Thousands Of Teachers Rally At State Capitol For Education Funding

Thousands of teachers and their supporters are at the State Capitol Monday morning to rally support for education funding.

Teachers say when you have less funding, you have classrooms that are too full. The ratio of students to teachers is so off-balance that providing them with a quality education is getting to be more of a challenge.

That's going to be the message from educators at the Capitol when they arrive Monday morning for that rally, then meet with state legislators.

The Oklahoma Education Coalition says public education in our state has been on the decline since 2009. There are 35,000 more kids in our public schools, but $200 million less funding.

It also says our state has taken greater per pupil cuts than any other state, and without raises for our teachers, many of them look for work in other states which offer more competitive pay.

"We're graduating really soon and we're looking for jobs. And because of the lack of funding for education, we won't be able to get jobs where we want to be," student teacher Emily Durbin said.

Not everyone is supporting this rally. Some parents argue these teachers need to be in the classroom teaching the students rather than here at the Capitol.

The rally kicks off at 10:30 a.m.

Dave Lopez, Interim Superintendent of the OKCPS, released the following statement,

"Our students have missed a significant amount of instructional time this year due to inclement weather days, and I am not certain that the planned rally is a convincing approach to advocate for more school funding. Our teachers can use a personal business day if they wish to participate in the rally, but as a District we will not take part."