The Fair Labor Standards Act allows employers to pay tipped workers the federal tipped minimum of $2.13 by claiming up to $5.12 of an employee’s tips as credit towards the $7.25 minimum wage. 

The amount claimed cannot exceed the tips actually received – if an employee does not receive $5.12 in tips, the employer must pay the difference. 

The federal tipped minimum has not increased since its inception in 1991 – despite being set at half the minimum wage, a 1996 amendment to the FLSA locked it at $2.13. 

According to OK Policy, tipped workers’ exclusion from minimum wage laws is rooted in racism; recently emancipated Black people largely worked tip-reliant jobs. Women disproportionately work tipped occupations nationwide and represent 75% of such workers in Oklahoma. 

The annual median income for restaurant servers in Oklahoma was about $4,000 above the federal poverty level in 2024.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Oklahoma Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Labor Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees
• Legal Clarity Oklahoma Server Minimum Wage and Tip Credit Rules
• Center for Economic adn Policy Research The Tipped Minimum Wage Has Been $2.13 Since 1991. That’s Too Damn Long!
• Oklahoma Policy Institute Raising the minimum wage in Oklahoma is pro-growth

The post Is the minimum wage for tipped restaurant staff in Oklahoma $2.13? appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Shelby Salazar was blissfully unaware of fentanyl becoming one of the deadliest drugs in Oklahoma until it reached her family. 

Salazar received a call from her father the day after Mother’s Day in 2020. Ty Hughes, her 22-year-old brother, had died from fentanyl poisoning. He took a pill he believed was oxycodone with a former high school classmate. 

Hughes’ death left Salazar shell-shocked, but it gave her a renewed purpose to tackle a prevalent issue in Oklahoma. She started a nonprofit, Talk About Ty, and joined forces with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services to educate Oklahomans on the use of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, in the illicit drug trade.  

Salazar also worked with the department to provide federally funded overdose prevention resources to communities. After a statewide naloxone vending machine program was launched in May 2023 to expand access to overdose prevention resources, she stocked machines often multiple times each week in towns east of I-35.

The machines distributed free naloxone, known as Narcan, a medication that rapidly reverses opioid overdoses, and fentanyl test strips for free. Salazar was passionate about the program; she said having naloxone on hand can mean the difference between life and death. 

“Since Ty did not know that the pill he was about to take was going to kill him, he was just alone in his bed,” Salazar said. “People aren’t dying in their bed or at the club snorting a line of coke …. It does happen, but a vast majority of deaths are happening there by themselves. They don’t have this long history of drug use, so it’s not like parents or whomever they’re living with have naloxone lying around.” 

The state ran the program for a little more than a year before it was canceled in late 2024. Free naloxone is still available through the OK I’m Ready mail-out program and through institutional partnerships with some police departments, healthcare centers and schools. 

Organizations that have taken over what is left of the vending machine program are uncertain about how they will maintain prolonged access to overdose prevention resources. Some are depending on their own budgets while others are depending on grants. On top of financial uncertainty, House Bill 2012 died before it could renew state-registered harm reduction efforts past July 1, which is causing concern among some public health leaders. 

“There are several things (changing),” said Ryane Draper, the assistant director of campus wellness at Oklahoma State University. “There’s some laws that were voted on. There’s some guidelines on recommended verbiage and things you can and cannot say and ways that you can and cannot afford to ensure that those things are still able to be done.” 

Education and awareness of the drug is one piece of the puzzle. But Draper said that access to harm reduction resources, such as naloxone and testing strips, directly affects the number of deaths. The vending machine program originally stemmed from the need to get ahead of an increase in fentanyl-related deaths in the state that started in 2020. 

The number of illicitly manufactured fentanyl poisonings increased from 127 in 2020 to 730 in 2023, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. It decreased to 487 in 2024.

“Education can only go so far, especially in rural communities where their access to everything is already so limited,” Draper said. “Yes, it is incredibly important to go in and educate them, but we’re only giving them so much. Basically, ‘Here’s what you should do, but unfortunately we can’t give you access to that final piece of it.’” 

The department said the naloxone vending machine program was the largest in the United States when it was announced. More than 40 vending machines were purchased, but 18 of those never made it out of the warehouse, according to records obtained by Fox 25. 

