'Ridiculous': OSDE reportedly misses deadline to apply for crisis intervention funding worth almost $1M

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — As first reported by The Frontier, the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) did not reapply for a grant previously used to create a crisis intervention team.

This year, tornadoes have ripped through several rural communities including Sulphur, Marietta, and Barnsdall. State Superintendent Ryan Walters visited each of those three cities shortly after devastation, according to his X account.

At the State Department of Education, we're providing all of the resources to make sure families can be put up in hotel rooms... make sure we can get them supplies. We can get generators out here. We are going to help the Barnsdall community in any way we can.

State Superintendent Ryan Walters said in a X video posted May 8

In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice awarded OSDE a $996,855 grant in part for school threat assessment teams.

"OSDE would deploy a team of trained staff members out to the district to assist with cleanup, to assist with counseling students, counseling teachers, you know, helping any way that they could in the event of a crisis," said former OSDE Director of Grant Development, Terri Grissom.

The Department of Justice grant paid for one full-time team leader and travel across the state. The grant also covered the cost of materials for local school districts to go through a three-day crisis training, according to The Frontier.

Grissom said the DOJ funding was a three year grant, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it turned into a four year grant.

"To my knowledge, it was solely federal funded," said Grissom when asked if the crisis intervention team was a mix of both state and federal funding.

According to an October newsletter from OSDE, the agency was nearing the end on the crisis intervention team funding.

"SDE will continue to offer PREPaRE Crisis Response training to Oklahoma School Districts upon request. School districts will need to provide the funding for the curriculum," the newsletter states.

The training would then cost school districts between $45 and $55 per person, according to OSDE.

"I don't even know if they have a crisis team. If they do - who is training them? What curricula are they using?," asked Grissom. "To my knowledge, everyone that was originally trained has left the agency."

The lack of potential funding and leadership at the Oklahoma State Department of Education is a major concern for House Appropriations and Budget Education Subcommittee Chair, Representative Mark McBride (R-Moore).

"It's Oklahoma taxpayer dollars coming back to our state and to refuse tax dollars is ridiculous because it just hurts the students… the teachers in our state by not doing that," stated Rep. McBride.

Rep. McBride supported Senate Bill 36 in 2023.

Buried in the language of the bill, later signed into law, states, "The State Department of Education shall not decline, refuse participation in, or choose not to apply for any federal grant funding that had been received by the Department prior to FY 2023 without joint approval from the President Pro Tempore of the Oklahoma State Senate and the Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives."

It was clear cut. Simple.

Representative Mark McBride (R-Moore)

That language became law in July 2023, which was two months after OSDE reportedly missed the deadline on crisis intervention funding through the DOJ.

"I do have a lot of concerns. Although my communication with [OSDE] is better than it was, I still don't feel like we're getting everything that we want on the federal funding piece. It's more complicated. We've got to realize those are taxpayer dollars that come back to the state. If they're there, we need to take advantage of them. Federal funding is huge when it comes to the Department of Education budget," stated Rep. McBride.

News 4 reached out to both OSDE and the Department of Justice for more information, but neither responded prior to publication.

News 4 also filed an Open Records Request with OSDE 314 days ago, asking for a list of all grants applied for by OSDE since Walters took office. We received an email late Tuesday afternoon indicating changes were made by OSDE in a SmartSheet pertaining to our request, but News 4 was unable to see if the request was fulfilled.

"You do not have access to this item - permission settings are preventing access to it, or it may have been deleted," a message reads when News 4 tries to access the "changes."