Another bill that would have given teachers a pay raise failed on the floor of the Oklahoma Legislature this week.
As it stands now, Oklahoma teachers haven’t received a raise in a decade.As KFOR reports,the bill would have paid for an educator pay increase by raising taxes on tobacco, diesel fuel and wind energy.
State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister called the bill’s failure “a soul-crushing blow to public education in Oklahoma.” In response to the bill’s defeat, Putnam City North High School teacher and soccer coach Thomas Pecore wrote an open letter to State Legislature.
The viral letter reads, in part, “I have never been so embarrassed and disappointed in our state Government as I am now. . . . How can you [Legislators] sleep at night knowing that when a teacher retires from years of unselfish service to our country, they retire into poverty? How can you and the other legislators even look at yourself in the mirror knowing what you did to all the families of every teacher in Oklahoma?”