Operating only 25 of the machines cost the ODMHSAS more than $14 million, which was double the estimate. Salazar saw the demand for the resources on her trips to restock the machine in Lawton, which is in a heavy-traffic area near several highways, including I-44 and U.S. Highway 62. 

“Whenever you’re on your way to Lawton, there is this one McDonald’s that you pass on the highway, and that one (vending machine) we were having to restock quite a bit, maybe a few times a week,” Salazar said. “It was most frequently used, which also allowed the department to say this is an area where we probably have a little bit more of an issue”

In 2024, the state pulled the machines out of their original areas. With the new data, the department was able to identify high-risk areas with an increased need for naloxone. Machines were redistributed based on data analysis and needs-based assessments, according to the ODMHSAS. 

In a press release announcing the transition, the state highlighted community ownership as the cornerstone for sustainable overdose prevention. Transferring responsibility remains in the works as machines are still being redistributed this year. 

East Central Oklahoma Family Health Center, Inc. received three machines from the Oklahoma Primary Care Association for its locations in Wetumka, Henryetta and Wewoka. CEO Donna Dyer said the organization will pay out of pocket for the stock. 

“They did give us the first set of stock,” Dyer said. “We can request from the PCA at some point, and we will pay for those out of our program income. We’ll pay for those supplies to be put back in. We’re going to keep it going, and as long as it’s being used, that’s the important thing.” 

As of July 9, 49 naloxone kits and 50 fentanyl test strips have been distributed across the three healthcare locations since they were installed in May. Each is open 52 hours per week, and the vending machines are in the lobby for patients and community members to use. East Central serves rural communities, and Dyer said it’s critical for those populations to have naloxone, too. 

“In this area and with all the small towns, Oklahoma has a very big fentanyl problem and overdose problem,” Draper said. “We want this medication to be out there and to be able to be used …. We’re going to find sources to make sure that’s covered. I mean, it would be ideal if the Department of Mental Health could help with that, but I also know that there’s funding concerns.” 

Wetumka and Wewoka are in rural counties as defined by the state health department. Henryetta is in a metropolitan county, but is considered high risk with a 15% death rate per 100,000 people for fentanyl overdoses. A majority of the vending machine stock at the East Central sites, according to data provided by Dyer, is going to Henryetta. 

Although it may cost the organization, Dyer said it’s important to be able to provide what their patients and surrounding community need, even if they need to reconsider how to maintain it. 

“There’s always a concern (for finding funding) when you start thinking about what we need to do and how we need to get it done,” Dyer said. “But that’s just part of providing the services that our patients need. We’ll be looking at other revenue if we can find it, and go from there.” 

So-called Narcan hubs, places that provide free naloxone through state partnerships, also are unsure of future stock, especially for fentanyl test strips. 

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration sent a letter to its partners at the end of April clarifying changes to federal funding after one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders declared that certain harm reduction resources and practices are facilitating illicit drug use against federal law.  

The order announced that funding would no longer be approved for fentanyl test strips or any other substance test kits. Since Oklahoma passed a law in 2023 no longer identifying test strips as drug paraphernalia, organizations that fund their own stock can still include test strips but will not receive state money.

Different ownership can create an inconsistent stock for vending machines operating across the state. The vending machine on OSU’s campus is a partnership with HOPE, a nonprofit that provides free and low-cost HIV and STI testing as well as education. The machine is meant to provide several needed resources, including sexual health resources, harm reduction materials and basic necessities. 

Other HOPE vending machines often include Naloxone provided by HOPE’s own private grants, but OSU’s Department of Wellness receives a majority of its overdose prevention resources from the state, Draper said. Her team stocks the machine with harm reduction kits, which include both naloxone and fentanyl testing strips, which Draper said is one of its most popular items.

“Being a Narcan hub really covers us for the most part, especially through the community wellness grants, but (having resources from the state in the future) is an up-in-the-air conversation,” Draper said. “There’s some change in funding structures, but for example, the grant that I oversee is specific to opioid and stimulant misuse, and that we anticipate to be refunded next year.” 

Draper is uncertain of the resources they may be able to distribute in the future as harm reduction programs are in limbo after House Bill 2012, which would extend a bill that permitted the legal operation of state-registered harm reduction programs through July 1, 2027, was passed by the House and never heard on the Senate floor. The bill died, but Rep. Daniel Pae, R-Lawton, said he plans to introduce another extension bill in the next legislative session. 

