CNN host Brianna Keilar (L) and Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R) on March 20, 2025 (Image: Screengrab via CNN / YouTube)
March 20, 2025
ALTERNET
ALTERNET
Editor's note: This headline has been updated.
An exchange between CNN host Brianna Keilar and Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters got heated when the latter was confronted over his management of federal funds.
During the Thursday segment, Keilar hosted Walters to discuss how President Donald Trump's executive order intended to shut down the Department of Education in his state would impact public school students in the Sooner State. The two soon began cutting each other off, with Walters railing against Oklahoma's "radical left-wing teachers' union" and "woke administrators," while Keilar repeatedly steered the conversation back to Walters' widely criticized management of Oklahoma's public schools.
"I took on the worst, one of the worst education systems in the country and have embrace these reforms. so we have continued to see the improvement—"
"But overall you've had issues, sir," Keilar responded.
"No I haven't," Walters said, insisting that the only people complaining about his leadership were his political opponents.
Keilar reminded Walters that "Republican lawmakers as well as superintendents of schools who do not seem ideologically opposed to you" have been some of his most prominent critics. As the Oklahoma Voice reported last fall, Republican state representative Tammy West suggested that Walters' office was not providing appropriate "transparency, accountability and communication" when it came to how taxpayer dollars were spent.
"Superintendent, for instance, this whole business in the spring of not getting proper estimates to schools so that they could figure out how to plan for their federal funds that they were getting. You had them running right up into August," Keilar said. "Obviously, you know, in spring, you need to know, 'can I hire new teachers with Title I funds especially?' You're talking about impoverished students. Let's talk about them. That was something that you had Republicans in your state, superintendents in your state, very frustrated with because they were not able to plan. It seems like a miscarriage of just basic duties of how you handle funds."
Walters grew visibly frustrated, and pushed back on Keilar and the network itself, saying: "I know you're trying to railroad me here and gaslight here on CNN ... So what you continue to see is CNN here fighting for a status quo, instead of saying our education system has to get better, we should all agree on that ... No amount of gaslighting is going to change that."
Keilar reminded Walters that the Department of Education gave Walters' office a failing grade on 32 out of 52 indicators for how the state managed federal funding. She also pointed out that those failing marks were specifically about "how you are meeting the needs of students who are low income, the most at risk students in your state."
"The same department within a week also told us we had to allow boys in girls' sports and boys in girls' bathrooms, or they would take all of our funding away from us," Walters said. "The Biden administration Department of Education was constantly attacking conservative reforms, attacking school choice, sending the FBI and the DOJ to investigate parents —"
"What about you, superintendent, and your management here?" Keiler responded. "I hear you pivoting to talk about bathrooms, but your management of these funds — because what we're talking about now, Joe Biden's not president — but you're talking about getting this money in block grants. so let's talk about you and how you manage those funds because you're asking for it with fewer restrictions. That's what a block grant is. And there are serious questions about how you handle that."
Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.
OKLAHOMA PUBLIC SCHOOLS BEING FORCED TO HAVE BIBLES, 1O COMMANDMENTS AND BIBLE STUDY
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