Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome meeting. It's time now for our community connection right here on Kate one, the one you trust. We have Republican and another Conservatives in Washington County here and boy, today we're going to have a nice little talk about education. First of all, Jessica Kross is with us, and so is Charlie Daniels. I'll start with you, Jessica. We've got a meeting coming up here, pretty darn.
Do we do.
Thank you for having us, Tom. We always enjoy our time here. We enjoy having Our monthly meeting is next Tuesday, February fourth, at six thirty pm Crossing Second. Good and we welcome everyone to join us. We have a wonderful informative topic that can affect every household and if it doesn't necessarily affect yours, your neighbors, your grandkids.
And by the way, Jessica I mentioned at Crossing Second, you can get food and drink for all they are listening to the interesting conversations there.
Absolutely, we encourage people to come early and order from the lovely menu that Sharon and Dan have going on there, and they can also order during the meeting as well they can.
It's a great thing. And the.
Real sliders who just divine I can recommend them enthusiastically.
It sounds like you had a few. Yeah, I have, probably a few too many. But now we're going to be talking about education.
Yes, school choice.
School, that's a biggie. It has been for quite a while here in Oklahoma.
School or not school, depending on how you do this, how you do it, how you define it.
You define it. That's right. New homeschool. I do we home educate? Yes? Yes, home educate? Is that the new term?
That's just the term that I.
Okay, we're going to have at the at the program, we'll have Kay Little who has almost founded homeschooling in Martlesville, and it's it's a real interesting landscape now.
You look at it. Homeschooling was the first kind of schooling back in the.
Cave Mandays when it was instead of home, Sweet Home, it was Cave Sweet Cave. And Papa Ogg was teaching little Og how to skin a bear, skin a sabertooth cat. Here you go, son used this, use this stone knife, and eh, Dad, that's yucky.
But this is how you did and how they learned.
And then we graduated to Hunt, Sweet Hunt, and we and we.
Got a little agriculture going, got a little agriculture.
Yeah, drop the seed in the hole, son, and that's that's how you did that. But now it's become very sophisticated. It's enshrined in the Oklahoma Constitution. We are, I think, the only state in the country where the constitution guarantees your right to homeschool, and out of that has proliferated. You've got single family homeschoolers like yourself. You've got pods, you've got co ops, you've got Classical Conversation which one day a week takes some in a more structured environment.
And you've got Cornerstone Classical Academy, which is two days a week that, by the way, is about to get accredited as a school, as an accredited school, very fine school.
It is. Been out there and they looked at it and they know what they're doing.
Yes, they do wonderful leadership, and the students really enjoy going there.
Yeah, they do all of those options.
Jessica, do you have any idea how many homeschoolers there are?
I do not.
I don't either neither. It is okay, but we think it's hundreds of absolutely.
I would definitely say hundreds because, as you mentioned, if you're involved in either of those programs, or we have numerous co ops throughout Bartlesville as well. And then families that aren't necessarily attached to a certain co op but.
Are homeschooling their children.
Yeah, and during during COVID, of course, everybody became a homeschooler for a while, it seemed like. And I had a friend who said, I used to laugh at preppers and homeschoolers, and now I'm doing both. And a lot of people continued after the crisis passed, as it were, so homeschooling really got a boost out of the whole thing.
But that also brought up the virtual options.
It did other charter.
School options other than just your private schools and the public schools.
It did.
Indeed, I'm glad you brought up the virtual because we all went virtual around here if you were trying to do any kind of formal schooling. But Bartlesville has a full time virtual school. And when the superintendent of education at Oklahoma City said we've all got to shut down for a while while we learned this virtual thing, we held our hand up and said we don't.
We got to take care.
It's Oklahoma Connect Academy. We don't have a big building. It's in one of those little office parks off of No Water Road to the entrance to Woodland Park. But got about fourteen hundred students students says state wide, and it's a real interesting school.
They asked me to get on the board.
And I've always thought I don't know about educating a kid sitting in front of a computer screen. But they explain to me that there is a thin slice of the population of students in the state. They don't thrive in a classroom. They just don't. And maybe the parents can't homeschool for one reason or other. This is a viable alternative. And the thing that sold me when they said if you miss if you miss fifth hour on Tuesday because you have a broken tooth or something, you've
missed fifth hour on Tuesday. But in virtual school, you can pick that class up at midnight on Friday if you want to, if you want to, that's an interesting thing to do.
Yeah, and you definitely mentioned that how all of these can work with the children and how best do they learn how their home environment thrives exactly right, their schedules and if they have other pursuits that might not or that might operate during the time frame that they would be.
Indeed, indeed, the virtual school had had a young lady high school girl who was trying to play her way on to the w PGA. So she was traveling around the Midwest and entering into golf tournaments. Well, that really did knock a hole in the conventional schedule, which she carried her laptop with you her and she did her lessons in between rounds. But let me let's let's shift over to to the virtual idea.
There there. Bartlesville Public does virtual school.
I do not know how many kids take advantage of it, but I know some do. And there's a new school choice and I'm going to use that in its broadest term with public schools. They passed a law in twenty twenty two allowing free transfer.
Between public schools.
If you don't like your school over on this side of town, you can go to the school on that side of town. And it's pretty free.
Now.
