After 15-year-old Skiatook High School sophomore Nettie Gray received a world history assignment that reminded her family of Boarding Schools’ forcing Christianity on Native American children, her teacher took it a step further in the wrong direction – by allegedly threatening violence in the classroom.
“He said, ‘I sometimes get violent because I’m a former marine,’” said Nettie’s mother, Olivia Gray. “Nettie contacted us at lunch to let us know what he said about violence. … He said it more than once.”
On Wednesday, Aug. 21, Gray met with the school’s principal and superintendent, along with husband Jim Gray, former principal chief of the Osage Nation.
According to the Grays, Principal Jenny Mcelyea and Superintendent Rick Loggins said the assignment did not meet school guidelines, and as a result, the teacher will have to meet with his mentor more often – but he will not be treated differently than the other teachers.
When the Grays told Mcelyea and Loggins that Nettie’s teacher, Erich Richter, had mentioned his propensity for violence to her class, they said the administrators looked shocked. “They wrote that down,” said Gray, who is an advocate for victims of violence.
“I deal with people like [Richter] all the time and I want him to be fired because he doesn’t have the temperament to be a teacher. … The situation is actually worse. We don’t respond well in this house to threats of violence.”
For Gray, the resemblance to Boarding Schools in her daughter’s classroom is growing. “Now we’re not only doing the whole pushing the Bible [thing,] we’re threatening violence.”
Superintendent Loggins said administrators are making sure the threat of violence is “a valid complaint,” and that Richter is undergoing an investigation. “We as administrators investigate that, take it very seriously. We take whatever action we feel is necessary,” he said, adding that it should not take long to complete the investigation.
Regarding Ryan Walter’s Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) mandate that public schools must include the Bible in curriculum, Loggins said he has not actually given any directive to his teachers.
“If you look up the world history academic standards, it talks about different world religions. Nothing in there says that they have to teach the Bible or focus on Christianity. They should be focusing on world religions,” he said.
In addition to his alleged threats of violence, Richter was also hired as a certified teacher – even though he does not have certification to teach world history, and his emergency English certification is expired. Loggins noted that Richter was hired under a prior administration.
“I’m not trying to make excuses, and I don’t really know how this happened, but our former superintendent resigned in June [and Richter was hired] as a certified hire,” said Loggins. “At the August board meeting, we changed [his] status to a non-certified adjunct.”
Richter may legally teach as an adjunct because Oklahoma law allows adjuncts to be uncertified teachers, but Gray said this did not matter to her.
“I want him to be fired because he is unqualified and unfit. This is his first year teaching … [and] when you lose your temper and get violent, well, that’s not good,” she said. “His skill level is nonexistent and now he is making these weird threats.”
According to the OSDE’s list of emergency certification requests, Richter was trying to teach English in Tulsa as early as February 2024. His degrees listed in the emergency certification request are “journalism, public relations” and a “master’s degree in health care administration.”
Oklahoma policy on issuing emergency certifications states that “the district shall document efforts to employ an individual with a provisional or standard certificate or with a license in another curricular [sic] area with academic preparation in the field of need. Only after these alternatives have been exhausted shall the district be allowed to employ an individual meeting minimum standards,” according to 70 O.S. 6-187.
The principal and superintendent of Skiatook High School asked Gray not to go to social media with further issues, but directly to them. She said that she has had several children attend Skiatook High School, and they have not been listened to historically. “I said, ‘I won’t keep secrets,’” said Gray. “When they looked at me, I just said, ‘That’s not who I am.’”
Yesterday, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Education Ryan Walters said during the State Board of Education regular meeting that he remains committed to “wip[ing] out a radical, far-left agenda in our schools.” During the meeting, he remarked on recent media headlines, criticizing minority opinions.
“A few – but loud – voices … want to maintain the status quo,” he said, which he described as “pornography in libraries” and “the lies of the transgender movement. … The media is lying, but I am telling the truth,” said Walters, who also said he is heartened to see “different types of teachers” joining the classroom and wants principals to focus more on students.
Loggins and Mcelyea are not focused on “wiping out” perspectives, but on ensuring Nettie’s safety, though they could not share any plan as to how. “I just want everyone to know that we have taken steps,” said Loggins, but could not say more due to the “confidential ongoing personnel investigations.”
Preston Bobo of Defense of Democracy responded to “what we saw in Skiatook” at the Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting during public comments, noting it as an opportunity to develop “high-quality lesson plans aligned to the Oklahoma standards.”
Bobo said, “Mr. Walters, you [promulgated] the OSDE instructional support guidelines for teachers. And so, [at] Defense of Democracy, we knew that a situation like what we saw in Skiatook was going to be inevitable.” He then shared the Biblically-based lesson plans via hard copies and a QR code.
Loggins said he would not assign any such lesson plans without reviewing them, and that he had not seen them.
Gray remains focused on safety. “When it comes to threatening violence, rhetoric can affect everyone differently. You don’t know who is in that classroom, you don’t know who is in an abusive household and goes home to [witness violence.]”
Tulsa parent and veteran Rick Watkins said that although he was “not from the out-of-state woke mob,” he sees that it is one-sided to mandate teaching the Bible and the Ten Commandments when even documents such as the U.S. Constitution, State Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Magna Carta and other religious texts are not mandated to be taught. He asked Walters, “Have we mandated any of these documents that are historical documents for the founding of our country?”
“None of them are in there, but we’re putting the Ten Commandments. That seems a little one-sided. We’re not representing Muslims, Hindu, pagans, just that one religion. … The reason the founding fathers wanted [the First Amendment] was because of all the bloodshed … they wanted to avoid that,” said Watkins.
Gray is considering taking legal action, after the American Atheists group contacted the family, offering them a meeting with their litigation team.
She said she would attend the meeting to learn more about what pursuing legal action would entail. “Nettie will miss school that day to have the opportunity to hear what they have to say. … If she says, ‘it’s too much,’ then we won’t [go further],” said Gray.
That doesn’t mean Gray will stop advocating, however. “This is bigger than Nettie, because of everything that’s going on in Oklahoma.”
