Before it was shut down, investigators said multiple truckloads would depart the warehouse every week, headed for other states, according to Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

The bureau is actively investigating several similar operations, he said.

Oklahoma’s loose oversight of its medical marijuana program, coupled with cheap land and licensing fees, has sparked an influx of illicit grow operations that has overwhelmed law enforcement. 

“We’ve been told we are now the number-one supplier of black market marijuana in the country,” Woodward said, citing information from agencies around the U.S.

Over the past two years, the Bureau of Narcotics has shut down nearly 1,000 illicit marijuana grow operations across Oklahoma, but as many as 5,000 more may remain, according to Woodward and other officials.

Last year, state lawmakers attempted to contain the problem by enacting a moratorium on new grower licenses and raising fees, but officials say Oklahoma is still catching up on enforcement after a successful citizen-led effort to legalize medical use in 2018 led to a massive marijuana boom.

Even though the number of growers peaked in 2021, Oklahoma is still producing 64 times more cannabis than is needed to meet demand for legal marijuana within the state, according to research published in June by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. Some of this oversupply may be frozen to be sold legally at a later date, but much of it is fueling black market sales out of state, according to the report.

Michael Sofis, co-author of the report, estimated that Oklahoma’s oversupply is at least five times larger than any he’s observed in other places, including Oregon, which made headlines in 2019 for a similar problem.

The Bureau of Narcotics has traced Oklahoma-grown marijuana to almost every state and is currently investigating over 3,000 farms. Law enforcement officials said most of these grows are operated by foreign criminal organizations — many of which make use of indentured labor, spray their plants with dangerous pesticides, and illegally move marijuana across state lines.

A thriving U.S. black market 

“No trespassing” and “beware of dogs” signs line the fence at one large marijuana grow situated on the Canadian River near the town of Wayne. Tightly-packed rows of marijuana seedlings could be seen in one greenhouse on the day Frontier reporters visited. 

The out-of-state operators came to Oklahoma for one reason:

“Money,” said one farm worker, chuckling. 

The man, who didn’t give his name and spoke limited English, said he had moved from China to Oakland, Calif., and then to Oklahoma to work in the marijuana industry.

He said many operations have more than doubled their returns by moving to Oklahoma from other states, as he wrote down figures on a napkin to illustrate his point.

Attempts to contact the owner of the grow operation near Wayne were unsuccessful.

Even though recreational marijuana has been legalized in 23 states, growers can still make more money shipping their product out of Oklahoma because higher prices and stringent regulations in other states have allowed the black market to continue to prosper. 

“Oklahoma should blame other states that have made it so difficult for legal weed to survive,” said Robin Goldstein, professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis and co-author of Can Legal Weed Win?. “Illegal growers in Oklahoma are only able to thrive and exist because, in those other states, legal weed is so expensive.”

Before many states legalized recreational use, legal medical marijuana was much cheaper, Goldstein said. But legal recreational marijuana brought higher taxes and more regulations with it, making it harder for legal growers and sellers to compete with the black market. For example, New York — which is one of the top destinations for Oklahoma marijuana, according to the Bureau of Narcotics — implemented a new tax on marijuana after legalizing recreational use in 2021.

With some of the cheapest agricultural land in the country, comparatively low licensing fees, and a lack of pandemic restrictions on travel, Oklahoma was one of the most inexpensive places to grow marijuana in the U.S. when growers began coming in droves in late 2020.

Before the state enacted a moratorium on grow licenses in 2022, growers only needed to pay $3,000 in licensing fees.

Many states, including Arkansas and Missouri, allow only a handful of licensed growers and have much higher fees. Arkansas law allows only eight companies to grow statewide and each of them must pay the state $100,000 annually. 

Oklahoma law also requires that at least 75% ownership of a medical marijuana operation be held by an Oklahoma resident who has lived in the state for over two years. But out-of-state and foreign groups were able to hire law firms or pay individual residents to become “straw owners,” bypassing this requirement.

The heads of two law firms, Yukon-based Stacy Legal Group and Tulsa-based Jones-Brown Law face felony drug and conspiracy charges after putting themselves, their employees or other residents down as the majority owners of hundreds of grows. All have pleaded not guilty. 

Criminal growers have been able to become nearly indistinguishable from legal growers on paper by acquiring licenses, helping them evade law enforcement, said Andrew Livingston, Director of Economics and Research at Vicente LLP, a cannabis law firm headquartered in Denver. 

Given this advantage and the low barriers to get a license, police say they’ve found very few grows in Oklahoma that are unlicensed. 

“Our licenses are so cheap and so easy to gain,” Woodward said, “that most are not going to risk it when they can just go get a license and hide in plain sight.” 

Thousands of operations with fraudulent licenses are still operating, he added.

Oklahoma also requires grows to have unique tags on every plant from “seed to sale.” This tracking system is designed to enable fine-grained product recalls if contaminants like banned pesticides or heavy metals are detected. But they are also used for enforcement purposes. If a grow has plants that are untagged, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority will use that as a signal to investigate the grow further, said Porsha Riley, a spokeswoman for the agency.

However, Woodward says most illegal grows have these tags to pass state inspections. 

“But that doesn’t stop them from taking the tags off in the middle of the night and moving all that product to an Oklahoma City warehouse so it can be shipped out of state,” he said.

