The Republican superintendent candidates agreed literacy needs urgent attention. They found less common ground on religion, political loyalty and Franklin’s past.
LAWTON — Undecided had the lead in Oklahoma’s Republican runoff for state superintendent when Robert Franklin and James Taylor met Thursday night for a debate hosted by NonDoc and KSWO.
Recent polling by Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates found nearly half of likely Republican runoff voters had not chosen between the candidates. Separate CHS findings placed name recognition for each at about 17%.
That gave Franklin and Taylor a fairly straightforward assignment: Tell voters what they would do with the office.
Most of the debate dealt with literacy, teachers, spending and parents. But the candidates also argued about religion, Franklin’s past and whether Taylor was too political for the job.
The debate was held at Cameron University and moderated by NonDoc Editor-in-Chief Tres Savage and KSWO anchor Jennah James. Savage said The Frontier, another media partner, would lead fact-checking efforts in the coming days.
KSWO has posted the full debate on its YouTube channel.
Teachers, parents and spending
Franklin came to the debate with a 44-year career in education that included work as a special education teacher, principal, Sand Springs administrator and Tulsa Tech associate superintendent.
His opening argument was blunt.
“Teachers are the solution, not the problem,” Franklin said. “The problem is we just don’t have enough of them.”
He called for rebuilding the teacher workforce, improving training and adding classroom support, including behavioral technicians who could assist students experiencing difficulties.
Taylor pointed to his current work teaching history and government at Little Axe High School. He is also a pastor and the father of a nonverbal autistic child.
His opening focused on preparing teachers, moving administrative spending into classrooms and giving parents a stronger voice. Taylor said every expenditure at the Oklahoma State Department of Education should face one test: “Does it help our kids learn to read, write and do math?”
“If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t need to be a part of the budget,” he said.
Taylor was just as direct about parents.
“Parents are not obstacles. Parents are not problems,” he said. “Parents are the first and most important teacher that their child will ever have.”
Reading plans overlap, then diverge
The candidates agreed Oklahoma must improve literacy, but they put the emphasis in different places.
Taylor credited lawmakers with restoring phonics, cursive instruction and limits on promoting students who cannot read at grade level. The superintendent, he said, must carry out those laws and help schools add reading specialists and teaching assistants.
“That’s one of the jobs of the superintendent — to enact the laws that the Legislature put into play,” Taylor said.
Franklin disputed the idea that legislation would automatically produce better scores.
“The teachers will be the ones who help us,” he said.
He called for intervention beginning in prekindergarten and the early elementary grades, consistent teacher training and sharing the practices of schools already getting results.
“By the time they’re in third grade, they must begin to retain what they have read and then interpret what they have read,” Franklin said. “So third-grade phonics is not the answer.”
They also parted ways somewhat on screen time. Franklin opposed a statewide limit and said lawmakers should “leave that to your educators and the school context.” Taylor favored less screen time but stopped short of calling for a legislative mandate.
“The research shows that too much screen time is a problem,” Taylor said. “We have to have screen time. Our school is one where we’re all electronic, but it doesn’t have to be all day long.”
Taylor said colleges also must do more to prepare new teachers for classroom management and discipline. Franklin called for stronger partnerships among common education, higher education and CareerTech while recruiting more people into teaching.
Faith and public schools
Religion produced one of the clearest differences of the night.
Moderators read what they described as two passages from Taylor’s book, It’s Biblical, Not Political! One described man as “God’s vice president” and said God has not asked women to live without male supervision. The other linked an “outbreak of homosexuality” to God stepping back as society embraces immorality.
Taylor did not take up either passage specifically. Instead, he described how Christianity has shaped his life.
“My life has been shaped by my faith in Jesus Christ,” he said. “It directs me. It guides me.”
Franklin had a book of his own to explain. During an earlier primary debate, he displayed The Separation of Church and Hate. Franklin said Thursday that he was reading it but had not recommended it to students or endorsed everything in it.
