This session has been one with many meetings and committee meetings about mental health, health, pandemics, and infrastructure.
I recently met with the new CEO of the Oklahoma Dept. of Human Services, Dr. Deborah Shropshire, as well as Deputy Director Austin Marshall. We discussed ways to protect our daycares should we find ourselves facing another pandemic.
A bill I filed this year, House Bill 1043, would initiate that daycares receive payment based on both attendance and enrollment.
During the pandemic, a number of daycares were forced to close. At that time, I met with former DHS leaders Justin Brown and Samantha Galloway. We determined that after federal COVID funding ran out, we should address paying daycares through this new combined method of attendance and enrollment.
With this scenario, if many of the children were not able to attend daycare, the daycares would receive half of the money per child rather than losing the entirety of the money for children not showing up. If an individual could still go to work during the pandemic, this would ensure that the doors would still be open for childcare.
The new administration wants to take time to look at this method, so the bill will be held until the next session.
On Tuesday, I debated against House Bill 1028, which would stop all corporal punishment in public schools for special needs children. The debate stopped the bill with a 45 to 43 vote.
In my debate, I emphasized that discipline is a complicated matter. It’s important for people to understand that we use positive discipline because 92% of our children respond to it. That means that 7% of the children will require consequences in addition to positive reinforcement, and 1% of the children will be difficult to manage and we may not be able to correct their behaviors.
We need to balance out discipline and nurturing with children at an early age. If there is not discipline at a young age, this will occur later in middle school or high school with the police. If it is not addressed at this age, these individuals may end up in prison or, at the very least, not become the best adult they can be.
I wrote my dissertation on “Managing Aggressive Children in the Classroom.” We established positive discipline programs in over 67 schools in Oklahoma.
There are many times that I work with foster children and one of the most common statements they say is “you can’t touch me” to feel like they’re protecting themselves. If this bill had passed, you may have started hearing this same thing with special needs students in the classrooms.
Within the state, corporal punishment such as spanking is rarely utilized. Occasionally parents must have the options to reinforce the teacher using this discipline to stop a behavior. This technique is never used without informed consent from parents.
The bill does not give blanket permission to use corporal punishment, but our current laws allow parents again to make choices for their kids while in school. All that I asked by debating this bill was to leave this discipline in local control with the parents.
Remember that discipline is not abuse – it is a form of teaching the prized of our possessions: our children.
I will continue to release articles so you can keep up with what’s happening in this office. When you have a concern or issue, please call my Capitol office at (405) 557-7375. I will return calls as quickly as a I can regarding issues within our counties.
Rep. Randy Randleman, a Republican, represents House District 15 in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. His district includes McIntosh and Haskell counties and portions of Muskogee, Le Flore and Pittsburg counties.
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