FCPE: What level of funding do you believe Oklahoma’s K-12 public schools need, and as State Superintendent, what would you do to advocate for funding?
William Crozier: “I’ve worked with kids for some time. My project would be to reduce the costs of administrators and administration. Also, keep our money that’s going to Washington D.C. at home. Have to meet with the governor and do the law on part of that.
“And right now, of course, you probably know, truck drivers get $100,000 a year. Of course, they don’t get to come home. I’ve driven trucks for a year one time from Detroit to Laredo.
“So, they would need to get the salaries up. There’s too many deductions for health, too many deductions for retirement, too many reductions for other things for school teachers.
“So, my project would be to reduce the number of administrators considerably; take the school districts, not consolidate the schools, but the districts so that each district has between 50 and 100,000 people in it. According to the National Assessment Guidelines.”
FCPE: Okay. So just to clarify, you believe that the funding is in the right area right now but that we need to reduce costs. Would that be what you’re saying?
William Crozier: “For teachers’ salaries, pretty much. For schools, you know, most of the superintendents, what they’re worried about is building these school buildings and so forth.
“And Humphreys – I may (not) have been (at) too many school board meetings since 1964 when I graduated. Humphreys, when he was running on the school board before they built PC North, he owned the land. He couldn’t understand why he had to resign. School board still bought his land from him.”
FCPE: Do you support using public funds for tuition for private schools?
William Crozier: “Okay. I sort of answered that last. Public schools should not take the hit when people want to go to a different school. Mainly public.
“And I think we ought to have some competitions. We always had private schools when I was growing up, kids from the Catholic schools would come over to the public schools, I think the sixth or seventh grade.
“So, they would – we can give them some kind of vouchers like we do with the motion picture business – presumably when they go to school.
“Of course, the big controversy was Epic. I don’t know how much money; I consider that money being stolen.”
FCPE: As State Superintendent, what would you do to recruit and retain a larger number of high-quality teachers and education support professionals in Oklahoma?
One of the jobs that I had once was teaching air traffic controllers. They have very sophisticated, very smart people. But when it comes to getting promoted, they didn’t know to treat their underlings.
Some of these things are done now, your ship, my ship, semi-military things. And we have a basically antiquated system, in my opinion, of how we get feedback. Say I say I’ll consult and join, is what’s it’s called. So, we need to have more input.
To me, the archaic system, more than just the money, is why people don’t stay in educational system. They don’t like the administration.
I mean, it’s 150 years old. Let’s do something different. Different teachers in their different groups can do the committees to figure out what they want to teach and how they want to handle their programs in their school.
The other thing, of course, is the State textbook committee. I have a battle going on with them some time.
FCPE: What is your position on educating the whole child?
“Well, to me, everybody should have the opportunity. The problem is everybody doesn’t learn in the same way. Being special ed. teacher, you have to teach people in a different way than you have to do the really smart ones.
“People move across the country to get rid of what they call the elitist ones, but those people contribute more.
“The other countries in the world, you don’t have those elitist people who want to make political changes because they’re too busy getting rid of the corruption of the government.
“So to me, the whole child, it’s just, like, “No Child Left Behind,” to me that’s one of the efforts that went through, I think, Oklahoma education.
“The only school I knew that complied — which is in trouble now by different people — is Western Heights. They’re the only ones that followed the federal mandates and could get it done. Finally, it just went away.
“Did that answer your question?”
FCPE: Yes.
William Crozier: I think everybody should — I think all of those kids should have choices of what they want to do.”
