Education Food Fight: Oklahoma's Right-wingers Get Nasty

Whoa Nelly! The education food fight in Oklahoma is heating up, with some of the state's right-wingers spouting off in hyperbolic terms. 

The dust-up (pun intended) began the other day when one of Superintendent Janet Barresi's staffers, Jennifer Carter, called some Tulsa-area educators "dirtbags" for their legal challenge to a new state law.

The law involves private school scholarships for special-needs children, which Jenks and Broken Arrow officials say is unconstitutional.

Poor choice of words, Barresi explained. You think?

Now, conservative OCU law professor Andrew Spiropoulous has unloaded on the school officials, referring to "the thuggish tactics of the school mafia and their legal henchmen." And "school mafia"? Really?

It's hard to see how filing a lawsuit is "thuggish," but that's what the good professor wrote in the Journal Record.

And Rep. Jason Nelson, Republican of Oklahoma City, claimed that Jenks and Broken Arrow were "persecuting" the special-needs children, though that too seems far from the truth. 

But wait, there's more! "I've got news for them [Jenks and BA school officials]. Get used to it. Oklahoma citizens will no longer stand by while wealthy [?] school bureaucrats abuse their power," Nelson said.

Of course, filing a lawsuit is not "persecuting" children, nor are these bureaucrats necessarily acting against the will of the people.

One other thing: Janet Barresi and Jennifer Carter are education bureaucrats too, and, for all we know, wealthy.