Teachers walkout and all the emotional turmoil that generated.

Teachers have walked out in our state.  Most schools have been closed a week.
We already have record numbers of emergency certified teachers this year---because we pay so poorly that any surrounding state is at least a $5000 pay raise.  Other states have also funded their schools better, so books, computers, art programs, science supplies are all from this century with real supplies instead of following a facebook campaign for papertowel rolls or a go-fund-me site for a field trip.
If you read the comments about this walkout--the teachers have some support, but the number of arrogant and frequenly illiterate comments on social media and newspaper articles are fuming.
"they just need to do their job, who do they think they are, they don't care about our kids"..on and on and on.
These fine, barely literate or sometimes privately schooled individuals either make much more money than these teachers or are trying to live on minimum wage from their own failed educational experiences.
Oklahoma has never valued education very highly.
We believe that our fortune 400 gazillionaires care about us and that is why they all have their names on our public buildings, our hospital wings and museum additions, our university arts programs and our roads that roar past the nicer parts of town.
They think foundations are something our houses sit on and not a way of moving taxable income while immortalizing ourselves.
They think their boss hired them because the boss is a nice guy and when someone says "trickle-down economics, they nod like that makes perfect sense instead of thinking--OMG, like a boss ever made a job that wasn't needed--unless it is a leadership role for a crony's kid.  You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

So, School is out. And no end in sight.  And we can't raise taxes on the rich or on corporations or on the Oil industry or on any one but poor people.
Because the rich or the corporations or the Oil industry might leave our state, but poor people can't go anywhere.

Simple math.  50% of almost nothing is still almost nothing.
The Oil industry is here because the oil is here, and the fracking is cracking my house all to pieces.  How about we diversify, solar, wind, maybe an electric car industry or even electric car charging stations.
The corporations already here, if we are the cheapest state for them, then we raise them to 0.25% of the next lowest, so they don't need to move.
And people that want to stay and raise a family, don't move to a state for a single tourist attraction and their job, they want good schools, good healthcare, and believe me--the countries highest incarceration rate is not on the list of things they are looking for.
We should not have a goal of 48th in the nation for our childrens education.
Bad enough that in the bible belt we can't teach science likes its real.

The state budget need to prioritize the items that need funding by importance.
Children are very important, much more important that the capital dome redo.
And we need to do something about being number one in incarceration.  We spend about twice as much on a prisoner per year as we do on a school child per year.
We put everyone in prison.
We have for-profit prisons and they have quotas.
http://oklahomawatch.org/2017/05/26/winners-and-losers-in-the-states-6-8-billion-budget/

http://www.governing.com/topics/education/gov-oklahoma-states-education-funding.html

So, if you don't want to stay home and provide your child with a quality home-schooled education.  Get off the teachers' cases.  Cost of living goes up more than 1.6 percent a year. Every year we don't increase schools at the least by the cost of living increase, we are taking them down.
We have failed to meet the cost-of-living minimum for over a decade.