew what

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defunding for public schools was going to
be. So even though they've been working

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behind the scenes really for the past
year, because they're working on the budget,

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as soon as one fiscal year starts, they start on the next one.

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We're scrambling now to see what's left. There's a limit to what we

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can spend and recurring expenses, and
also looking at whether or not the economy

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will soften, so there's not as
much left to appropriate for other needs in

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the state. But that's why they're
working on now, and I believe we

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are going to try to run a
concurrent session, which means being two sessions

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at once, so that we can
still get these things passed in order to

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be able to override a veto if
that's necessary. Tom, that's it in

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a nutshell,