OKLAHOMA CITY — State Superintendent Ryan Walters released a video on his social media pages attempting to assure Oklahoma families their children’s public schools are safe, but in the video he also took credit for something he had to be legally forced by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond to do last year.
In the wake of the Minnesota Catholic school shooting that occurred earlier this week, Walters took to social media and sent out a press release where he said school safety was a top priority and stated his agency is spending record levels on school safety measures like school resource officers.
My thoughts and prayers are with the Minnesota families as they navigate yesterday’s events. I want parents to know that protecting the next generation of Oklahomans is my top priority, and every child entering an Oklahoma school is supported and safe. pic.twitter.com/yfmC96H2Ux
— Ryan Walters (@RyanWalters_) August 28, 2025
“Here in Oklahoma, we have made record investments and done as much as we can with our resources to ensure the safety of all of our students,” said Walters in a video he posted to X. “With the help of the legislature, we have provided school resource officers for our schools. We’ve also provided over 6,000 school administrators training on how to assess threat levels in our schools.”
Walters referred to the school safety funds spent on enhanced safety measures in his press release as well.
“Protecting Oklahoma’s children is my top priority,” Walters said. “From training teachers, to ensuring schools have the right tools in place for emergencies, we are setting a national standard for how school safety should be done. Parents can know with certainty that Oklahoma is leading the way in safeguarding our classrooms and their children.”
However, it was a battle for local school districts to obtain the money for the safety programs Walters is referring to in his statements. That battle led to an investigation by both the Oklahoma State Legislature and Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond just a year ago.
FOX23 reported in August 2024 when multiple school districts reached out to state legislators asking why the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) was making it difficult for them to access one of their segments of $150 million in newly created funds passed by state lawmakers in 2023.
Schools were supposed to receive $50 million a year over the course of three years to help them hire more school resource officers and purchase other safety equipment for their schools.
Some districts wanted to save their portion of the funds over the three years to make one large purchase with the entire $150 million, while others wanted to make security purchases over the course of those three years.
However, when schools went to access their second payment installment in 2024, OSDE had zeroed out unused balances and provided no explanation for why it was done.
At that point, districts began to contact state lawmakers with their concerns.
These concerns were coupled with other complaints from school districts that OSDE wasn’t letting them purchase emergency inhalers they could use onsite for students, despite the state legislature appropriating money allowing them to do so and requiring the inhalers by law.
According to OSDE, the language about the money and when it had to be spent was confusing and vague.
As other complaints with OSDE surfaced, then-House Education Appropriations Chairman State Representative Mark McBride (R-Oklahoma City) and then-House Speaker Charles McCall (R-Atoka) asked the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT) to look at the multiple concerns lawmakers had received from school districts across the state regarding OSDE not giving them the money set aside for them by the state legislature to purchase safety measures.
McCall and McBride promised the LOFT investigation and the LOFT committee were going to get to the bottom of what was happening with the safety funds.
Walters then held a news conference in front of Governor Kevin Stitt’s office and accused McCall of trying to impeach him, saying doing so would make the governor’s race easier for McCall in the 2026 election.
At the time, McCall had not announced he was running for governor, though he has announced his intention to run since.
Currently, Walters hasn’t announced his own intentions for his political future.
At the press conference in August 2024, Walters said, “We don’t need to wait. We do not need to wait on a LOFT committee. We do not need to wait on an investigation. It is time to start the proceedings immediately. The Speaker wants to impeach me for political advantage in the 2026 governor’s race, so then let’s start the impeachment proceedings.”
Afterwards, Walters asked AG Drummond, who also hadn’t at that time announced his intention to run for governor, to look into OSDE’s accounting practices and their interpretation of state law. Walters said his agency was confused by the wording of the legislation involving school safety and that was why the funds were not able to be accessed by school districts.
After LOFT’s investigation, the agency said they believe no criminal wrongdoing occurred, but said the agency had miscommunicated and then didn’t communicate its misunderstanding of budgetary language.
The LOFT report stated:
“The problems with SRO (school resource officer) funds arose primarily due to communication issues; agency departments were not communicating clearly with each other, which resulted in incorrect communications to school districts. Additionally, when changes to the guidance were made on SDE’s website, they were not communicated. SDE did not notify districts of the change until after the Attorney General required SDE to reverse course.”
When Drummond issued his legally binding opinion on the matter, he was harsh in his tone in a separate letter sent to Walters about OSDE’s actions.
“Those wasted months have resulted in school districts not receiving millions of dollars in funds they could have used to bolster security and protect students,” Drummond stated. “I pray that your failure to deploy these funds does not result in deadly consequences.”
Drummond said the legislative intent in the school safety funds that OSDE and Walters was withholding was clear, and stated OSDE was the one being inconsistent and refusing to acknowledge it was wrong.
In his legally binding opinion on the matter, Drummond wrote:
“The Department also advised school districts that their funds were available for carryover throughout the three-year program period but, arbitrarily and without notice, reversed course and zeroed out the district’s balances.”
Immediately after the opinion was released, Walters announced OSDE was letting districts access their security funds again as originally expected by lawmakers and school districts.
To view the letter sent to State Superintendent Ryan Walters regarding the school safety funds along with AG Drummond’s opinion on the situation, click here.
The first page is Attorney General Drummond’s letter to Walters, while the rest of the document contains the Attorney General’s Opinion.
