New Bills Proposed To Address Teacher Shortage

A handful of education bills are pushing forward today, several of them focused on combating the teacher shortage. 

Senate Bill 16 written by republican Senator David Bullard would launch a pilot program for school districts to provide free child care for their employees.

“Just to be very frank the purpose of this bill is to try to help with teacher recruitment and retention,” Bullard said.

Bullard says they decided on a 2-year pilot program to give both urban and rural districts ample time to test it. 

“2 years gives us a pretty good 30,000 foot view of are they gonna take advantage of it, how are they gonna set it up, whats it gonna cost to implement,” said Bullard.

The grants would be open to any district interested, and would be split between urban and rural schools.

Bullard says he envisions this being completely free to the teachers needing childcare, and the State Department of Education would determine who is eligible for the grant.

While the specifics of the program are still in the early stages, Bullard says the districts would likely submit a plan to OSDE on how they would use the grant funds, and the application would be open to any district interested.

There are some districts in the state, such as Kingfisher, have similar programs already implemented. Senator Bullard says this program won’t impact those programs.

“I think it would help them and hopefully we have some out there that are giving us good models to look at, so this would just help them on the funding side of what I do now,” Bullard said.

Bullard says he’s not sure how much it would cost, but it would be a one time appropriation. He said if the program works well and they decide to continue, it would likely become a recurring cost at that point. 

“We don’t wanna pursue a failed program so the 2 years gives us a good look at is this gonna work or is it not,” Bullard said.

Senator Pugh had a few bills on today's agenda that weren’t heard including one to give paid maternity leave to teachers and one creating a teacher mentorship program.

The deadline for policy bills is March 2nd.