The Second Session of the 59th Oklahoma Legislature officially adjourned for 2024. At best, it was a mixed bag for children; despite that, the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy (OICA) saw some great wins for children.
Still, there were far too many issues about which child advocates care that lawmakers refused to pass. In fact, some child advocates referred to this session as “an absolute dumpster fire” for children’s issues.
An important win was House Bill 2102, known as The Hope Shaffer Act by Rep. Forrest Bennett, D-OKC, and Sen. Brenda Stanley, R-Midwest City, requires driver education classes to get waivers from parents of students if a youth learning to drive will be operating the vehicle with other children as passengers. The measure is named for a young lady who lost her life in a driver education car driven by a student driver.
Senate Bill 1324 by Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, and Rep. Mark Lawson, R-Sapulpa, requires the state Education Department create an optional electronic universal application for free or reduced-price meals, making it far easier and less costly for the state to process benefits for Oklahoma families.
This is important, especially since the governor refused to accept $40 million of federal summer food funding for Oklahoma families. To partially address that loss, Senate Bill 1192 by Senator Chuck Hall, R-Perry, and Rep. Kevin Wallace, R-Wellston, moved $8,085,454 from the state Commerce Department to Oklahoma Human Services to increase funds for the grant program supporting affordable and nutritious lunches for children.
It was not all good news for Oklahoma’s children. House Bill 1028 would have banned corporal punishment for many special needs students in 10 percent of state public school districts still allowing teachers to hit special needs students. This was not brough to the floor for a vote despite having a majority of state representatives committing support, truly making this a national embarrassment. We are working with attorneys to develop a solution outside the legislative process.
House Bill 4147 by Rep. Suzanne Schreiber, D-Tulsa, and Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, would have created a modest childcare tax credit for businesses that help employees struggling to pay the prohibitive cost of childcare. The Legislature did allocate $2 million more for childcare support services, but significantly more is needed to meet the skyrocketing statewide demand for childcare services.
Senate Bill 1278 by Sen. Jessica Garvin, R-Duncan, and Rep. Nick Archer, R-Elk City, would have provided for paid maternity leave for higher education employees; they were unintentionally left out of last year’s bill which saw a tremendous move forward to provide for maternity leave to state and public-school employees. Senate Bill 1315 by Senator Pugh and Rep. Rhonda Baker, R-Yukon, would have created an adoption leave program similar to maternity leave.
Other issues lawmakers chose to not support were the Dolly Parton Imagination Book project, at-home therapeutic care services, and many of the concepts offered by Governor Stitt’s 2023 Child Welfare Task Force for improving foster care services.
OICA will continue to work on those issues which were not passed; please join us in calling on lawmakers to address these issues in 2025. Interim studies, the formal review of concepts by lawmakers, will be limited as this is an election year, but we will still seek studies on these and many other good bills which were not passed.
Please reach out to OICA at https://www.oica.org if you have suggestions for a good study which we can pass along to lawmakers. And, of course, you can be involved by taking part in this year’s elections by asking questions to candidates. Primary Elections are held on Tuesday, June 18, so please exercise your civic duty and vote!
