Education
Jonathan Small | August 5, 2016
Free Market Friday: Opportunity to save teachers and taxpayers
Jonathan Small
The condition of take-home pay for teachers in Oklahoma is dire.
If one doesn’t believe so, all a person has to do is look at recent polling that shows 97 percent of Oklahomans believe teachers deserve a raise.
Even more telling, at a time when Oklahoma’s economy is in recession, Oklahomans are so rightfully concerned that good teachers will be forced to leave the classroom that 62 percent are willing to further damage Oklahoma’s economy by raising their own sales tax to the highest in the country.
Yes, it’s true that there is more than $8.2 billion of revenue in our K-12 public school system.
Yes, it’s true that from FY-2008 to FY-2015 local funding grew by nearly $600 million but very little made it to teacher salaries.
Yes, it’s true that suburban schools have parents and teachers who report that they can’t fund classroom essentials yet announcements of NFL-grade turf and small-college-style athletic improvements are made.
Jonathan Small
President
Jonathan Small, C.P.A., serves as President and joined the staff in December of 2010. Previously, Jonathan served as a budget analyst for the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, as a fiscal policy analyst and research analyst for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and as director of government affairs for the Oklahoma Insurance Department. Small’s work includes co-authoring “Economics 101” with Dr. Arthur Laffer and Dr. Wayne Winegarden, and his policy expertise has been referenced by The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, National Review, the L.A. Times, The Hill, the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post. His weekly column “Free Market Friday” is published by the Journal Record and syndicated in 27 markets. A recipient of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s prestigious Private Sector Member of the Year award, Small is nationally recognized for his work to promote free markets, limited government and innovative public policy reforms. Jonathan holds a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a Certified Public Accountant.