Last week, the Oklahoma schools superintendent Ryan Walters sent a letter to Kamala Harris demanding that the federal government reimburse the state for the cost that illegal immigration imposes on the school system. In his letter, he said the state has incurred a cost of at least $474.9 million, and says it’s the largest unfunded mandate in the country.
The amount requested by Walters is a result of an analysis done after Oklahoma’s agencies began tracking spending due to mass migration, starting in August. Walters said they looked at the cost to educate every single child and the resources needed for English as a Second Language. He said the amount was a best estimate because only the Biden-Harris administration knows the true number of illegal aliens crossing our borders.
“Kamala Harris doesn’t want you to know how many illegal immigrants are in our state. So, what we did is we went to districts and found students that do not speak English, come from another country during the school year and began to crunch those numbers to account for those who do not show residence in the country as the illegal immigrants that have moved over. And so, that is our best estimate is 474 million,” Walters said.
As Walters’ letter details, in addition to the thousands of students being added to the classrooms as a result of illegal immigration, the cost of teaching children who do not speak English is daunting. In 2022, approximately 10 percent of K-12 students nationwide were designated as Limited English Proficiency (“LEP”). Over 414,000 teachers nationwide were certified to teach LEP students, but another 100,000 teachers are serving as LEP instructors, despite lacking the proper certification. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that another 100,000 additional LEP teachers will be needed within the next five years.
In his letter to Harris, the superintendent said her “failed oversight and efforts are a direct cause of the current crises Oklahoma and other states now face. Oklahoma taxpayers, schools, teachers, and parents should not bear the burden of your failings. They deserve better,” he said.
Walters went on to say that “Open borders has had an impact on every aspect of society, but it has overrun our schools, decimated our families. And it is absolutely time to hold them accountable for that.”
In September of 2022, FAIR studied the cost of mass immigration and the challenges it poses on public education. At that time, using data from 2020, we estimated that it costs public schools just over $78 billion to serve the increasing population. The report also found that the struggle to fund programs for students with limited English proficiency represents a major drain on school budgets as they redirect resources away from American citizens to support English learner programs for this cohort.
According to the Education Data Initiative, the federal government only provides 13.6 percent of funding for K-12 education across the country. The rest comes from state and local resources.
“As the statewide elected Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Oklahoma and the Executive Officer of the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE), it is my duty to ensure that the resources allocated to our public schools are counted for and used in the most effective manner possible for the benefit of Oklahoma students’ education,” Walters wrote to Harris.
