Education, Law & Principles

Oklahoma House advances bill requiring schools to show instructional spending before bond elections

March 24, 2026

Ray Carter

To get voter approval of proposed bond projects, Oklahoma public schools would be required to provide voters with clear information on the share of school funds currently going to instruction under a bill approved by members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

“When we are asking taxpayers to voluntarily raise their taxes, they should have a good understanding of where their tax money is currently going,” said state Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid.

House Bill 3711, by Caldwell, requires Oklahoma public-school districts to “provide the percentage of total district expenditures that were allocated to instructional expenses in the last fiscal year on the home page” of the school’s website. The share of funds going to instructional expenses would also be posted with bond-proposal information.

The bill defines “instruction expenditures” to align with the definition used by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a federal entity within the United States Department of Education that provides apples-to-apples comparisons of school spending in all 50 states.

According to NCES data for the 2022-2023 school year, 53.3 percent of Oklahoma school funding went to instruction, on average. The national average was 58.8 percent.

Data released by Caldwell in 2025 showed that less than half of school funding went to instruction in roughly 150 of Oklahoma’s more than 500 school districts.

While total Oklahoma public-school revenue from all sources—local, state, and federal—has surged more than $3 billion since 2018, rising from $6.3 billion to $9.5 billion, academic outcomes have steadily declined.

A recent report found that much of the extra money went to expenses other than direct instruction.

Between the 2018-2019 school year and the 2024-2025 school year, staff numbers at Oklahoma public schools increased from 86,709 to 92,979. Of the 6,270 additional school employees hired during that time, just 602 were teachers, or less than 10 percent, according to WANDA, a database maintained by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

HB 3711 drew opposition from some Democratic lawmakers.

State Rep. Michelle McCane, D-Tulsa, argued that information on school districts’ instructional spending is already available “through other means.”

Caldwell, who serves as chair of the House Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Education, agreed that the information is available, but not necessarily accessible to the average citizen.

“Yes, you can find it,” Caldwell said. “I would challenge each of you right now to open up your laptops and try to find this information for your local district and see how long it takes you. I can get to it fairly easily, but I’ve worked on this issue for a long time. For the average person at home, can they find it? Yes. I think they would be lucky to find it.”

HB 3711 passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives on a 79-16 vote with bipartisan support, although all opponents were Democrats. The bill now proceeds to the Oklahoma Senate.