Jake for the State Podcast

A look at all things related to the wellbeing and prosperity of our state and the people who make it great.

Moms for Liberty - Roberta Lewis - Tracking Children... Why?? 04/07/2025

Governor Kevin Stitt - Recovering from Tragedy, Education After the DOE, Wind Energy and more... 03/25/2025

Turnpikes in Oklahoma - Amy Cerato with Pike Off OTA 03/17/2025

The Oklahoma Storm Chaser Bill - 3 Perspectives: Jordan Hall, Independent Storm Chaser; Tod Beasley, Volunteer Firefighter; Rep Scott Fetgatter, Author of the Bill 03/14/2025

GOP Drama in Logan County - Aiya Kelly Gives Her Side 03/13/2025

Patient's Bill of Rights - Gerald Brand Tells His Story and How this Effort Started 03/08/2025

Surveillance in Schools and School Board Re-Structuring with Rep. Sherrie Conley 03/07/2025

Surveillance in Schools and School Board Re-Structuring with Rep. Sherrie Conley Former Oklahoma Rep Sherrie Conley joins me to discuss a couple of education related bills. SB 224 and HB 1491. SB224 would establish a Statewide Longistudinal Data System in the state of Oklahoma. This would allow the govermnment to track and monitor your child from cradel to the grave. I have a big problem with this! Listen and you'll understand why. Then, we have HB1491 and this interesting move by Gov Stitt with support from Speaker Hilbert and Pro Temp Paxton. They want to allow any of the board members to participate in setting the agenda for the OSDE. Maybe this would not seem so interesting, if it were not on the heals of Gov Stitt's recent move to remove three board members and replace them with three members that some have suggested are closely aligned with Stitt. Is this a hotile takeover to wrest control from Superintendent Walters and prevent him from trying to count children of illegal immigrants? Or is it an honest move to redistribute power? We'll lay out some facts, and you can decide. Transcript: Jake How do you feel about surveillance? How do you feel about surveying your children or the state surveying your children? We're talking about data mining. It is a topic of one particular bill here in the Oklahoma legislature. We're gonna take a look at it. I'm here with Sherry Connolly and will also look at house bill 149 1 that was recently backed by Governor Stitt and the speaker of the house. This deals with a shake up in the school board here in Oklahoma so got a lot to get to let's get to it. All right, I'm here with the former house representative Sherry Connolly Sherry welcome to the show Sherrie Conley Thank you so much for having me You You bet. Well I appreciate you all the work you have done and are doing in the state. Before we get too involved in these subjects that I wanna dive into both this idea of data mining collecting information on our children in the state and also this house bill 1491. I want to give you a chance to talk about a passion project of yours. Exposing the corruption in the public schools. Real quickly, what is the website that you are working on? Sherrie Conley So we have we have two websites one is our broken trust website it's still in the construction phases but we've got another one that we're taking over called iHeart my teacher You OK Sherrie Conley .org. It is a collection of over 24, 000 reports of a teacher misconduct the majority of it is all sexual misconduct and so. Yeah, it's like it's a huge undertaking. We got to update it. I believe the gentleman that has it that we're taking it from. He worked for about four years doing it and just got overwhelmed with all of the information and so yeah we we got a lot of work ahead of us, but it's iHeartmyteacher.org You You know someone would ask, “is this actually happening in our schools?” and I think that's the right I mean that is eye-opening that the one who founded this to track this and expose it he's overwhelmed because of all of the data that he's he's collecting and all of the instances of sexual misconduct in our schools so yeah, it's definitely happening Sherrie Conley It is definitely happening and I have collected it over the last year and a half while really just a year started my research in February of last year collecting the data. I got 2 6 3 predators from inside the school and those are just Oklahoma cases those are just predators from inside You Wow Sherrie Conley Oklahoma. You Well, that is iHeart my teacher .org the other one broken trust you're working on but that's gonna be coming to everyone pretty soon and I just wanted to make sure we we highlighted that before we get into these other conversations and forget to because I really appreciate your work there. I think it's needed in the state. Sherrie Conley Yeah, thank you You But the topic today we're looking at this statewide longitudinal data systems. The SLDS this is something that looks like it's been adopted by about 40 states and often times that's used as an argument for for something to adopt it and if we see a trend across the nation then often times Oklahoma says well it's happening everywhere else we want to happen here too, but we want to hit the pause button on that and say wait a minute is this a good idea? To actually track the data on our students what have you seen Sherry about this SLDS in our US concerned about it as I am Sherrie Conley I am extremely concerned about it and let me just kind of give you just a little piece of information. This started in Oklahoma back in 20 12 Oklahoma received a $4.99 million grant. For the race to the top program to institute a longitude that system and that money good for the year 2012 to 20 17 I haven't that information just came to me, but I have not had an opportunity to dig into that and what was instituted whenever that money was received? You Well, back in 20 12 Sherrie Conley Yes You OK, do you know where this is originating from? I mean, who is behind this and pushing this as far as wanting schools to adopt us Sherrie Conley No, I asked the house author where the language came from and he's he's not real sure where it came from but he knows that it's being pushed by the education people in Oklahoma and also by the chambers and so you know if you look at The language inside the bill it gives the workforce commission higher education, career tech superintendent, public instruction, Oklahoma, employment security commission oh QA and the the university it's the Russo group. It gives them all access to the data that comes out of the database. Me personally it also add some language in there that says among approved