Lack of state funding for enforcement

The Bureau of Narcotics only has around 30 marijuana enforcement agents statewide dedicated to investigating Oklahoma’s thousands of grow operations, although state narcotics agents focused on other investigations sometimes also end up helping. 

“Even our enforcement agents that are working on meth, cocaine, fentanyl, and other types of drugs are intercepting shipments during the course of their other investigations that are linked back to these marijuana grows,” Woodward said. “So our entire agency is overwhelmed by this.”  

State law enforcement also assists federal agencies in investigating and prosecuting black-market sellers. 

Twelve prosecutors, fewer than half of district attorney offices around the state, have their own drug task force investigators funded by federal programs. But these agents investigate illicit marijuana on top of the ongoing fentanyl crisis and other drug crimes, said Jack Thorp, district attorney for Adair, Cherokee, Wagoner and Sequoyah counties. 

Earlier this year, the Oklahoma Legislature approved raising fees for marijuana growers from $500 to $2,500. This will increase the Bureau of Narcotics’ revenue by $6 million to $8 million dollars per year, but the money will only sustain the agency’s current size and will not be enough to immediately add additional agents, Woodward said.

“We’re hoping to continue to hire additional investigators to deal with this,” he said. “But we need to see what’s available and what we’re financially capable of going forward.”

In 2022, the Legislature also created a fund for county sheriffs to help take on illegal grows. Sen. Darrell Weaver, R-Moore, Senate sponsor of the bill that created the fund, is also the former director of the Bureau of Narcotics. Weaver said state drug agents have limited resources and need support from local sheriff’s deputies to cover rural parts of the state.

“They’re at ground zero. They’re the boots on the ground,” Weaver said. 

Oklahoma sheriffs had hoped the Legislature would send between $5 million and $13 million to the fund. But all funding requests have been denied. 

Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, chairman of the Senate appropriations committee, has blocked the funding because he says it wasn’t clear how sheriffs would use the money.  

Ray McNair, director of the Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association, said the funding would have been used to allow “deputies to work overtime locating and assisting state agencies with the eradication of illegal grow operations.”

Oklahoma tries to contain its marijuana boom

The state ballot measure that legalized medical marijuana in 2018 was written by citizens and included few regulations, said Rep. Jon Echols, R-Oklahoma City. Echols has worked to revise the law, including adding a two-year residency requirement for the majority owners of Oklahoma marijuana grows in 2019. 

But these revisions didn’t stop a large wave of new non-resident growers, as they were able to bypass the requirement by using straw owners, said Woodward. 

Oklahoma lawmakers have attempted to slow this flood of new growers with a two-year moratorium on new licenses in 2022 that has since been extended through 2026. 

The Oklahoma State Fire Marshal is also cracking down on hazards like unsafe wiring, exposed insulation and poor chemical storage at rural grow operations. 

Many illegal grows are not in compliance with state fire codes, said State Fire Marshal G. Keith Bryant.

“This is the best way to take on bad actors,” he said. 

The moratorium, along with more attention from law enforcement and natural market forces, has led to a steady decrease in the number of grows over the past few years. The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority also did away with a grace period for expired licenses in late 2021. 

But the moratorium does not prohibit an owner from transferring a license. Despite the moratorium, the Bureau of Narcotics has received around seven to 10 new grower applications per week, all of which are from applicants who have transferred their license through the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. 

“While there is a moratorium, we’ve still had people able to start up a business, and many of them are criminals,” Woodward said.

When the state moratorium on new growers is lifted in 2026, licensing prices will also increase to as much as $40,000, depending on the size of the farm.

Even though thousands of illicit grows remain, Woodward says he is hopeful many will close down due to newly required paperwork, designed to detect fraudulent licenses, that all growers must submit by the end of October. The majority owner will also have to show up in-person for a review of this paperwork with a narcotics agent.

Since the new requirements were rolled out in January, many more applicants have backed out of the application process due to the new requirements compared to previous years, Woodward said. 

“I'd be shocked if there's not a large number that never renew because they know they cannot get through the paperwork process without getting caught.”

-Frontier Reporter Clifton Adcock contributed to this report.

The post With cheap land and low fees, Oklahoma-grown marijuana fuels the black market in other states  appeared first on The Frontier.

Facing the possibility of another accreditation downgrade, Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist called the process “completely untransparent” at a press conference on Wednesday. She said she had concerns that the district has been targeted by “inflammatory threats” and “a process that is being politicized for a very specific personal agenda.”     

The Oklahoma State Board of Education had been expected to vote Thursday on whether to restore or lower the accreditation status of Tulsa Public Schools after the district was penalized last year for using teacher training materials on racial bias. 

But Matt Langston, Chief Policy Advisor for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, told The Frontier on Wednesday that the State Board would not review the district’s accreditation at this month’s meeting after new alleged deficiencies “due to the severity of the allegations and issues.” 

Despite the hearing being less than a day away, Gist said the district has not heard from OSDE about this apparent change of plans. She says she still expects the board to vote on Tulsa schools’ accreditation, as they will with all other districts, and plans to attend the meeting to advocate on behalf of the district.

“I only learned that we would not be a part of tomorrow’s annual process on Twitter about 45 minutes ago, so I’m not aware of a change,” said Gist.