“It’s not a book that I have written. It’s not a book that I espouse,” Franklin said. “It’s not a book that I actually have affirmed all the things that are in it.”
Both men said America was founded as a Christian nation. Their answers differed when the question turned to religion in public schools.
Taylor criticized former Superintendent Ryan Walters’ attempt to place Trump-endorsed Bibles in classrooms, saying Walters’ approach was wrong.
“I don’t want an atheist teaching my children the Bible,” Taylor said. “I want someone of faith to teach the Bible.”
He displayed a replica of the New England Primer and said he uses original documents to teach about the religious influences on the country’s founding.
Franklin said educators should model good conduct but should not be expected to direct a student’s religious development.
“It shouldn’t be me as an educator foisting that on top of another educator to say, ‘I need you to also teach reading and algebra, but I also need you to lead the religious journey,’” Franklin said. “That’s far too heavy of a burden for teachers to have to carry.”
Taylor also was questioned about a 2021 podcast appearance in which he described “demonic activity” in schools and cited critical race theory, antifa and Black Lives Matter.
He said he would not govern like Walters.
“Ryan Walters was good at trying to find problems, but he was not very good at fixing the problems,” Taylor said. “That’s not my style.”
Taylor did not abandon all of his earlier language, however. He described the actions of some Black Lives Matter leaders as “somewhat demonic.”
Camp incident brings sharpest exchange
The debate became most heated when Savage asked Franklin about a 2014 incident at a summer camp Franklin helped establish for people with disabilities.
Photographs released during the campaign showed marks behind the ears of a 12-year-old nonverbal child. Franklin has said the child was behaving aggressively and that his fingernail scratched the child as he intervened.
“I did scratch behind his ear. It was not intentional. That was on me,” Franklin said. “I have apologized to the young man. I’ve apologized to his mother.”
Taylor answered as a former special education paraprofessional and the father of a nonverbal autistic son. He said his training never included grabbing a child near the ears.
“The mother calls it abuse. He calls it an accident,” Taylor said. “The mother calls it gouges. He calls it scratches. The two are not compatible.”
Taylor then cited Franklin’s earlier work at Hissom Memorial Center and the Rader juvenile treatment facility and argued that it showed a broader pattern.
Franklin rejected the assertion. He said litigation involving Hissom concerned Oklahoma’s failure to provide community-based services and had nothing to do with misconduct by him.
“You are so far off, and that is one of the most disrespectful things that you could have ever said,” Franklin told Taylor.
The moderators ended the exchange, with Savage again pointing to The Frontier’s planned review of disputed claims.
Who is Republican enough?
Politics — which Franklin says should be removed from the superintendent’s office — produced another argument.
Franklin was asked about his former Democratic registration, old social media posts criticizing President Donald Trump and a post that appeared to endorse a federal gun registry. He said the gun comment was sarcastic and intended to oppose government registries.
“The Democratic Party back in the day used to be a pretty conservative place,” Franklin said. “It’s not anymore, and therefore I’m not anymore a Democrat.”
“Let’s take all the politics out of this particular role,” he added.
Taylor countered that Franklin had not read the Oklahoma Republican Party platform. During a muddled exchange over labels, Taylor acknowledged describing Franklin as a Democratic plant.
Franklin answered by pointing to Taylor’s four unsuccessful Republican primary campaigns against U.S. Rep. Tom Cole.
“We don’t need to have another politician who’s run four times for a congressional seat,” Franklin said.
Taylor said Cole “deserved to be challenged” and that those campaigns taught him how to compete while spending relatively little money. After another Franklin interruption, Taylor called him “very rude.”
Franklin later apologized if he had been disrespectful but repeated that running for superintendent was not a political hobby.
By the end, the choice each man was selling was clear. Franklin asked voters to value a long administrative record and his promise to pull the office away from partisan conflict. Taylor offered his classroom and pastoral experience, a call for reform and a stronger voice for parents.
Republican voters will decide Aug. 25. The winner will face Democrat Jennettie Marshall in the Nov. 3 general election.
