This week, the Legislature and governor came to an agreement on the largest education package in state history that will provide an additional $625 million in new funding to the system. $500 million of this will go directly into the funding formula to pay for tiered teacher raises, ranging from $3,000 to $6,000 based on their years of service and also provide six weeks of paid maternity leave for educators. This raise will bring the average Oklahoma teacher salary to approximately $60,300. This is a great accomplishment and should help tremendously in retaining and recruiting teachers to our classrooms. The plan will also invest another $125 million into the Redbud Fund, which greatly benefits rural school districts that don’t receive as much ad valorem money as some other schools.

We’re also investing onetime funds into literacy programs and school safety. Reading is the basis of all knowledge – without this critical skill it’s hard for students to succeed in school or in adulthood. We’re creating a three-year program to help districts hire literacy instructional teams to get all students on reading level and above. In elementary school, students learn to read but as they get older, they read to learn. We want them to be as successful as possible, so they can reach their full potential in life.

Our schools must be safe spaces and with all the school shootings and other violence in recent years, we’ve dedicated $150 million into a three-year pilot program to help our schools better secure their facilities. Under this plan, each district will receive $96,000 to either hire a resource officer or make necessary security upgrades.

This week, we also continued considering House amendments to Senate bills, as well as conference committee reports. I accepted the House amendments to my SB 796 and the Senate unanimously approved it. The bill now goes before the governor for his final approval. If signed, it will become law on Nov. 1, 2023.

SB 796 ensures legal shipments of wine into the state and stops spirits from being illegally shipped here. I want to thank the wholesalers, including the Institute for Responsible Alcohol Policy, BDO and local wholesalers, the Retail Liquor Association, and the Wine Institute, who negotiated on behalf of FedEx and UPS, for working out this compromise language.

The direct shipment of spirits to consumers across state lines is illegal under the Oklahoma constitution. However, as I shared earlier this year, after hearing of illegal shipments, I wanted to see for myself, and I was able to have whiskey shipped to both my house and Senate office. This has to be stopped. This is not only illegal, but my ID wasn’t checked at my home to ensure a minor wasn’t getting it.

This new law will hold delivery companies more accountable when shipping wine into the state by requiring them to submit a quarterly report verifying signatures of customers 21 years and older, along with the name and license number of the common or permit carrier who completed each shipment. This bill empowers ABLE to go after bad actors because without this reporting, ABLE can’t audit. It further allows ABLE to penalize those companies breaking the law. Finally, this will ensure the state gets the proper tax revenue from these purchases, which we currently are not.

You can contact me by calling (405) 521-5581 or emailing Bill.Coleman@oksenate.gov.