Oklahoma school chief misled board to put election denial into lessons: lawsuit

A new lawsuit filed by Oklahoma parents alleges that the controversial pro-MAGA state superintendent misled the state Board of Education to get them to sign off on a curriculum that puts 2020 election denial into official school lesson plans, The Washington Post reported on Thursday evening.

The new curriculum, approved in February with the blessing of Superintendent Ryan Walters, instructs students in Oklahoma public schools to analyze key moments in 21st century politics, including what he calls “discrepancies in 2020 elections results" — accompanied by baseless conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump's loss not adding up, like that mail-in ballots weren't secure and that "batch dumps" of ballots late at night during the electoral count were somehow illegitimate.

But, according to the lawsuit, Walters never actually revealed to the board members voting on the curriculum that it included election denial.

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"At least three board members said [after the curriculum passed] they did not know Walters had added the election-related item to the standards before the 5-1 vote, the Oklahoma Voice reported in April," said the report. "'We were unaware that the version we received (almost 400 pages of documents) at 4 p.m. the day before the meeting had changes to what the public reviewed,' Christopher Van Denhende, one of the three board members, told The Washington Post."

This discrepancy forms the basis of the parental lawsuit against the standards, which brought arguments before Oklahoma County Judge C. Brent Dishman on Wednesday. Dishman declined to issue a temporary order blocking the standards, but is expected to make a definitive ruling in coming weeks.

As all this is going on, the report noted, "other parents opposed to the standards’ content are circulating opt-out forms to remove their children from the future lessons."

Walters, who has previously compared teachers unions to terrorists and ordered schools to take state-purchased "God Bless the USA Bibles" endorsed by Trump, denies misleading the board and says the standards are designed to prevent "liberal indoctrination" in schools. He has gone on cable news to defend the standards, but has often faced rigorous challenges to his claims.