Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters awarded nearly $600,000 in end-of-year bonuses to Department of Education staff in 2024.

Most employees received an amount equal to 2.5% of their annual salary, an average of $1,700.

A few received significantly higher amounts, payroll data shows. They include the department’s chief academic officer, Walters’ executive assistant, the director of social studies and the open records coordinator.

Chief Policy Advisor Matt Langston received nearly $45,000 in January, $34,000 more than a typical paycheck, according to payroll data on the state’s transparency website. It’s unclear whether that reflects a raise, a bonus, or both. It’s coded as regular pay. A spokeswoman for Walters, Grace Kim, would not answer questions.

“The press office does not comment on personnel matters,” Kim said.

Langston is one of the agency’s highest-paid employees, earning approximately $130,000 in 2024, which is estimated because three months of the agency’s payroll data are missing from the website.

Langston ran Walters’ 2022 campaign for superintendent and is CEO of the Austin, Texas, based political consulting firm, Engage Right. The firm last year worked with Texas House candidate Stormy Bradley, public ethics reports show. Bradley was defeated in the Republican primary in March.

Langston is registered to vote in Texas, records show, indicating he’s not an Oklahoma resident. Governor Kevin Stitt ended remote work for state employees as of February 1, and Walters did so for his staff in early 2023.

In June, a group of lawmakers asked Attorney General Gentner Drummond to investigate whether Langston was a so-called ghost employee. Republican and former House member Mark McBride, who initiated the request, defined a ghost employee as “an individual who is listed on the payroll but does not actually perform the duties associated with their position.” That, he said, would constitute a misuse of public funds and undermine public trust.

Drummond declined to pursue the investigation.

Langston did not respond to an email or phone call seeking comment. Kim, a spokeswoman for the department, said the press office would not comment on personnel matters. Questions sent to general counsel Michael Beason and program manager Kellie Keefe were referred back to Kim.

Public employees’ gross pay, dates of employment and title or position are public record under Oklahoma law.

The department paid more than $600,000 in bonuses to staff in December, payroll records show. Walters did not receive one; the superintendent’s salary is set in statute at $124,373.

Chief Academic Officer Todd Loftin received an additional $18,000 in December; the records show he received an additional $15,000 in July as well. Loftin earns $120,000 a year.

The records show that Lexi Flanagan, Walters’ executive assistant, and Brenda Beymer-Chapman, the agency’s director of social studies, each received just over $9,000, about 13% of their respective salaries. Flanagan graduated from McAlester High School in 2016, where Walters was a history and U.S. government teacher.

Marley Billingsley, the agency’s open records coordinator, received a bonus of just under $9,000.

In addition to the agency-wide end-of-year bonuses, Walters intends to implement a performance-based bonus program at the agency this month, according to an email dated December 12. In the email, he told staff those bonuses would be paid this month and tied to annual performance evaluations.

We asked Kim to provide details of this initiative but did not receive a response before publication.

Walters, in his agency’s budget request to the Legislature, requested an additional $2.3 million to cover a 6% cost-of-living salary increase for Education Department staff and an increase in benefit costs. Senators in an appropriations committee meeting in February questioned the need to fund a cost-of-living increase, considering the department has decreased its employee count.

He told the committee the agency employed 520 people when he took office in January 2023. There were 387 on the payroll as of January 31, according to the state’s transparency website.

Oklahoma Watch reporter Paul Monies contributed to this report.

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While its effort to buy Bibles for classrooms is tied up in court, the Oklahoma Department of Education initiated a new vendor search to purchase materials containing Bible-infused character lessons for elementary-aged students.

The department is looking to buy supplemental instructional materials containing age-appropriate biblical content that demonstrates how biblical figures influenced the United States. Additionally, the materials must emphasize virtues, significant historical events, and key figures throughout Oklahoma history, according to bid documents published Friday.

The request for proposals doesn’t specify how many copies the state wants to buy, only that the vendor must be willing to ship directly to districts.

Like the Bibles the department sought in the fall, this request could be challenged under the state constitution, which prohibits public money from being spent for religious purposes.

“This RFP seems to be another constitutional violation,” said Alex Luchenitser, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and one of the attorneys representing Oklahomans in the Bible lawsuit.

“It seeks to inject the Bible into public school curricula, and only refers to the Bible and doesn’t refer to any other religious texts, so it’s clearly a move to push Christianity,” he said.

The Education Department wants the character materials to align with Oklahoma’s new social studies standards, which have been revised to contain more than 40 references to the Bible and Christianity, compared to two in the current version. But the proposed standards haven’t been approved.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is expected to present the standards to the Board of Education at its next meeting, scheduled for Thursday. It will be the first time the board meets since Gov. Kevin Stitt replaced three members. If approved, the standards will move to the Legislature for consideration.

The standards review committee included several nationally prominent conservatives: Dennis Prager of PragerU, David Barton of the Christian Nationalist organization Wallbuilders, and the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.

While standards guide what schools are to teach, school districts have sole authority to choose curriculum and books.

In November, the state abruptly canceled a search to buy 55,000 King James Bibles, an effort that attracted criticism for appearing to exclude all Bibles except an expensive version endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Walters vowed to reissue that request, but a coalition of parents, students, teachers and faith leaders asked the Oklahoma State Supreme Court to block the purchase and Walters’ mandate to teach the Bible.

The Office of Management and Enterprise Services, the state’s central purchasing agency, also wants to wait. It asked the court for an order allowing it to delay the new Bible request for proposals until the case is resolved. Two OMES employees are named in the lawsuit.

This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.