Gist said the two violations involved a report to the state Department of Education that was filed late and an audit that found $343,000 in questionable payments to vendors. 

State Superintendent Ryan Walters hinted at support of a further downgrade for the Tulsa district at a press conference on Friday, alluding to “many, many violations” over the past year. But he didn’t provide specific examples and left without taking further questions.

The board ruled in July 2022 that Tulsa teacher training materials violated House Bill 1775, a state law that bans some concepts about race and gender from being taught in Oklahoma public schools. The downgrade involved a professional development video titled “Cultural Competence and Racial Bias” that was offered to teachers via a third-party vendor. The board moved to penalize the district even though a state Department of Education attorney found that Tulsa did not directly violate the law.

State Department of Education staff initially recommended demoting Tulsa schools to “accredited with a deficiency.” However, the State Board, composed mostly of members appointed by Governor Kevin Stitt, decided to go a step further and downgraded the school district to “accredited with a warning.”

There are five levels of accreditation:

• Accredited with no deficiencies
• Accredited with deficiencies
• Accredited with a warning
• Accredited with probation
• Unaccredited

If the board lowers Tulsa schools’ accreditation further, the district would be placed on probation. 

This action would not cost the district any funding, but Leslie Berger, a former spokeswoman for OSDE, told The Frontier last year that it could “negatively impact” the district. Families could decide to move their students to other districts or private schools, which would reduce state funding for Tulsa, she said.  

When placed on probation in 2021, the Western Heights School district had 90 days to correct the issues or face further penalties, including full loss of accreditation and state funding.

The State Board was also expected to review Mustang Public Schools’ accreditation status at the Thursday meeting. But the State Department of Education has not clarified yet if Mustang would still have its accreditation reviewed at this month’s meeting. 

Mustang’s accreditation status was also downgraded last year for violating HB 1775. The downgrade came after the district self-reported a violation related to a voluntary learning exercise where students were asked if they had “ever been called names regarding your race, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation, or physical/learning disability and felt uncomfortable.”

A parent complained that the activity made her child feel “uncomfortable.”

Kirk Wilson, a spokesman for Mustang, told The Frontier on Monday that the district reserved comment until after the meeting. 

The post Gist concerned TPS has been targeted by ‘a process that is being politicized for a very specific personal agenda’  appeared first on The Frontier.

State Department of Education General Counsel Brad Clark wrote in a July 7 letter to the Tulsa school district that the agency had found no evidence that a training course called “Cultural Competence and Racial Bias,” violated the law. 

“Upon reviewing this information, the OSDE did not find any evidence to substantiate the allegation that the training included ‘statements that specifically shame white people for past offenses in history, and state that all are implicitly racially biased in nature,’” Clark wrote. 

However, the investigation did find that audio from the training, which Clark later declined to provide the the State Board of Education, “incorporated” or was “based on” concepts including that “societal systems, including public schools, were originally solely developed by the majority, who were then predominantly White, middle-class individuals,” that black students are more likely to be suspended than white students, and that “deeply rooted stereotypes, built over time and by history and culture, can still be found in classrooms.”  

These ideas violated House Bill 1775, a law Oklahoma enacted in 2021 that banned some teachings about race and gender in public schools, even if the concepts weren’t explicitly mentioned, Clark wrote. 

“Though there were not direct statements in the training that an individual should feel discomfort or guilt because of their race, the design and basis of the training makes it more likely than not that it incorporates and/or is based on such a concept,” the letter said. 

The state board voted last week 4-2 to downgrade both Tulsa and Mustang Public Schools to “accredited with a warning,” a harsher punishment than was originally recommended. Mustang Public Schools, which self-reported a violation from earlier this year based on a student exercise meant to increase empathy among students, received the same punishment as Tulsa for the sake of consistency, board members said last week. There is no appeals process.

To donate to The Frontier and help support our efforts to grow investigative journalism in Oklahoma, click here.

According to Clark’s letter, the 18-minute online training on cultural and racial bias that Tulsa Public Schools used was from Vector Solutions, Inc., one of the largest producers of online workplace training in the United States. 

The state investigation found that, while none of the concepts banned by HB1775 were directly included in the training course, there was evidence “making it more likely than not that the training incorporated and/or is based on some banned concepts, including that “an individual is inherently racist because of their race, consciously or unconsciously.”

The Frontier has requested a copy of the training from Tulsa Public Schools and Vector Solutions, Inc., but neither have fulfilled the request. 

Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, who has viewed the training, disagrees with Clark’s conclusion.

 “There was no violation of 1775 in the complete 18-minute audio and video that I saw and heard,” said Goodwin. “Clark admitted there was no violation in the materials. He spoke to his interpretation of what the materials possibly could mean and of what he thought the vendor intended. In what world is that a credible violation of law?”

But Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, a co-author of HB1775, said he thinks Clark’s conclusion is fair and that violations of HB1775 don’t need to be explicit.

“When a seminar talking about ‘racial bias’ is telling you that black people are more likely to be suspended than white people, I don’t know that it’s like crazy to think that somebody is going to think that you’re trying to get me to realize that (white teachers who disproportionately suspend black students) are racist,” he said.

“To me, if you drop breadcrumbs towards a specific conclusion, I don’t think that you get a pass just because you didn’t explicitly state the final conclusion,” Caldwell said.

Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, the principal author of HB1775, agreed.

