May 26, 2016

By Emily Wendler

Parents, students, and educators are rallying at the state Capitol Wednesday because of dissatisfaction with Oklahoma’s $6.8 billion budget deal. They want to see more money go to education.

The group Let’s Fix This has been planning the demonstration at the statehouse for weeks. Its original intention was to protest cuts to education. But since lawmakers revealed their budget proposal Tuesday, their plan changed.

“I think there’s a lot of us that was to have face-to-face conversations with our legislators about what’s proposed, what’s been done, and what hasn’t been done,” said the even’t sorganizer, Andy Moore.

Moore wants to see more funding go to education because cuts from last year’s revenue failures were not restored in the budget the Senate passed Wednesday. Allocations to the State Department of Education were 2.34 percent less than the original appropriation in Fiscal Year 2016, although they’re almost 1 percent higher than the revised mid-year budget after two revenue failures.

Moore says there are several revenue-boosting measures lawmakers still need to consider. He’s encouraging participants to bring apples to their Representatives as a symbolic gesture for each teacher lost to budget cuts.

http://kgou.org/post/oklahoma-education-advocates-marching-capitol-again-talk-budget-concerns