CareerTech State Board Meeting for June 16, 2022
Streamed live from the Oliver Hodge Education Building in OKC
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The Oklahoma CareerTech board omitted a $400,000 line item from its newly adopted annual budget over questions about how it ended up on the hook for a program members were told was hand-picked by Gov. Kevin Stitt to operate out of a different state agency.
Stitt’s office announced in October 2020 that the governor was launching an Oklahoma-based program for at-risk high-schoolers through a national nonprofit called Jobs for America’s Graduates, or JAG, and that he would join 13 other governors on JAG’s governing board.
The program was initially run through the Oklahoma Office of Educational Quality and Accountability, under the supervision of Ryan Walters, Stitt’s appointed secretary of education. It placed six state employees in various high schools around the state with the goal of linking at-risk students with real-world work experiences to prevent them from dropping out.
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But CareerTech administrators told CareerTech board members at a Thursday meeting that one year ago, the agency was notified that JAG was being “transferred” from OEQA to CareerTech.
Because CareerTech’s board had already adopted the agency’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget, CareerTech has been using its “carry forward” fund of unspent FY 2021 state funding allocations for JAG to date.
CareerTech proposed a new budget for FY 2023, which begins July 1, with $388,448 dedicated for JAG, but the funding was removed after a lengthy discussion at Thursday’s board meeting.
CareerTech administrators said they would have to research answers to members’ questions and concerns about why the state-funded program was not subject to competitive bidding or requests for proposals or even voted on by the CareerTech board for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
“I know this is something the state auditor is asking questions about right now — asking, ‘How is a vendor just selected to appear on a budget to go before a board if there is not an RFP (request for proposals)?’” said Joy Hofmeister, whose duty it is as Oklahoma’s elected state superintendent of public instruction to chair the nine-member board.
“I would just have to ask questions about how all of that got started. There is no competitive bidding. This has been a topic we’ve seen in the news, and things just landing (on an agency budget). I would have to have those answers before I would consider something like that.”
The Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector’s Office has been tasked with an investigative audit of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department amid law enforcement investigations into “potential fraudulent activity” in a state park restaurant deal with a company called Swadley’s Bar-B-Q.
The remainder of CareerTech’s proposed new budget was unanimously approved by the board. State general appropriations to the agency increased 2.2%, or almost $3 million, to $137.6 million.
Besides Hofmeister, who is running for governor, the board has eight other members, who are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Oklahoma Senate.
Lee Denney, a former legislator from Cushing who stepped in March 1 as interim director of CareerTech, first explained that the agency had this particular JAG program “transferred to us at the end of last fiscal year from OEQA.”
When board member Estela Hernandez asked about results, CareerTech administrators said the program, which had four state employees placed in high schools in Bartlesville, Broken Arrow and Wewoka to provide intervention services for students at risk of dropping out, “just didn’t work.”
“We just got the program last year, July 1. We were using carry forward money to fund those three programs, and it didn’t go as we expected; I’ll be honest,” Denney said.
The bulk of the cost is in funding the school-based employees, plus, Denney said, “We pay, I think, a $25,000 membership fee to JAG (the national organization).”
If approved at a future date, the state’s JAG program is set to expand to several more high school sites in 2022-23. But rather than install state program employees, CareerTech would send program funding to each participating high school to employ a local teacher to serve at-risk students through the JAG program.
Stitt’s office had no response to questions for this story Friday.
andrea.eger@tulsaworld.com
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