“You can state facts in a matter-of-fact way or you can do them in a way that implies the person you’re speaking to is guilty,” he said.

Mustang Public Schools’ cross-the-line activity

A ‘cross-the-line’ activity at Mustang Public Schools also violated HB 1775, school officials found. But it’s still unclear what parts of the law the district believes it broke. Mustang conducted its own internal investigation and reported the matter to state officials. 

The district reported its findings to the state and has its own plan of correction, State Department of Education spokeswoman Leslie Berger told The Frontier. Mustang claimed that the State Department of Education had confirmed the findings of its internal investigation, but Berger said the agency never endorsed the district’s conclusion.

In a statement released Monday, Mustang Public Schools said that “at least one question” violated “the spirit of the law.” That question was: “If you have ever been called names regarding your race, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation, or physical/learning disability and felt uncomfortable, take one step back.” 

Mustang has yet to release further information from its investigation.

The parent who made the original complaint spoke anonymously to FOX25 in Oklahoma City and said their child felt uncomfortable because of the cross-the-line activity.

Caldwell was adamant that HB1775 does not prevent teachers from teaching things that make students feel discomfort or guilt, although he acknowledged that this is a common misconception of the law. The law only prevents teachers from saying that students should feel guilt or discomfort based on their race, he said. 

“Simply feeling uncomfortable in and of itself does not violate 1775,” he said. “It doesn’t say that whatsoever.”

“In a historical setting if we’re talking about the Holocaust, and as a someone who is of a German origin, if I felt guilt or whatever from someone saying Germany did it, that in and of itself certainly isn’t precluded in this bill,” he said. 

Goodwin, a staunch opponent of HB1775, said she thinks this confusion was intentionally designed into the bill.

“The bill was written so that schools will not be able to stand up to it because folks are not wanting to take the time to delineate the difference between a concept that teaches that you should feel guilty and someone just arbitrarily saying I feel guilty,” she said.

The Frontier asked Kirk Wilson, the director of communications for Mustang, why the district found it had violated the law and what section they thought they had violated. 

“All of (the investigators) agreed that the question with the ‘felt uncomfortable’ was what was violating the spirit of the law,” Wilson said. “It’s hard when the law is about feelings and so it’s really kind of in the eye of the holder and I guess there were students, and at least one complainant that felt uncomfortable and felt like that this violated the law and so the conclusion of the investigation by those three individuals found that it did.” 

Mustang’s attorney Brian Drummond and two district administrators who helped lead the investigation did not respond to requests for comment. 

But Caldwell thinks the cross-the-line exercise violates HB1775 in another way. By prompting students to step forwards or backwards based on their identity and asking them to observe their differences, the activity seems to “define students either positively or negatively” because of their race or sex, he said. The law prohibits teaching that individuals are inherently superior or have better moral character due to their race or sex.

The future

Only three complaints for alleged violations of HB1775 have been filed so far, but some parents say they expect more will follow. 

Janice Danforth, chair of the Tulsa chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative parental rights group made up of over 700 parents in Tulsa county, told The Frontier she expects more complaints will be filed against Tulsa Public Schools in the near future.

“There have been many questionable things that have been brought to my attention, some of them straddling the line of breaking the law and some not,” she said. “I expect there to be many cases brought forward this school year. We are better prepared to tackle questionable curriculum now and we will expose it.” 

Further violations would cause the district to first be put on probation, Berger said. If the problems aren’t resolved and more complaints are received, the district could lose accreditation and even be dissolved.

“If TPS does not follow the law, then we expect there to be a consequence,” Danforth said. “More and more parents are waking up to the woke ideology that is being embedded into their child’s classes. And more parents are becoming bold and ready to stand up.”

The post A state investigation found Tulsa schools didn’t directly violate a law on race and gender teachings appeared first on The Frontier.

Jennettie Marshall, a Tulsa Public Schools board member, said she worried Tulsa schools would be harmed if the downgrade leads parents to seek districts without the black eye of a warning on their record. The district is already facing a staffing shortage and low student enrollment.

“Any time people are coming into Tulsa to find jobs, realtors will show them schools that don’t have a negative record,” she said. “If the school has had their accreditation lowered, they’ll take parents to outlying areas.”

Marshall also worries about the impact on Tulsa’s  economy.

“We have companies here courting people all the time, and I have a feeling that those students and families will not be pushed to TPS given everything that’s going on politically,” she said.

On Thursday, The State Board of Education voted 4-2 to downgrade the accreditation status of both Mustang and Tulsa Public Schools from “accredited” to “accredited with a warning” for violating HB 1775, a bill passed last year that placed restrictions on teaching race and gender issues in Oklahoma public schools. 

This decision came after a Memorial High School science teacher complained about an 18-minute online training titled “Cultural Competence and Racial Bias” she was required to complete. 

The State Department of Education originally recommended Tulsa Public Schools be downgraded to “accredited with a deficiency.” But the State Board, made up of members appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, decided to go a step further and downgraded the school district to accredited with a warning.

The board also downgraded Mustang Public Schools’ status to the same level.

There are five tiers of accreditation, according to documents released to The Frontier on Friday by the Oklahoma State Department of Education: 

• Accredited with no deficiencies
• Accredited with deficiencies
• Accredited with a warning
• Accredited with probation
• Nonaccredited

The state has no appeals process for a change in accreditation status, but there’s also no additional sanctions on top of the downgrade, Leslie Berger, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Education told The Frontier.  The schools will be able to have their status re-assessed in 12 months, she said. 

