A University of Oklahoma instructor, who reportedly identifies as transgender, has been placed on leave amid an investigation into whether he discriminated against a student who cited Christian beliefs to reject the claim that there are more than two genders.
On December 2, 2025, the Home Builders Association of Greater Tulsa and HBA Charitable Foundation will host a construction career fair called Build My Future: Rogers County at the Claremore Expo Center. This event will host more than 250 high school students from 9:30 AM–1:30 PM.
The Home Builders Association has identified the #1 issue in the construction industry as the lack of a quality workforce to complete jobs on time and on budget. We are taking part in an annual event to encourage the next generation to continue their education through construction programs and eventually enter our industry as more qualified employees.
Moms for Liberty – Tulsa County is asserting “a serious governance failure” at Tulsa Classical Academy (TCA) as the administration eliminated public comment from its school board meetings. This is a significant departure from the standard practice of publicly funded schools allowing citizen input. As an independent charter district, TCA operates without the standard oversight, electoral accountability or established grievance pathways found in most public school districts. Legislators say this makes openness even more essential – not optional and many are speaking out on the troubling change of procedure.
Debunking the Partisan Myth of the “Southern Surge”
This Sunday morning, as I sipped my coffee and scrolled through the latest headlines, I stumbled across yet another piece framing the “Southern Surge”—the remarkable literacy gains in states like Mississippi and Louisiana—as a red-state triumph over blue-state failures.
As a conservative educator with a passion for teaching kids to read, I’d love to cheer for a partisan win. But let’s be honest: this red-versus-blue narrative is a lazy oversimplification that muddies the real story. It lets Oklahoma off the hook for a literacy crisis that’s left 73% of our third-graders non-proficient in reading (Oklahoma State Department of Education [OSDE], 2023a; National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2022).
This isn’t about politics. It’s about an entrenched bureaucracy that’s squandered $150–250 million over the past decade on outdated, ineffective programs, leaving our kids to struggle while other states soar. Let’s celebrate the Southern Surge’s success by crediting its true drivers—explicit, systematic instruction over politics—and demand Oklahoma learn from it.
Oklahoma State University’s Hargis Leadership Institute is established to mentor the leaders of today and tomorrow; now in a newly renovated space. Nearly four years to the day after its launch, HLI was the site of another ribbon-cutting ceremony. This time, for its revamped home on the second floor of the Student Union.
“The Hargis Leadership Institute empowers our students to lead with character, humility and purpose,” OSU President Jim Hess said. “It’s about learning how to lift others, living the Cowboy Code and making a difference in the world.”
