Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, speaks during a swearing-in ceremony Nov. 20 in the House chamber of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Caldwell is the new head of a key subcommittee focused on education funding. (Photo by Emma Murphy/Oklahoma Voice)
OKLAHOMA CITY — A year of leadership turnover in the Oklahoma House brings three new K-12 education committee leaders who say improving academic results is their top priority.
The GOP-controlled House is unlikely to pursue a hike in school funding after passing major increases in recent years, the three new committee leaders said.
Instead, they pointed to other policies that would restrict cellphones in schools, focus state dollars in the classroom, and support teacher retention and recruitment.
Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber, is the new head of the Common Education Committee while Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, will lead the House subcommittee focused on education appropriations.
“It’s a pretty simple decision matrix for me,” Caldwell told Oklahoma Voice. “Is it going to improve student outcomes? That’s what I want to do.”
Lowe, a longtime agriculture and CareerTech teacher, replaces former Common Education Committee leader Rep. Rhonda Baker, R-Yukon, who chose not to seek reelection after eight years in office.
Caldwell is an Enid hospice center executive who sat on education committees since he was elected to the House in 2014. He succeeds Rep. Mark McBride, R-Moore, who reached the end of lawmakers’ 12-year term limit.
Republican Rep. Dell Kerbs, a restaurant owner and eight-year lawmaker from Shawnee, will lead a newly created Education Oversight Committee. The new panel will create another opportunity to refine education bills at the committee stage before legislation comes before the entire House for a floor vote.
Each new committee leader voiced support for seeking policies, besides raising funding levels, that could help school performance.
Rep. Dell Kerbs, R-Shawnee, will lead the newly created Education Oversight Committee. (Photo by Kyle Phillips/For Oklahoma Voice)
Kerbs said school funds must be concentrated in the classroom, not in “bureaucratic red tape or administrative inefficiency.”
“Oklahomans deserve tangible results, better resources and a future built on intentional investment in student success,” Kerbs said through a House spokesperson. “It’s not enough to set standards for educators or merely increase education funding. Class time and financial resources must be used effectively to deliver meaningful improvements in outcomes and opportunities for every student, no matter where they attend school.”
A priority the House, Senate and governor appear to share is limiting student cellphone use during the school day. Multiple states — and several Oklahoma districts — have enacted similar regulations in hopes of curtailing students’ distractions and discipline issues.
“I think it’s a pretty simple change that we can work with our schools to implement, but the return and the benefit for our students is incredibly high,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell hosted an interim study on the topic this fall, as did Senate Education Committee leaders Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, and Ally Seifried, R-Claremore.
Seifried has filed a bill that would require districts to adopt a cellphone ban lasting the entire school day. Another bill is expected to come from the House.
Gov. Kevin Stitt encouraged more Oklahoma schools to create cost-neutral policies to restrict student cellphone use. He visited schools in Jenks and Bixby that have done so, where students generally spoke in favor of their schools’ cellphone rules.
Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber, said he expects a bill limiting cellphone use in schools will “roll fast” through the state Legislature. (Photo by Emma Murphy/Oklahoma Voice)
While speaking in his office at the state Capitol, Lowe predicted a cellphone bill will emerge early in session and “roll fast.” Policies supporting teacher incentives and educator preparation programs also are a priority, he said, as Oklahoma continues to suffer from a teacher shortage.
Lowe said he intends to file a bill that would add 10 more years to the teacher salary schedule, which would allow classroom educators to earn annual wage increases for up to 35 years. Right now, the state’s minimum requirements for yearly teacher pay increases hit their maximum at 25 years.
After the success of Oklahoma’s Inspired to Teach scholarship, Lowe said lawmakers are interested in creating more programs that could strengthen the pipeline of aspiring teachers coming through colleges and alternative pathways.
“That’s going to be a big push of how can we keep teachers in, how can we add new teachers in and how can we prepare them better,” Lowe said.
Senate lawmakers already have filed several bills proposing more tuition waivers and scholarships for students who want to earn a college degree in education. House Bill 1020 from Rep. Michelle McCane, D-Tulsa, suggests offering the Oklahoma’s Promise scholarship to the children of public school employees.
Pugh, the chairperson of the Senate’s K-12 education committees, has filed a teacher pay raise bill each of the past three years — this time to set teachers’ minimum salary at $50,000, up from $39,601. He was the architect of a pay raise structure that passed in 2023, but his proposal for another wage increase last year didn’t survive the Senate.
The Oklahoma State Department of Education also has spent funds on teacher recruitment. State Superintendent Ryan Walters directed a signing bonus program to entice hundreds of certified teachers to return to the classroom or move to Oklahoma from other states.
Sen. Mary Boren, D-Norman, and Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber, listen as state Superintendent Ryan Walters, foreground, speaks at an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting Oct. 24 in Oklahoma City. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)
In his agency’s 2026 fiscal year budget request, Walters asked the Legislature for an additional $1 million to support a teacher induction program that connects early-career educators with mentors and professional development, hoping they are more likely to remain in the field.
Walters also requested $3 million to purchase King James Version Bibles for all 5-12th grade classrooms in the state. His agency already spent just under $25,000 to buy more than 500 Bibles for Advanced Placement government classes.
He issued an order in June to public schools that they incorporate the Bible in their lesson plans as a historical document and keep a copy of it in every classroom. Several district leaders rejected the mandate, and the order already faces a lawsuit.
Lowe and Caldwell didn’t comment directly on the merit of Walters’ $3 million ask for Bible purchases. They said the House will consider it along with all other agency requests that go through the Legislature’s budgeting process.
“If it’s something that, collectively, the Legislature wants to do and wants to allocate resources for, then we’ll do it,” Caldwell said. “And if the Legislature doesn’t want to do it, they won’t. It’s as simple as that.”
Both lawmakers said they have an open, working relationship with Walters, who has become one of the most high-profile and highly polarizing politicians in the state.
Caldwell has been one of Walters’ more vocal defenders, particularly when House Republicans sought to limit the state superintendent’s ability to spend agency funds on public relations.
Lowe said he and Walters often speak one-on-one, and “if there’s a problem, we talk about it.”
“If we disagree, we disagree, but we’ll leave the table still where we’re open to talk and try to move forward,” Lowe said. “I can truly say I believe that Superintendent Walters wants our kids to succeed. I truly believe that. We may have different views (on) how to get there.”
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