Further violations could “negatively impact” the districts, Berger told The Frontier. When the state board placed the Western Heights School district on probation in 2021, it had 90 days to correct issues or face further punishment, including the loss of accreditation and the possibility of dissolving the school district. 

State statutes require the Board of Education to close schools that lose accreditation. Students would then be re-assigned to other accredited schools or school districts. 

Marshall said she was concerned that the district “has been punished without actual documentation or evidence being shown.”

“There was no violation of 1775. I think that is why they did not want to stand up and say here’s the violation because there is none,” said State Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, in an interview with The Frontier. 

During the hearing, the Department of Education’s general counsel Brad Clark told board members that audio from the teacher training made it clear that Tulsa schools had violated HB1775. But Clark told the board he could not share the audio. 

So far, Tulsa Public Schools has declined to release the training to the media, saying that it is copyrighted. The state education department has not responded to requests by The Frontier for the training, and the company that publishes it — Vector Solutions, Inc., has not responded to a request for comment. 

Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa, a former Tulsa history teacher, said the decision would spark fear among educators and keep new companies from coming to the state creating new jobs.

“This is designed to make teachers and librarians and school officials look over their shoulders, afraid that they’re going to get more of these frivolous complaints from any direction, ” Waldron said. “And it’s certainly not going to help us make deals with companies like Panasonic if we have medieval standards of conduct in our public schools.”

Tulsa Public Schools denied any wrongdoing. 

 “In Tulsa, we are teaching our children an accurate — and at times painful, difficult, uncomfortable — history about our shared human experience,” the district said in a statement. 

The district denied it teaches “a law school academic body of work known as ‘critical race theory,’” and that “we are focused on your child’s educational success. That means every child in Tulsa.”

The Superintendent for Mustang Public Schools said the district was “disheartened” to receive “harsh” punishment based on a “single outlier event.”  The downgrade came after the Mustang district self-reported a violation related to a voluntary student exercise intended to build empathy in students.

“With the board action to increase the penalty above the recommendation, I seriously question the criteria for these Accreditation Categories. We are eager to work with the State Department to understand why this decision was made,” Charles Bradley, Mustang superintendent, said in the statement.

Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, who spoke at the meeting, said Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist should have done more to stand up to the allegation.  

“What she could have done was said, ‘Hey, you know we are teaching properly. We’ve not violated any law.’ Just stand up and have lawyers ready, folks willing, and superintendents ready not to substantiate bull crap,” she said. “But that’s what happened. That’s how we got where we are today because they substantiated a claim that should not have been substantiated. Period.”

Goodwin was also disappointed that TPS did not send an official to defend the district at the State Board meeting.

Lauren Partain, a spokeswoman for Gist, did not respond to a request for comment.

“When you have a teacher who can just willy nilly say, oh, whatever and not have any proof — and we knew that’s how they created the law — the ability to know the truth and our history is sacrificed when you have narrow minded folks that think only their whitewashed versions of history should be presented,” Goodwin said.  “Now who wants to be a part of that kind of school district? Who wants to be a part of that kind of city?”

To donate to The Frontier and help support our efforts to grow investigative journalism in Oklahoma, click here.

The post After education board hands down punishments to school districts, questions remain about what happens next appeared first on The Frontier.

High temperatures and a lack of rain this year have stunted Peters’ crops.

He lost roughly one-third of his wheat, significantly reducing his income. And what remains of his hay won’t grow tall enough to be bailed and sold. It can’t be fed to his cows either, as the nitrate levels are so high it would kill them.

“You’ve definitely got some decisions you have to make,” he said. “The biggest fear right now is where the money is going to come from to plant the next crop.”

The pastures where his 350 head of cattle graze are also in rough shape due to the drought. When the grass dies, the cattle need to be fed manually, which requires lots of driving. With gas prices still hovering around $4 per gallon in western Oklahoma, it can get costly — not to mention the extra cost of feed. 

Although Oklahoma is no stranger to the occasional dry spell, climatologists predict droughts will grow more frequent and severe in the future due to climate change. Scientists say the state is slowly becoming hotter and dryer with increasingly erratic patterns of precipitation. And the average number of 100-degree Fahrenheit days that Oklahoma sees each year will more than triple by mid-century if humans don’t take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, climate models predict. 

“For this individual drought, you probably can’t say it is due to climate change. But you might be able to say it was exacerbated by climate change,” said Gary McManus, Oklahoma’s state climatologist.

The Earth’s warming may have caused a run-of-the-mill drought, spurred by natural variation in rainfall, to become more extreme, he said. 

A hot, dry year hits Oklahoma hard

It’s been a challenging year for wheat producers across the state, said Mike Schulte, Director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission. 

“Some places were completely and totally devastated, where producers just never harvested anything,” he said. 

The yield from Oklahoma’s wheat harvest— the state’s second-largest agricultural export—is down 30% from last year. And farmers in Southwestern Oklahoma and the Panhandle have seen even steeper declines in production due to extreme dryness, Schulte said. 

These conditions have made it a hard year for Keeff Felty, a fourth-generation farmer in Altus. Some of his wheat was harvestable. But his dryland cotton—normally harvested in the fall—has already failed.

