OSDE: Ryan Walters’ $50,000 contract for ‘public awareness campaign’ revealed

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OKLAHOMA CITY — A video played at an Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) meeting on May 23, 2023, marked the beginning of KOKH FOX 25’s investigation of looking at how state tax dollars were being spent on production.

The video attacked what Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters has called “woke teachers unions” and LBGTQ+ student support rhetoric, causing tears from teachers and parents in attendance, some having to walk out.

At the beginning of the video, Walters appears on FOX NEWS stating, “We want to completely have full choice for parents, full education here in Oklahoma. Parents will be in charge of our education system, not these ‘woke’ teachers unions.” 

The next month, OSDE shared another video that perceived transgender students as an “assault on truth,” Walters states in the video. 

“We’ve been really clear here that we’re going to only allow boys to go in the boys’ bathroom and girls to go in the girls’ bathroom. And there’s dangerous consequences when common sense is vacated. And you know it is common sense and what we’ve got to do is we got to return back to common sense policies that we had just a decade ago in our schools. And say, ‘Listen, we are absolutely going to affirm truth, what is reality.”

Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters said in the opening of the video.

OSDE Faces Scrutiny Over $72,000 Marketing Contract with Houston Firm for Social Media and Video Services

The OSDE spent $22,000 of Oklahoma tax-payer dollars last year to have over 30 minutes of videos produced by Precision Outreach, a Houston-based marketing company. 

An extra $50,000 is headed to the company, KOKH Fox 25 News reported Tuesday.

KOKH found from an open records request that OSDE is paying $150 an hour for the company to assist in creating 10 social media posts and two videos a month, at $7,500 a month. The company is also tasked with publishing video clips from board meetings.

Ryan Walters’ team history

Walter’s current senior advisor, Matt Langston, has a history with the president of Precision Outreach, Jess Fields.

Fields ran for a House seat in the Texas legislature as a Republican in 2016 and lost.

Langston worked on Field’s campaign while he was the vice president of Axiom Strategies. Records show that Fields’ campaign paid Axiom Strategies $104,348.61. Langston was paid $9,000.

When FOX 25 reached out to Fields for comment, he denied.

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Fox 25 received a statement from an OSDE spokesman stating, “Superintendent Walters is deeply committed to bringing dramatic change to Oklahoma schools, and will not allow the left-wing media to misrepresent his ideas to Oklahomans.”

Shawna Mott-Wright, President of Tulsa Classroom Teachers told the Black Wall Street Times the OSDE should not be spending state dollars on derogatory videos made by out-of-state vendors.

“Our State Department of Education should be using state dollars to provide much-needed support for our students, not on more videos that perpetuate false, negative narratives that create unnecessary divisiveness,” Mott-Wright said. “Oklahoma’s taxpayer money should not be going to our of state entities who do not value our communities and schools.”