Just in case you haven’t had your fill of news about State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, the first thing to know is that the State Board of Education on Thursday accredited Tulsa Public Schools with deficiencies. On Wednesday, the Tulsa Public Schools board accepted the resignation of Superintendent Deborah Gist, effective Sept. 15, and chose Ebony Johnson to be the interim superintendent.
As Jennifer reported, Walters has been laser-focused on Gist’s leadership, a rift that goes back to her handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I was crystal clear from day one: Deb Gist had to go,” Walters said. Walters also wants to see the district make rapid improvements in academics, particularly reading scores, and move some of its low-performing schools off the state’s F list. Progress must be made in the next three to four months, he said.
••• But wait! There’s more! Someone apparently wants the superintendent to run for governor (someone could, of course, be the superintendent himself). Or maybe someone’s setting up a parody website. What’s confirmed is that the URL RyanWaltersForGovernor.com has a working webpage, a placeholder that promises more info around the end of September. The domain name was purchased through a proxy service, so the owner is masked. The registration record was created Tuesday and expires in a year.
Sometimes when that sort of thing becomes public the website suddenly vanishes. If the link above is no longer working, here’s a link to a screenshot taken Thursday afternoon (Editor’s Note: Streuli provided this in his newsletter).