The drought’s impact hasn’t only been limited to farmers. Water rationing has been ordered in some parts of the state, heat-related emergencies have surged, and Governor Stitt has activated the Oklahoma Air National Guard to help fight wildfires. 

Some Oklahoma ranchers have also begun selling their cattle early due to dying grass and dried-up ponds. And Schulte said that consumers will see higher prices for wheat products in the fall.

Climate change and worsening heat

Oklahoma’s current drought is spotted with “the fingerprints of climate change,” says Professor Jason Furtado, a researcher at the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology. However, he notes scientists don’t know exactly how much climate change has contributed. 

“But, our temperatures are increasing, our base level climatology is increasing, so yes, it’s contributing to this.”

Western Oklahoma has seen consistently higher temperatures since the late 90s, warming over 1 degree Fahrenheit in just over 30 years.

Average annual temperature in Western Oklahoma from 1895 to 2021, averaged across different temperature-measuring sites across the region. SOURCE: Oklahoma Climatological Survey

Professor Renee McPherson, a climatologist at OU, says increased temperatures create dry conditions by causing water to evaporate from the soil and leading plants to transfer their water back into the atmosphere.

“There’s a vicious feedback loop where, as the soils get drier, the sun can heat the ground more efficiently, which causes temperatures to rise,” Furtado said. “And as temperatures rise, that forces more water out of the ground. And without anything to replenish it, you develop this cycle which we’re in now.”

Scientists from the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center at OU, lead by McPherson, predict that this drought-causing heat will only become more common in the future. 

Oklahoma now experiences an average of 10 days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit per year, according to state data. Scientists at OU predict the number will increase to an average 35 days a year by mid-century. Southwestern Oklahoma could experience as many as 55 days a year over 100 degrees. 

To produce these models, researchers use methods that have correctly foreseen past changes in Oklahoma’s climate to predict general conditions in the future. 

The models assume greenhouse gas levels will continue increasing at the current pace, trapping heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere. But if humans take steps to significantly reduce greenhouse gasses, including reducing the use of fossil fuels, the state is predicted to experience about 20 days above 100 degrees per year by mid-century.

The map on the right depicts a scenario between 2036 and 2065 if greenhouse gasses continue increasing at their current rate. The map on the right assumes emissions are significantly slowed. SOURCE: South Central Climate Projections Evaluation Project (C-PrEP), South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center

The models also predict that Oklahoma’s average temperature will rise by about 5 degrees by mid-century if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, or 2.5 degrees if levels are reduced. 

Changing precipitation patterns

Researchers say more erratic precipitation patterns, which climate change has helped cause, are also creating longer dry spells. 

“What we have seen are these oscillations going back and forth between extremes in precipitation on the wet side, and extremes in precipitation on the dry side,” said Professor Jeffery Basara, a researcher at OU who has studied Oklahoma’s changing patterns in rainfall.

Oklahoma might be getting about the same amount of rain per year, but the state is seeing longer dry periods in between wet periods.

“Increasingly, we are getting more of our rain in shorter periods of time,” Furtado said, and it is coming more intensely.

Oklahoma has seen drastic swings in precipitation in recent years — 2015 was the state’s wettest year on record. “And yet at the same time we’ve had all these dry periods recently as well,” like the drought of 2011 and now 2022, Basara said. “That actually is something different that we’ve seen in our climate record that we haven’t seen in the past.”

While Peters and Felty expressed general skepticism towards climatologists, noting that droughts have always been part of Oklahoma’s climate, they both said they have noticed differences in rain patterns.

“There’s definitely some changes going on,” Peters said. “It seems like when it rains, it does rain more.”

Felty made a similar observation.

“We had a little rain in June, but it was like 6 inches that all came in an hour,” he said.

Changes to the jet stream — a high-altitude stream of wind that circles the globe and brings Oklahoma rain — are some of a few causes behind the variance in rainfall,  McPherson said. 

Cold air from the North Pole clashes with hot air from the equator to create the jet stream. But, due to climate change, the poles have warmed faster than the equator, causing the jet stream to weaken. This has caused more erratic weather patterns and unpredictable rains. 

Extra heat in the atmosphere also creates more rising air, “making those puffy little cumulus clouds that you often see on summer afternoons that can turn into big thunderstorms,” McPherson said. With warming temperatures, rain is more likely to fall more intensely when it does come. 

Heavier rains can impact farmers by resulting in crop damage and causing soil to retain less water and lose important nutrients. 

Soil to sand

What are now considered drought conditions in Oklahoma will slowly become permanent, giving rise to a new normal.

“I always like to say Oklahoma sits on a razor’s edge,” said Basara, sharply separating the dry, desert-laden Western United States from the wet, forest-covered East. But, due  to the planet’s warming, the arid climate of the West is slowly beginning to expand east toward Oklahoma, he said.

One study found that central Oklahoma is about as dry today as the more arid Western border of the state was in 1980.  Given that Oklahoma weather varies day to day, large-scale changes can be hard to detect. But, OU scientists predict that this trend will become more pronounced in the future.

The map on the right depicts a scenario where greenhouse gasses continue increasing at their current rate. The map on the left depicts a scenario where the rate of greenhouse gasses being added to the atmosphere is significantly slowed. SOURCE: South Central Climate Projections Evaluation Project (C-PrEP), South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center.

