“I’ve been asked about the differences between Texas and Oklahoma for a teacher and coach. When I left Oklahoma back in 2006 to start my teaching career in the Eagle Mountain - Saginaw Independent School District, I immediately gained an extra $24,000 than I had been offered at multiple schools across Oklahoma. My starting teacher salary at EMS-ISD was $44,000, and I was paid $8,000 as an assistant football coach. I made another $6,000 as a JV softball coach, and $2,000 as the recruiting coordinator at Saginaw High School. I even had a video coordinator stipend for football which paid another $1,500. I was making over $60,000 as a first-year teacher and coach from Oklahoma. The most I was offered to teach and coach in Oklahoma was $36,000. In the 11 years that I have been gone from Oklahoma, EMS-ISD has raised their starting teacher pay from $44,000 to $50,840. That number doesn’t even put them in the top 10 in salary in the metroplex area of Texas. Most schools in the metroplex in the past 10 years have raised their pay anywhere from $7,000 to $12,000. In Oklahoma, our state hasn’t had a raise in pay in 10 years. It’s sad to me that our kids are losing great coaches yearly to surrounding states, and really all they are looking for is a place that puts a premium on education, and most importantly, on the kids! The legislature will say things like ‘teachers are extortionists.’ They will make it sound like we are greedy, or we’re the problem. In the long run, the people getting the rawest deal in this state are our kids. It’s almost impossible to fill our coaching slots at Del City High School with professional educators. We have double-digit adjunct coaches. In Texas, there is no such thing as adjunct coaches. In fact, I would say 90 percent of the school districts in Texas, require their coaches to be employees of the district, certified or support. The quality of applicants you get for all the athletic department jobs in Texas is night and day better. In Oklahoma, some districts just have to take whatever they can get, because some jobs get NO applicants when posted. In most cases, teachers will step up, and give more of their time to help our kids by taking sports they really have no business coaching.

“Our Oklahoma teachers have asked for a $10,000 raise. This raise would be UNBELIEVEABLE to most. It would be a God send for most. It would help teachers take care of childcare, car payments, groceries, bills, house payments, etc. And that is extremely important. However, it’s very sad to say, or even think about, but a $10,000 raise would still not even come close to what a teacher/coach would make if they drive 2.5 hours south to Denton ISD. In Denton ISD, a teacher with no experience will start at $52,000, and the truth hurts to know that some of their teachers actually live in Oklahoma and drive across to Denton to teach for $20,000 more than their own Oklahoma schools can pay. Their assistant football coaches will make another $8,000. Their assistants in other sports will make $6,000. That is $66,000 fresh out of college. While Oklahoma’s legislature has completely stopped caring about education and the kids of this state, the surrounding states have kept going forward, and have made it near impossible to catch them at this point. Oklahoma has failed the kids of this state for far too long, and something needs to change now.

“In Texas, the state has put a HUGE premium on kids, educators, and education as a whole. When I arrived in Oklahoma last April, one of my first questions was, ‘How much money do we have in the budget currently?’ Coming from Texas, we were able to give our kids a shirt and pair of shorts to work out in daily. We do this because we want all the kids to look the same. In any school, you will always have the kids that can wear Nike and other name brand clothing for every workout, and you will always have the kids that wear Walmart brand. We solved this problem in Texas by giving our kids mandatory workout gear. I wanted to do the same thing at Del City with our DC very visible, so our kids would know they are accountable to represent our brand in a positive light. When I arrived at Del City, we had kids working out in khaki shorts, cargo pants, jeans, Nike, Walmart, etc. It was shocking to me. It didn’t look like a team at all. That is why I asked about the budget, and that is when I truly figured out exactly what I was facing! My athletic secretary, Sylvia Watson, who is GOOD AS GOLD, and deserves a raise as much as anybody out there, informed me that we were probably $4,000 to $5,000 dollars in the negative at that time. She also informed me that we only received $11,000 total for that year. So, I started thinking about what becomes most important in football when you only have $11,000 to budget. I started talking about helmets, tackling dummies to prevent concussions, baseline testing, etc., all things for football only. I was SHOCKED again when Sylvia told me the $11,000 was for the entire athletic department, every one of the 20 athletic programs. In Texas, I was used to operating off of a football budget closer to $80,000, and the entire athletic budget of $240,000. Mid-Del Public Schools has done EVERYTHING in their power to ensure athletics gets absolutely everything they can give to our programs. When the state underfunds schools so greatly, all activities, curriculum, fine arts, and athletics suffer. This year we are reconditioning 70 used helmets and only buying 15 brand new helmets. This is going to cost us close to $10,000. With an $11,000 budget, that would leave us with $1,000 to spend on the other 20 programs in our athletic department. To recondition a gym floor and keep it safe, that will cost $4,000 a year. Those are three things (helmets, tackling dummies, reconditioned gym floors) we MUST do in order to keep kids safe, and we can’t do it without fundraising. We can’t keep kids safe with $11,000, and it’s not fair to our kids to be shorted so greatly by a state that continues to fail them. Luckily, Dr. Rick Cobb and our athletic director, Andy Collier, found an additional $11,000 this year, and doubled our athletic budget to $22,000. We are also extremely blessed to be part of a community that understands our state is failing us when it comes to funding, and they have tried to help make up for those failures. Our boosters and supporters will eventually stop when they keep having to make up for legislators that refuse to do their jobs.

“The money issue from state to state is obviously very substantial. This next issue is also a money issue, but I can’t go without saying anything about the difference between resources with TX versus OK. In TX, kids are used to walking into immaculate buildings daily. They learn in buildings that are designed by the best architects in the state. It’s a rat race when it comes to modern design in Texas public schools, and we are a million miles behind in Oklahoma. When kids walk into buildings and classrooms that are new and functional, you can’t tell me that doesn’t help them achieve. You can’t tell me it doesn’t help to prepare them for college. The science labs in the schools where I taught in Texas were unreal! They fascinated me, and I was one that wanted no part of math or science. I was an inclusion teacher, and I loved going to the science classes because teachers were able to do things hands on. They did exciting labs. In Oklahoma, there is no money for labs. The only labs taking place are labs being paid out of personal pockets by teachers that want their kids to have the same fun they experienced in classrooms. At Brewer High School in Fort Worth, they have an entire wing devoted to the band program. They have private, sound-proof booths for music lessons. They have multiple band rooms for jazz, orchestra, marching, etc. They have thousands of instruments at their disposal. It was a collegiate facility, and you can’t tell me our kids in OK have the same chance of succeeding in college as those kids. At least not when they both step foot on their respective campuses for the first time! There is no doubt in my mind that our kids will catch up eventually, but we aren’t even trying to be competitive with neighboring states with what our legislature is giving our schools to function.