OK: A Triggered Voucher Bill

I have read many, many voucher bills, a truly thankless task because they are numbingly similar, displaying about as much variation as pages from an old hand-cranked mimeograph machine.

But in Oklahoma, I have found something legitimately new. A voucher bill (one of several ed disrupt, defund and dismantle bills out there) that doesn't just provide a trigger warning, but an actual trigger payoff. 

The bill is courtesy of Senator Shane Jett, who does not look like a frail snowflake, and yet... Perhaps he's worn out from trying spending his years pushing bills to ban CRT and SEL and who knows what other letters of the alphabet.

This education savings account style bill has all the usual accoutrements, from the laundry list of education-adjacent items ending with "any other damn thing you can get past the agency we hire to run this for us." It has the special hands off rules so that the state won't try to interrupt education vendors when they are discriminating against LGBTQ folks or performing religious indoctrination or teaching kids how to be wonderful nazis.

But it has something those other voucher bills don't have.

Triggers.

By the rules of SB 943, two groups of students are eligible for the Oklahoma Parent Empowerment Act for Kids (PEAK) vouchers. Students who live (or whose parents work) in a county with more than 10,000 people, and students who live in counties with fewer than 10,000 people but who attend school in a Trigger District.

What, you ask, is a Trigger District? It appears to be a district that district that does anything that could trigger a right wing culture warrior. There's a list of triggers, which starts out with some three violations of Oklahoma's Title 70, including don't do gender/diversity training. Then things take a turn. As God is my witness, I am not making up any of the following triggers that can trigger conservatives into putting the school on the trigger list. The exact language is any district in which the following are "advocated or tolerated."

Instruction in gender identity and sexual orientation including instruction designed to promote gender confusion (Are there such things? When I taught I used some materials that usually promoted some other kinds of confusion, but I never came across a deliberate gender confusion unit).

Possession of books which contain obscene material as defined by Section 1024.1 of Title 21 of the Oklahoma Statutes. So if the district even "tolerates" someone carrying a dirty book around. Smartphones are still okay, I guess.

Curriculum which is sexual in nature, except as provided for in Section 11-105.1 of Title 70 of the Oklahoma Statutes (that's sex ed).

The presence of any school employee or volunteer engaged in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries. So maybe dressing up as the school mascot is still okay if the student isn't getting into it too much?

Climate change ideology including, but not limited to, disparaging the oil and natural gas industry or the agriculture industry. No saying mean things about oil, gas or agriculture. Unclear whether or not you can make fun of their silly counterfactual advertising. 

Curriculum promoting social and emotional learning.

Curriculum promoting animal rights activism.

Instruction that disparages the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The next time there's a school shooting, don't say mean things about the guns involved. 

Ideology that encourages efforts to defund the police. 

Curriculum promoting a Marxist ideology including, but not limited to, violations of Section 1266.4 of Title 21 of the Oklahoma Statutes. That's the one that says it's bad to try to overthrow the government or conspire to do so, which is an odd thing to pair with an anti-Marxist trigger, since the most recent attempt at "the overthrow, destruction, or alteration of, the constitutional form of the government of the United States" by use of "force or violence" did not involve Marxists. I am also curious about how many card-carrying Marxists are rattling around the rural counties of Oklahoma, using their copies of Das Kapital to bat away tumbleweeds.

It's a pretty impressive list, and I feel as if it could have been extended with some other important trigger items.

The presence of any school employee or volunteer who says aloud that Hunter Biden's laptop is "not a big deal."

Curriculum that suggests that all racial issues in the United States were not solved by 1964.

Curriculum or instruction calling the United States a democracy and not a republic.

Any instruction that suggests that Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election.

The presence of any school employee who says "Happy holidays" during the month of December.

Curriculum that teaches that all of Shakespeare's female characters were original portrayed by male actors.

Landscaping school grounds in such a way as might promote them as a landing area for Chinese spy balloons.

The presence of any employee or volunteer who responds to any of the above complaints by suggesting that the complainant needs "to put on their big boy/girl pants and get over it," and it counts as a double trigger if they fail to use the correct gender of the large pants that are supposed to be put on.

The hiring of a baseball coach who is in favor of the designated hitter rule.

There are undoubtedly more (see you in the comments) because somehow the folks who used to complain about liberal snowflakes and put up "F#@! Your Feelings" signs are now just loaded with feelings, and not just feelings, but feelings that are easily bruised and hurt and triggered. How did the party of cold, hard facts somehow become the party that cannot give up the story of furry students in schools, a thing that--and I cannot stress this enough--did not actually happen anywhere at all ever.

And let's not lose sight of what this bill does-- it pays folks for being offended. "Dear State of Oklahoma. There was a student at my child's school with a copy of "And Tango Makes Three" and the school did not punish that child, so this is clearly a trigger district. Therefore, I would like you to send over my pile of voucher money right away."

This is a silly bill, and I can only hope that it gets the kind of mocking it deserves, even if that triggers somebody.