Oklahoma’s annual rainfall will drop by up to 15% and that the average dry period will last 3-4 days longer by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue on at their current rate, according to OU climatologists. 

With less rainfall, Western Oklahoma is at risk of desertification by the end of the century, a process that gradually turns soil to sand, transforming pastures into infertile deserts. This occurs when climates become too dry to support the bacteria and fungi that break down rock into soil.

“It's not going to be something quick, or a switch that flips. It’ll just slowly become harder for grass to grow in those regions,” McPherson said. 

Adapting to changing conditions

Experts say there are multiple ways Oklahoma can adapt to and help mitigate changing climate conditions. 

Schulte is hopeful innovation in agriculture can help farmers become more resilient. In 1996, a similar drought caused a near total loss for Oklahoma wheat growers. Innovations in agriculture over the past two decades including efficient water use, more drought-tolerant wheat varieties, and no-till practices that increase soil health would have minimized those crop losses, he said. 

“So it’s really kind of remarkable that we have as high a yield as we had,” Schulte said. “And a lot of that is due to more modernized practices.”

Farming methods that improve soil health could also help to stave off desertification, McPherson said. 

But scientists say reducing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere would help prevent long-term changes to Oklahoma’s climate from occurring in the first place.

“My hope is that, decades from now, people look back to this article and say, ‘Ah see what she said about really bad conditions? That was wrong. It didn't happen,’” McPherson said. “I would love to be wrong. But the best way to do that is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified a plant. It has been corrected.

To donate to The Frontier and help support our efforts to grow investigative journalism in Oklahoma, click here.

The post A poor wheat harvest as Oklahoma faces a hotter, drier future appeared first on The Frontier.

The new funding will create more opportunities for Tulsa students, said Rep. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, who requested the money.

“Through this program, generations that have never gone to college can be educated,” Goodwin said. “They can establish businesses or work in the field of their choice. And they can begin to create generational wealth.” 

But there’s still more work to be done.

State lawmakers originally envisioned the Tulsa Reconciliation Scholarship would help descendants of those who lost businesses and homes in the 1921 massacre regain lost generational wealth through funding for college. But the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, which administers the scholarship, has not prioritized descendants in the selection process or provided significant funding for the program. 

In a response to The Frontier, Kylie Smith, the vice chancellor for administration for the State Regents, said the agency has been focused on funding Oklahoma’s public universities after budget cuts rather than seeking more money for the scholarship.

The State Regents has awarded students of various racial backgrounds scholarships since the program began in 2003, according to state data. Out of 59 scholarship recipients over the past eight years, 34 reported they had at least some Black ancestry. Fourteen did not report their race or ethnicity. Eight reported their race not as Black but Hispanic, Asian or Native American.

“We need to be more mindful that the most impacted group was Black folks,” Goodwin said. “More than 300 Black folks were murdered. 1,256 homes destroyed. Those were Black homes. Those weren’t white folks’ homes. We can’t run away from that.”

The scholarship’s nomination form also doesn’t ask whether students have any ancestral link to the massacre, although state law permits using public records to determine this during the selection process.

Goodwin authored a bill to change this and other issues that garnered bipartisan support. However, the proposal wasn’t given a hearing on the Senate floor before the end of the last regular legislative session in May.

But the State Regents may be able to implement some of the changes Goodwin wants without changing the law. With the new infusion of funding from the Legislature the State Regents will review its process for awarding future scholarships, Smith said. 

Underfunded and underutilized

In 2001, a bipartisan state commission found that a white mob, aided by local law enforcement and the Oklahoma National Guard, systematically destroyed the homes and businesses of thousands of Greenwood residents during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. 

The incident is considered by many to be the single worst episode of racial violence in American history and led to a vast loss of generational wealth among Black Tulsans. To help descendants regain some of this wealth, the report recommended the state create a “scholarship fund for students affected by the Tulsa Race Riot.”

The commission’s report did not specify how many scholarships should be awarded each year or the amount. But former Rep. Don Ross, D-Tulsa — the author of a resolution that created the commission — and the late Sen. Maxine Horner, D-Tulsa, who co-authored a 2001 bill establishing the scholarship, envisioned a program that would cover up to full college tuition for “not less than 300” students.  

“Of course, this was aspirational,” said Goodwin. 

But the Oklahoma Legislature and the State Regents have never provided enough funding to the program to give Tulsa students significant tuition assistance. Since the program was established, an average of only eight $1,000 scholarships have been awarded per year.

The program has also remained underfunded compared to the two other specialized scholarships that public dollars fund. The Chiropractic Education Scholarship Program awarded $196,500 in state funds to chiropractic students from 2014 to 2021. During these same years, the Tulsa Reconciliation Scholarship only allocated $40,000 in scholarships. 

The state also plans to spend $41 million over the next five years on the Oklahoma Future Teachers Scholarship program, which provides funding to students studying education. 

The Legislature never recommended or required a specific amount of funding for the Tulsa Reconciliation Scholarship, but the State Regents began putting between $30,000 and $50,000 each year into a trust fund for the program in 2003. The funds were then invested and the earnings used to award scholarships.

