Ryan Walters Smears Oklahoma Educators While Proposing New Rules

The controversial Oklahoma state superintendent of schools suggested, without evidence, that the state teachers union and educators were creating a culture that allowed for rampant sexual misconduct against students.

“What we have seen is radical leftists and the teachers unions turning our schools into Epstein Island,” Ryan Walters said at an emergency Oklahoma State Department of Education meeting last week, referring to where Jeffrey Epstein, the late billionaire and sexual predator, would abuse children.

“They have opened up our schools and allowed sexual predators to target our kids unchecked, unwatched, and without accountability,” he added.

The meeting had been called because of sexual misconduct allegations against a high school teacher in the Western Heights school district in Oklahoma City. Earlier this month, a group known as the Oklahoma Predator Prevention accused the teacher of inappropriately texting with someone he believed to be a minor. According to KFOR 4, the teacher reportedly was not arrested. (The Oklahoma City Police Department told HuffPost it did “not have anything on that individual that would be open record.”) OSDE suspended his teaching license at the meeting.

Walters claimed that there were many concerns about sexual predators in the state’s schools, which he oversees. He said he believes the vast majority of schools do not have issues with sexual predators, but that the state school board was seeking to suspend 17 more licenses across Oklahoma.

When making his claims about predators being prevalent in state schools, Walters singled out several specific districts, including Western Heights, which Walters had previously targeted. In September, OSDE announced an investigation into the