Oklahoma City, The Oklahoma Senate on Tuesday signed off on a pair of education bills that target two hot spots in the state’s school system: how to attract more certified teachers and how freely districts can lean on uncertified adjuncts in early grades. One bill would substantially boost scholarships for college students training to become teachers, while the other would narrow the circumstances when schools can plug staffing gaps with adjunct instructors in K–5 math and reading. Both measures now head to the Oklahoma House.
Scholarship expansion under SB 1546
Senate Bill 1546, carried by Sen. Adam Pugh, would rebrand the current Inspired to Teach program as NEXT-ED and double scholarship awards for eligible education majors. Full-time students with fewer than 90 college credits would see their support increase to $2,000 per year, while those with 90 or more credits would be eligible for $5,000 annually.
A fiscal analysis pegs the yearly cost of the expansion at about $10.49 million and notes roughly 7,632 current recipients. In exchange for the aid, participants would still commit to teaching for five years in an Oklahoma public school after graduation, a requirement that remains baked into the program. Those provisions and the official cost estimate are outlined in documents posted by the Oklahoma Legislature and the related fiscal summary from the Oklahoma Legislature.
Limits on uncertified adjuncts
Senate Bill 1614, authored by Sen. Ally Seifried, would tighten how districts use adjunct instructors, particularly in the youngest grades. The measure requires adjuncts who lack standard certification to have high school diplomas and bars them from serving as full-time mathematics or English language arts teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade.
The bill also spells out that adjuncts without a valid teaching certificate are not considered “teachers” under state law and adds reporting and oversight requirements tied to their use. Those changes appear in the amended Senate floor version of the bill, as detailed in the LegiScan posting of SB 1614.
Politics and what comes next
The scholarship plan cleared the Senate on a 37-10 vote. Supporters framed it as a key piece of a broader push to boost literacy and teacher pay by putting more money directly into classrooms. The larger Senate proposal would shift roughly $254 million into classroom priorities and includes funding for the NEXT-ED scholarship expansion, according to analysis from the Oklahoma Policy Institute.
Pugh has argued that juicing scholarship amounts is one of the quickest ways to draw more people into the profession. “We want to double it and reimagine it,” he told reporters in January, as reported by Oklahoma Voice.
Some advocates and legislators are not entirely sold, raising questions about how the Senate funding strategy could affect long-term retirement funding even as it channels more dollars toward near-term recruitment tools, according to reporting by KGOU. Both SB 1546 and SB 1614 now move to the House, where committee hearings, budget negotiations and floor debate will decide whether the changes make it into law this session.
