School districts say Walters’ claims of massive budget surpluses are verifiably false, damaging to public education

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — More Oklahoma school districts say State Superintendent Ryan Walters is using his state office's platforms to spread verifiably false and damaging claims about their finances, while suggesting districts should knowingly and illegally misuse money to pay for one of his unfunded, unenforceable mandates.

It started earlier this week when Walters issued what lawmakers from both parties called an unenforceable, legally invalid mandate—directing Oklahoma school districts to begin serving free lunch to every student, immediately.

He did not propose any funding to support it.

Instead, Walters suggested districts could pay for it using their administrative budgets.

“For far too long, we have seen public schools take taxpayer dollars that are there for students and continue to grow administrative costs, then turning around and charging parents for school lunches,” Walters said in a video posted online.

But lawmakers said that’s not how school funding works—and accuse Walters of political grandstanding.

“They’re already capped. Districts can’t go over a certain percentage for administrative costs,” said State Sen. Mark Mann, D-Edmond. “I think this is just a political trick to try to get on television and in the papers.”

District leaders said even if Walters somehow had the legal authority to require such a program, complying with his directive would be financially impossible.

Bixby Public Schools told parents it “would require catastrophic measures impacting all programming, staffing, and class sizes.”

Deer Creek Public Schools’ superintendent broke down Walters’ memo line by line, explaining how state law prohibits schools from redirecting most funds from one category—such as facilities or salaries—to another, like meals.

Still, Walters doubled down, sending an email to every public school parent in Oklahoma on Wednesday.

In it, he called out Bixby, Broken Arrow, Deer Creek, and Piedmont Public Schools by name—claiming each district is sitting on tens of millions of extra dollars they could use to cover lunch costs.

That came as a surprise to Tara Thompson, spokesperson for Broken Arrow Public Schools (BAPS)—a district Walters claims has a $109 million budget surplus.

“I was surprised, yes,” Thompson said.

She said Walters never contacted the district directly, and based on the numbers he cited, it appears he simply looked at how much money is currently sitting in the district’s accounts—including money budgeted for payroll, utilities, transportation, and other basic day-to-day functions—and assumed it was all surplus.

“Even if all of those funds do add up to $109 million, that is not a surplus,” Thompson said. “We’ve got to make payroll. We’ve got to pay our utilities. We’ve got to do all the fuel costs.”

She said Walters even appears to have counted bond money in the $109 million total surplus he claimed BAPS had.

Bond money can only legally be spent on specific, voter-approved projects.

“And so we can’t just go back and take those monies and divert them to something else, because those were a vote of the people,” Thompson said.

Thompson said—even though free lunches for all would be commendable and a noble cause—if a school district were to spend bond money on school lunches instead of the specific facilities projects voters approved for, districts would face legal consequences.

“There would be lawsuits,” Thompson said. “There would be attorneys involved. There would most likely be people losing jobs. I think the school district could probably have its bonding capacity downgraded, its bond ratings downgraded, if we did something like that. There are a lot of legal and financial ramifications for just operating willy-nilly, regardless of what state and federal laws might be dictating how those funds are spent.”

The other districts that Walters accused of having massive surpluses said the same.

In a letter, Piedmont Public Schools told parents:

“We can’t imagine Walters would be suggesting that we use bond money to pay for student meals. Using bond money would be a clear violation of the law.”

The district also criticized the growing burden of having to correct misinformation originating from and amplified by Walters, writing:

“It is unfortunate that school districts have to spend their time and resources correcting misinformation sent by the state superintendent of public instruction.”

“That’s the other frustrating thing about this,” Thompson said. “To have our integrity questioned like this. We just question why can we not have a conversation if there are questions or there are concerns? You know, we’re educators—reach out to us and let us educate you about things that you may have questions about.”

News 4 reached out to Walters’ office with a detailed list of questions about how he calculated the numbers and what authority he believes he has to enforce this directive.

Nobody responded.