The State Regents never received any additional funding for the program from the Legislature or private donors, except in 2003 when Oklahoma taxpayers were given the option to donate their tax refund to the program. But taxpayers only donated $9,407 over six years — and the option was shut down in 2009 due to a lack of interest. 

To donate to The Frontier and help support our efforts to grow investigative journalism in Oklahoma, click here.

Goodwin is grateful for the money the State Regents has allocated for the scholarship, but said funding has been inconsistent. She noted that the State Regents did not award any scholarships one year and also stopped allocating funding to the trust in 2019.

Three past scholarship recipients from Tulsa, Lisa Holmes, Missy Daniels, and Brandon Oldham, told The Frontier more funding could have helped them avoid taking on more debt from student loans, which some of them are still working to pay off.

Oldham, the salutatorian of his class at Central High School, mentioned he had an ancestor whose business was destroyed in the massacre. 

“More scholarship money would have been much appreciated as I am still working to pay off loans,” he said. 

Holmes and Daniels also said they were first-generation college students.

Another 2003 recipient, who didn’t want her name published for job-related reasons, told The Frontier she was grateful for the help, but the $1,000 scholarship she received barely paid for her books. After graduating high school in the top 10% of her class, she attended Oklahoma State University, but said she was unable to graduate due to a lack of funding.

The State Regents will add the newly-approved $1.5 million for the scholarship, growing the fund’s total to $2.3 million. This sum will be invested and State Regents will determine the number of scholarships it can give and the amount based on the fund’s yearly earnings. Goodwin also said the State Regents has promised to resume adding new money to invest in the fund each year. 

Last week, the State Regents decided to give 26 students $2,000 scholarships for the upcoming school year. Recipients can also reapply for funding in future years and will receive priority.  

Goodwin has also asked the State Regents to award two students full-tuition scholarships next year. The scholarships would cover one year of college tuition (and recipients can also reapply).

Prioritizing Greenwood descendants 

Moving forward, Goodwin would like descendants of massacre survivors to have first preference for scholarships and later North Tulsa residents still affected by the long-lasting damage to the local economy second. Students who may not have ties to the community, but who are enthusiastic about preserving its history would come third. 

The State Regents’ latest set of policy procedures from 2021 do not reflect Goodwin’s ideal. A student’s ancestral connection to the massacre is the last variable the State Regents take into account when awarding scholarships. Only if three measures of financial need do not sufficiently narrow the pool of nominees will they use one’s descendant status. Goodwin notes this has likely never happened.

In response to these problems, Goodwin introduced House Bill 4154 in February, which would have required the selection committee to give preference to descendants.

The bill would have also raised the maximum household income of applicants from $70,000 to $120,000 per year and allowed descendants residing in other parts of the state — not just Tulsa — to apply. 

The bill saw initial success. It passed the House of Representatives by a margin of 68 to 19 with strong bipartisan support. It saw similar success in two House and two Senate committees.

Despite this, the proposal wasn’t heard on the Senate floor. 

Sen. George Young, D-Oklahoma City, the Senate co-sponsor of the bill, said he was frustrated the proposal didn’t get a hearing. He blames squabbles with Senate leadership regarding other legislative issues.  

“It bothers me when, talking about something like the Tulsa Race Massacre, we would allow politics to enter into it to such a degree that it would stop the legislation,” Young said. 

The Frontier contacted Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, to ask why HB 4154 was sidelined. Treat has the authority to decide which bills are heard in the Senate. His office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

While the bill didn’t pass, Goodwin is hopeful she can collaborate with the State Regents to make some of the changes she proposed without changing the law, although restrictions on income and geographical limits can’t be modified without the Legislature’s approval.

Goodwin says the agency, particularly under the new leadership of Chancellor Allison Garrett, has been receptive to working with her.

“We can impress upon them that current law says descendants may have preference and we can say to them: ‘Let’s consider the descendants; let’s remember that this was born out of a report that dealt with the 1921 race massacre,’” Goodwin said. “We absolutely can have that conversation and we’re going to.”

A first step

Goodwin and Young both said more scholarship funding is a positive first step, but maintain that the state needs to do more to address long-lasting economic harm from the Tulsa Race Massacre. 

In addition to establishing a scholarship fund, the state commission’s 2001 report on the massacre also recommended paying direct reparations to victims and descendants as well as implementing policies to stimulate economic growth in the Greenwood District.

Dreisen Heath, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who has studied the massacre, commended Goodwin for obtaining new funding for the scholarship, but said the state needs to do more to repair the damage to Greenwood given the Oklahoma National Guard’s complicity in the attack.

Goodwin also introduced bills this year to create a $300 million victims’ compensation fund for the massacre and a $400,000 study on removing Interstate 244, which cut through Greenwood in the 1970s, displacing businesses and homes. These bills were not heard in the House of Representatives.

While Goodwin says she’s unsure what the Legislature will have an appetite for going forward, she sees her success in securing the scholarship’s new funding as a hopeful beginning. 

“I thank God we got this far,” she said.

A descendant of Tulsa Race Massacre survivors, Goodwin says she has a moral obligation to continue fighting.

“I owe it to all those that have died, all those that lost property, all those that lost generational wealth,” Goodwin said. “I would not be doing my job if, 101 years later, I’m not still talking about this and still not trying to seek justice.”

The post After more than 20 years, a scholarship to help students harmed by the Tulsa Race Massacre has new funding appeared first on The Frontier.