Page 5 - ARUBA TODAY

A5
U.S. NEWS Monday 28 august 2017
Oklahoma:

Charities try to help teachers survive pay collapse

gan dropping sharply from appropriations rather than
a boom-era level of more a mix of state, local and
than $100 a barrel. Oil pric- county revenue. Okla-
es now are hovering below homa’s average teacher
$50. salary of $45,276 trails only
Since then, while publicly Mississippi, while the starting
making higher teacher minimum salary is $31,600.
salaries their top priority, Even affluent districts with
lawmakers have not over- new buildings and huge
come strong conserva- football stadiums are now
tive aversion to resetting hemorrhaging qualified
the tax rates, especially teachers to other states or
on the powerful oil and professions. Overall, there
gas industry. Over the past are about 1,500 fewer
three years, state funding teachers in Oklahoma than
for public schools has de- in 2010, according to data
clined by more than $48 from the Oklahoma State
million, even as student School Boards Association.
enrollment increased by In some cities, a sense
In this Thursday, June 1, 2017 photo, former Oklahoma high nearly 8,000. of emergency is grow-
school teacher Shawn Sheehan poses for a photo at the door of While school budgets over- ing. In Tulsa, a downtown
the classroom where he once taught algebra, in Norman, Okla.
Sheehan, a former Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, has joined all have suffered, teacher church has begun provid-
the exodus of Oklahoma teachers and has moved to Texas to pay has taken the great- ing free meals periodically
teach in better conditions. est hit because it alone is to teachers at a nearby
(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) entirely funded by state school. q

By SEAN MURPHY working poor, becoming
Associated Press the most visible victims of
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — the state’s seemingly end-
Tiona Bowman was over- less budget problems.
come with emotion when With state revenues deplet-
the walls were erected last ed by deep tax cuts and
spring on her first-ever new lower energy prices, Okla-
home, a three-bedroom, homa’s teacher salaries
two-bath house in Tulsa are now the second low-
built through Habitat for est in the U.S., even though
Humanity. the state’s gross domestic
Bowman was flanked by product ranks 29th.
her daughter and mem- Teachers haven’t had a
bers of her family, work pay hike in a decade, and
colleagues and a handful 10-year veteran teach-
of local reporters who had ers who are single now
come to document the make little enough that
event. their own children qualify
Unlike most of those who for reduced-price school
qualify for a subsidized lunches.
Habitat home, though, As schools reopen for the
Bowman, 28, wasn’t a fast- fall term, hundreds have
food worker or other low- left their jobs while com-
income service employee, munities and local charities
but rather a teacher in are coming forward with
Tulsa Public Schools with a gifts and incentives to try to
master’s degree and three keep others from depart-
years of experience. ing.
“Obviously I was grateful “Habitat for Humanity was
and excited,” said Bow- not intended to be con-
man, who teaches middle- structing homes for working
school English and whose teachers,” said Cameron
$34,000 salary made her el- Walker, the charity’s Tulsa
igible for a no-interest loan director, but their income
on one of the program’s is approaching “typically
houses. “But on the other hourly jobs, people who
hand, I was like: I went to couldn’t walk into a bank
school for all these years, I and get a mortgage.”
have these degrees, and While never high, teacher
I qualify for a program like pay was squeezed when
this?” the GOP-led Legislature
Charity for teachers isn’t slashed taxes on both indi-
that unusual in Oklahoma vidual income and oil and
these days as more of them natural gas production in
approach the ranks of the 2014, just as oil prices be-