entities, but then it also goes down and it makes the comment that that there could be other Groups that are given access to it, and so that is the part that concerns me if this was being You Right Sherrie Conley created and used in the state of Oklahoma in order to improve education at the common end level at higher Ed workforce you know I'm getting our kids to work and getting them educated in the field that they want to pursue I would be OK with this, but I see you know connections to the agenda from the United Nations for a global database system, and that is what concerns me about this You Me too, yeah have you seen the divergent series? Sherrie Conley I have yes You Stuff like this reminds me of this, and I know that that could be laughable, but so all too often we're seeing the sci-fi fantasy world becoming reality you know, and when you have an agenda for kids when you when you wanting to mind their skills and their strengths and all these data points on them to it seems like fund them in a certain direction Sherrie Conley Yeah You And it just reminded me of that I don't know if is a divergent series or one of those I think it's called a divergent they they have certain categories that people go and Sherrie Conley Yes You select at a certain age and you know it seems like we're thinking along those lines, dude does the government really need that much data on our kids and do they need to have that much control about how to funnel them in a certain direction? Sherrie Conley Yeah, well it makes me think of the movie. I think it's ants where when the baby answer born somebody holds it up and says this is a worker aunt and hold it up and you know this is you know You Right Sherrie Conley whatever whatever the other categories are it's been a long time since I've seen the movie but that's what this kind of makes me think of is funding kids into you know well your grades are not high enough so you can't go to college so you're gonna have to go either into the military or into career tech, I feel like you know we need to be educating our kids. On all sorts of You know the arts and music, appreciation and being able to think logically and reasonably and you know create a dialogue and rhetoric and all of those things and then let the kids decide. I think that we're doing too much of deciding for the kids. I say all the time I know there's a lot of other people that that say this, but let's teach the kids what to think or how to think and not what to think you know and that's what this feels like there. This is a push You Right, right? Sherrie Conley towards is pushing kids to think this is where I'm gonna have to go because I'm not good enough to go to know to someplace else and I just I don't agree with making decisions for children. People have the freedom. They should have the freedom to be able to make the decisions on their own, we should not be collecting data points in order to push them into the direction that somebody else thinks they need to go. You Well, I'll just read here from the text of the bill again we're talking about Cinna bill 22 4 and is there is there a house bill with a different number? Sherrie Conley I have not found one You OK OK I think it's just this one. It's run by Seyfried in the Senate in Caldwell in the house and here in section a right at the beginning of the bill first page. It says the purpose of the SLDS shall be to provide state agencies, but right there first red flag provide state agencies, legislators, and other Sherrie Conley Yeah, You approved users with with that's the issue. It's very vague very open right other approved who are these approved users and who's approving them Sherrie Conley that's the Yes You It was shall provide them with access to data on early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, workforce training and employment outcomes and employment outcomes so I mean how how far are we gonna track these Sherrie Conley Yes You individuals these children it is it employment while they're in high school or is it beyond that? Sherrie Conley Well, the next word, the next four words, five words say improve education, and then here's the caveat and workforce outcomes You There you go Sherrie Conley You know here's the thing is that you have to track somebody past their high school in college careers in order to be able to track workforce outcomes right so you You Yum Sherrie Conley know that I mean they're calling it a longitudinal data system and so they are truly talking about tracking people from the cradle to the grave and determining where they go, what I see this is using this for ES G and social scores you know I just came from London and one of the perfect examples of a social credit score is the Uber system and you know you can take that system and you can you can see where using these data points where people go whether or not they're working, you know you can use gaps in their employment as they hit on their social credit score that if you're tracking their workforce your tracking their work and And everything that comes after high school in college that's exactly what that stuff can be used for You Yeah, well it's clear and it's no secret. The DEF has made it very clear that they have an agenda and you know when you start seeing things like this it seems to match what they have been very vocal about this this global Sherrie Conley Absolutely You agenda and it's so easy to dismiss this and say you know you radical conspiracy theorist talking about 15 minute cities and and social credit scores. But then we have a bill like this and it's talking about tracking from the cradle to the grave preparing people for the workforce and and here's a thing I get so sick of it because it's always for our own good. It's always about the government protecting us helping us, but it's like you said, are we telling them what to think or we just simply teaching them how to think how to be independent critical thinkers who then can go pioneer their own way rather than Sherrie Conley Yeah Yeah You fall into a certain track that has been pre- prepared for them. Sherrie Conley Yes, yeah and that is that is very concerning to me because how many people actually reinvent themselves all the time they get a degree in one thing and then you know decide I don't wanna do that and so they go to another job that's You Yeah Sherrie Conley outside of where of what they actually majored in in college and you know is that eventually going to be used against us if you look at the comparisons to the launch