It was pretty free in Bartlesville anyway, and between here and Dewey, but this is this is codified, and it is very free now. If there's a space available, but that in shifts us into private schools. Yes, and we've got about five of them here, depending on how you classify a corner zone, which is we'll get back to that here in a second. But you've got Saint John's,
You've got Wesleyan Christian. You've got Beacon Academy. Beacon Academy, which is a small school, about thirty five or thirty six students, but it's knocking the top side of the vent.
They're learning Latin in the first grade.
I love that we have friends who attend that she is just thriving in that environment.
Yeah.
Yeah, And then there's there's Cornerstone as we met, and I don't want to forget paths to independence for children who are autistic. There is no better school in the state of Oklahoma.
Probably.
Yeah.
People move, people move here in order to get autistic children into PGI and it's just a wonderful place. You can get into Peacha. It's if you pay the tuition out of pocket. It's expensive, but there is a thing called the Lindsay Nicole Henry Scholarship for Disabled Children and it fits perfectly. You get an I E. P or for five oh one, five oh four. I'm talking jargon here,
but people who have disabled kids know what I'm talking about. Uh. And you go there and you present it, and you can get the loose eaton coal scholarship and it is a doozy. Uh. Then we've got we've got a contributory, a voluntary tax credit scholarship that was enacted a year later. This is where people contribute money towards the fund of that provides the scholarships and they get these great tax credits, and I mean they're whoppers, they're they're they're really good.
And then schools can apply to get these scholarships. Works for Saint John's, works for Westland Christian, Uh, will work.
For any Peachi, of course.
Uh, it will work for any accredited school in Oklahoma.
Which brings me to a point.
All public schools are accredited, including the virtuals School. UH. Saint John's is accredited, Westland Christian is accredited, Cornerstone's about to be accredited.
PTI's accredited, And.
I know that Beacon is working on it. They're they're they're beavering away on that very thing.
And this is great, This is good to know.
It's yeah, and a lot of people don't know it. That's true.
They think they think of private schools, they think of Holland Hall.
It's also or Casha Hall.
Those are expensive, they're great schools, they're elite schools, and they cost a bundle. But but the average private school cost in Oklahoma is between eight and nine thousand dollars. And that's just where where Westland Christian hits. Saint John's is about one thousand more. But we're we're around that mid range. And you can get You can get scholarships, which leads me to the biggie they got passed a year or two ago, the Parent Choice Tax Credit Scholarship.
That's how to get it right. I know, I'm throwing a thicket of terms.
Can I remember you being here a couple of years ago explaining that too.
Oh gosh, it's so good. And it basically provides parents of any means, whether you're rich or poor or middle class, you can get one of these scholarships by applying for it. They're skewing toward the lower income kids right now.
But they're building up to the others.
The least you can get is five thousand dollars towards towards tuition The most you can get is seventy five hundred, which is starting to crowd those averages pretty nicely. If Beacon gets credited, they're only charging thirty five to forty five hundred.
Dollars right now, they're a bargain.
Cornerstone is five thousand to fifty five hundred dollars, so that's a bargain too. If we can get them over the line, that Parent Choice Tax Credit is going to be a real life saver. Do you look like you were about to ask a question?
No, you know, I just wish this was around when most of my kids were Yeah, we're younger.
Most of my kids now are in their forties. They're no longer eligible.
Tome.
I'm so sorry. The grandkids are yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah they are.
Well, I think back to forty or fifty years ago when we were all sending kids to when a lot of people were sending kids to school.
What kid?
What school did you send your kid to? Well, you went out and you looked at your street of dress, and your street address told you not. In so many words, I've gone out and tried to converse with my street of dress. It is remarkably smute on talk.
We are, but it did tell you where to send your kid, and sometimes that was a good choice and sometimes it didn't work with a flip, And so that's the great thing about how we do it now.
So you know this way, we've got a lot of choices, We've got a lot of flexibility. And I think this conversation you're going to have coming up on Tuesday at the crossing second at six, this is going to be well worth your time and your energy and your attention.
Absolutely is going to be one of our main speakers along with Kay Little.
As you mentioned, Kat Kay Little knows all, sees all, tells all about homeschooling.
I've tried to hit the tops of the.
Waves and Jessica knows how to do it, so he's good.
So you've got to go to it from all directions.
But the great thing about the thing on on Tuesday night is you can get food and drink, as we've mentioned, and you can ask questions and.
We're gonna I'm going to come with a PowerPoint.
I seldom knew these things, but I've got one ginned up and uh, you can ask questions.
We'll go into it and the greater.
To tap in depth and Uh, this thicket of acronyms and letters and things like that will all be explained.
Oh, that is going to be great.
Yes, it is really going to be great.
So if if you're a parent, or a young couple looking to have kids, or if you already have children, or if you have grandchildren.
Just an interested members.
Ever the community, come on out and get a mindfuls right.
Yes, we welcome everybody and they can find more information out on our Facebook page by searching for R O C. W C Republican and other Conservatives of questions.
And they're gonna ask.
They can ask all great questions like well, doesn't just take money away from the public schools, but we'll explain.
Why there is a formula that's right, that's right.
Yeah, but this this will be good, Yes, it will be No.
I want to thank you both for coming again again and once again. That's Tuesday, February fourth, six thirty pm. Crossing second the topic school choice, and that is Republican and other Conservatives, Washington County Rock ond Kids. That's all right, thank you very much for being with its pre needs are completely transferable in the United States from funeral home to funeral home, and in Oklahoma,