Education

Democrat lawmakers express frustration over public school failures for vulnerable students

April 23, 2026

Ray Carter

In recent years, most Democratic lawmakers have opposed school-choice programs that allow parents to use their tax dollars to send a child to private school rather than keep the child in a local public school.

But during a recent legislative debate, two Oklahoma Democrats admitted that many Oklahoma public schools are failing students badly, particularly children with special needs, and said that threats of lawsuits and federal sanctions are routinely necessary to force Oklahoma public schools to provide legally required services.

“I’m here to tell you, there’s state schools that aren’t going to follow the federal law,” said state Rep. Aletia Timmons, D-Oklahoma City.

“There are a lot of parents that are exhausted, trying to tell schools what they should already know,” said state Rep. Ellyn Hefner, an Oklahoma City Democrat who has a child with special needs.

The two Democrats made their comments on April 21, when members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives took up House Concurrent Resolution 1025. That resolution endorsed efforts to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, declaring that closure was not only “consistent with the spirit of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, but could ensure more efficient use of taxpayer dollars and improve student outcomes through greater state and local control.”

State Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, an Elgin Republican and former public-school teacher, carried the resolution on the House floor.

Democratic lawmakers objected, saying federal regulators are needed to force Oklahoma public schools to comply with federal law and respect students’ rights.

Timmons, an attorney and former judge, said she routinely represented parents in lawsuits against Oklahoma schools that were violating the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA); the federal Rehabilitation Act, which bans employment discrimination against people with disabilities; or Title IX law, which requires that girls be provided the same athletic opportunities as boys in public schools.

Timmons said she had to file cases in federal court before local school officials would “do what the law said they needed to do.”

She said in one case, filed against a school in the Oklahoma City area, local officials denied that any complaints had been filed.

“I went to federal court, they found 33 violations, just like I pointed out,” Timmons said. “Meanwhile, that kid in school had not gotten that IEP (Individualized Education Program) he needed, and it affected his movement forward.”

Hefner said parents of children with special needs face a daunting challenge when trying to make a local school comply with federal law.

“Let me talk about the parents that have a child with a disability,” Hefner said. “Oh, my goodness, not only do we have to fight the schools, but we’re also filling out applications every year to say that our child still has a disability. We still have to fight hard for all those things that we’re talking about, big time, right now.”

A local advocate says the two Democrats are right, and that’s one reason so many families of children with learning challenges have embraced Oklahoma’s school-choice programs.

“It’s both/and,” said Lucia Frohling, director of parent services at Oklahoma Parents for Student Achievement. “We want great public schools, of course. But when it’s not working, parents and students should not have to be stuck in a place that does not work for them and is actually detrimental to their child’s emotional well-being as well as their academic well-being.”

Frohling said Oklahoma Parents for Student Achievement works with about 200 families each year from roughly 60 percent of Oklahoma counties. In up to 75 percent of those cases, she said, a resolution is reached within the local district.

But in the remaining cases, school district officials often fight tooth and nail against parents’ requests for legally required services for their children. In those cases, she said, “for parents, the process is the punishment” because it is so drawn out and financially expensive.

“It is so incredibly painful, because parents are the only police for IDEA,” Frohling said. “They are the only ones who say, ‘Hey, I don’t think this law is being followed.’ And then they are the ones who have to file a state complaint or ask for mediation or file a due-process (complaint) when we are in a special-education attorney desert in Oklahoma. The burden of proof is fully on the parents to have to prove the school is breaking the law, and yet they don’t have the investigative authority to see everything that is going on behind those closed doors.”

For Some, School Choice Is an Escape Hatch

Roughly half of parents who cannot get a local district to comply with federal law have used one of Oklahoma’s school-choice programs to move their child to a private school, Frohling said, and an even larger share would do the same thing if not for current school capacity limits.

Oklahoma has two major school-choice programs that benefit those families.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition. The largest tax credits go to those with the lowest incomes, and families with income of less than $150,000 per year are prioritized. That program is available to all Oklahomans.

The Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities (LNH) program allows families to use state tax dollars to pay for private-school tuition for children with special needs, as well as foster children, adopted children, and the children of military families. The scholarships range from $4,196 to $22,236 per child, based on a child’s diagnosis.

In recent years, there have been numerous instances of families who used Oklahoma’s school-choice programs to place a child with learning challenges in private school after public schools failed to properly serve the child—and those children have thrived in the private-school setting. And other families have been forced to take drastic action to obtain a quality education for their children.

For example, Kandice Jeske’s oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia, which make reading and writing difficult, and dyscalculia, which affects an individual’s ability to do math. He was also diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But officials at his public school claimed the boy only had ADHD. The family had to pay for private testing to document the youth’s other challenges and eventually used Oklahoma’s school-choice laws to change schools.

Karly McEntire’s daughter has dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and ADHD, but officials at her child’s public school told the family those issues would resolve over time.

Jonathan and Certaintee Brown say they had to sell their home and buy a house in another school district to get their child into a school that would help him overcome his dyslexia.

Families who have used state school-choice programs have generally found the private school did a better job serving their child, said Frohling, whose children have learning challenges and are among the beneficiaries of Oklahoma’s school-choice laws.

“For parents, you either have to fight this David-versus-Goliath system where it feels like everything is stacked against you, and some parents want to do that,” Frohling said. “But it’s financially and emotionally exhausting, so they choose the escape hatch and go somewhere else, which is what we did. I mean, my own family, we needed that. It saved my daughter’s life, because without that escape hatch I don’t know where we’d be.”