Tual database and to the UN agenda They have data collection and management on there, which is sharing the and the integration of the educational data for global monitoring monitoring monitoring sorry You Monitoring Sherrie Conley Privacy and security oversight then they got tracking student progress, which aligns a state level educational outcomes with the global four targets and interestingly enough it actually even has a workforce and migration data in it and it's to improve understanding of migration impact or education systems and what I find so interesting is that the argument you know I'm gonna go back to the argument between Walters and stick the argument between them was Walters, wanting to collect the data on the students who are illegal immigrants to determine the impact that they're having on Oklahoma's education system and the funding right and yet this the UN database the UN agenda is actually wanting to collect that data through these launch to databases and so I find it very interesting that they got that battle going back-and-forth between them and yet this SDS actually does exactly what Walters just wanting to do to determine the impact on our education system here in the state of Oklahoma You Yeah, I just as I read down the bill it just for me. It's more concerning. It says implement identity management capabilities, identity Sherrie Conley Yeah, what is that? You management, right to create unique identifiers that link early childhood childhood education, elementary, and secondary education post secondary education, workforce data, so we've seen those for Elements there in the previously in the bill that early childhood elementary secondary post secondary and workforce but this identity management capability What is that about and you know one thing we know Sherrie Conley No You about the UNWEF this global agenda is the big 3M's that the monitoring management and monetize Sherrie Conley Yep You and this is the goal is to monitor that's why I push back Sherrie Conley I didn't You against surveillance, especially in this day, even if it's used to justify preparing our youth for the future or use to justify catching more criminals I'm gonna be paranoid whenever we talk about Sherrie Conley Yes You surveillance because I know there's a bigger agenda here and that is the first step and Sherrie Conley Absolutely You monitoring which then when you're monitored, you can be managed and when you're managed, you can be monetized not for your Sherrie Conley Yep You benefit, but for someone else's benefit to use you Sherrie Conley Yep You as a channel and Just direct you in a certain way where you can be a good worker which where we heard that before if it rings a Marx's Sherrie Conley Yes, You tone Sherrie Conley yes well and if you think about it, these companies that are changing their human resources to human capital that gives a huge Red flag for me that you are counting me not as as as someone who is valuable to your organization, but you're counting me as an asset that I You Yeah Sherrie Conley am I am looked at as money for you to make money and I don't know they're just there's something just really creepy about that. It's kind of a weird word to use, but that is very scary to me and then the that section 4 was something that was very section 3 that was very concerning to me because when you say identity management capabilities, that is what it sounds to me like and I hope I'm wrong but what it sounds to me like is giving someone a number inside the database that will follow me kind of like my Social Security number that will follow me all of my life so that it can be tracked, regardless of where I go work and regardless, if you know what state I'm working in that it can always be tracked back to that number and that I'll have to use that along with my Social Security number so that they can identify who I am and what I'm doing. You Yum and we're talking about things like your history of illness for instance, your travel where were you Sherrie Conley Yes You exposed to other forms of illness Sherrie Conley Exactly You Behavior psychological Sherrie Conley Yes You evaluations, you know Sherrie Conley Yes You businesses you started businesses you've been affiliated with the list goes on and on and on and the ones reading this first of all, we don't even know who that Sherrie Conley It does You is because they've Sherrie Conley Right You intentionally made it vague, so who's gonna be looking at this data and how would they be evaluating you? Do you want them evaluating you and your children especially So man, so many red flags here and you know one of the things we mentioned at the start of this I think before we went live is you know Chad Colwell was carrying this in the house you know you respect Chad Caldwell in the house and we're waiting to hear back from him as far as what is it that he sees that would be good about this bill I personally don't know him well I don't know Senator Seyfried well in the Senate I know both of them have had other good pieces of legislation in the past So I'm curious to hear from them what what is it about this bill that you think would be good for Oklahoma's Sherrie Conley Yeah, I am. I am very much interested in hearing hearing from him and that's the reason why I reached out to him. I was hoping that I could get you know a response back so that we could talk about you know what he seems to be the benefit of this, but I will tell you that I'm also very concerned about this being linked to school based healthcare. I'm also very concerned about it being linked to common core and I was looking at a graphic that was put out by Jenny White and it's it's kind of a complicated graphic I I really need to sit down with her and have her explain to me yeah You I saw that graphic arrows going everywhere Sherrie Conley Yes, yes everywhere but if you look at it closely, you can see that there are different entities that are gathering data on our students at every single level and so I mean even our night test you know that are tracking our our test scores are reading in math test scores for fourth and eighth graders You know that's that's a concern to me also, I mean, I understand the need to be able to determine where our kids arming we're using that data to be able to say look our schools are not cutting it. They are failing our students and so they're failing our families and they're failing our communities and our businesses who need good you... /episode/index/show/jakeforthestate/id/35568770