In July 2020, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister unveiled a school COVID plan so restrictive it would have mandated closure of all schools across an 1,834-square-mile county when as few as four active COVID cases were identified.
The State Board of Education declined Hofmeister’s request to implement that plan as a mandate, but thanks to state health records Oklahomans can still know what would have happened if her plan had been adopted as a mandate and maintained. State data shows that schools in every county in Oklahoma would have been mandated or pressured to cease in-person instruction for more than half of the 76-week period from Sept. 24, 2020, to March 1, 2022.
What Oklahomans do not know is how Hofmeister’s plan was developed and why she chose such low thresholds to impose school closures that are now linked with severe learning loss.
For nearly a year, Hofmeister’s office has not responded to an open-records request for her email communications regarding COVID. Hofmeister’s refusal to provide transparency contrasts with the actions of at least one other statewide officeholder who publicly released thousands of emails and hours of recordings related to state-government COVID response.
Instead, Hofmeister’s inaction mirrors the approach taken by former officeholders criticized by a state open-records organization.
One national expert on government transparency said delayed responses to open-records requests are often a red flag.
“People in government, when they don’t want to talk about what they’ve been doing, generally speaking there is a reason why they don’t want to talk with you about it,” said Mark Tapscott, an award-winning journalist who was admitted to the National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame in 2006 and continues to cover Congress for The Epoch Times. “And it’s probably not something they want to see published in the media. That’s a good rule of thumb.”