Draper’s team is prepared if there is a change in their available stock, including if they no longer receive testing strips, she said. Education would shift to being the sole focus of the department’s prevention efforts, but not being able to provide certain resources would be a drawback.

“People don’t feel as safe, and they don’t feel as supported,” Draper said. “Words can only go so far, right? We can only tell someone this is how you should respond, or this is what you should do, but not giving them the full tool set to intervene is hard and scary.” 

Naloxone will remain available at the state level through the mail-out program, but the fentanyl test strip option has since been removed from the website. 

Organizations that took over the vending machines are working toward an efficient model to provide Naloxone to their communities, but uncertainty looms without guaranteed funding and the legal operation of harm reduction programs. For Salazar and others who have been touched by fentanyl-related deaths, it’s important to prevent it from happening again.  

”Everybody needs to be trained in administering Narcan just like CPR,” Salazar said. “It’s not because we’re supporting people that take pills that aren’t prescribed to them or anything like that. It’s because it’s a real thing that happens and we need to accept that as a nation and learn for the sake of just being able to look out for one another.”

Raynee Howell is a Stillwater-based journalist and contributor to Oklahoma Watch. Contact her at raynee.howell@okstate.edu.

The post Oklahoma’s Ballyhooed Naloxone Vending Machine Program is Gone, Leaving Communities Scrambling to Fill the Gap appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Paul Monies examines a Republican gubernatorial candidate’s surprising board attendance record, while reporter J.C. Hallman breaks down the legal questions surrounding an Insurance Commissioner candidate’s swift state residency swap. Plus, Jake Ramsey details severe property mismanagement at Vesta Realty and how it’s leaving local tenants in the lurch. Catch these stories and more on the latest Long Story Short with Shaun Witt.

The post Candidate Attendance, Residency Disputes, and Apartment Agony appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

A drive through the Westmoor Mobile Home Park in southwest Oklahoma City paints a picture of a quaint community. The grass is cut to a neat level, the trees bloom and the mobile homes are decorated and maintained.

At the park’s center is a playground, a pool, a basketball court and a field with two adjacent soccer goals.

Dustin Rollins, a trailer park resident, said that when he was searching for a property, Westmoor’s amenities and cleanliness were reasons he and his family moved in.

But Rollins said he later learned that was only the surface.

The Westmoor Mobile Home Park is a serial evictor and is starting to push rent-to-own deals on residents, in which a portion of a tenant’s monthly rent builds towards the purchase price of the mobile home. The serial eviction filings have left tenants stuck there, unable to move up the economic ladder, and legal experts contend that rent-to-own deals are little more than a profitability scheme that rarely benefit tenants.

Westmoor Mobile Homes

Westmoor Mobile Homes is owned by YES! Communities, a Colorado-based real estate company that specializes in affordable manufactured homes. The company owns parks in 23 states and has 13 properties in Oklahoma.

Westmoor, near Mustang, is in the 73169 ZIP code, where 167 evictions were filed last year. Westmoor filed 160 of those. There are an estimated 191 renter-occupied units in that ZIP code, according to the most recent U.S. Census.

Multiple phone calls from Oklahoma Watch to the Westmoor Mobile Home Park and YES! Communities over the course of more than a week went unreturned.

The park is Oklahoma City’s seventh-highest evictor, according to data from The Eviction Lab. It filed evictions against 76 households in 2025, with 29 households having more than one filed. One household had 10 evictions filed against them in a single year.

Only three other YES! Communities’ properties appear on The Eviction Lab’s list of Oklahoma City’s top 100 evictors. Meridian Sooner is the 23rd-highest evictor, Oak Ridge Estates is the 40th-highest and Golden Rule is the 42nd-highest.

But Westmoor holds the title.

Rollins, a Westmoor resident, has had seven evictions filed against him in three years living there. Five were filed in 2025; two were filed this year.

Rollins lives in the park with his wife and three children. He said the eviction cycle started when his food stamps were cut off. He also missed work when his daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

He said that aside from the evictions, other fees are tacked on regularly. He said, as an example, that if the grass is too high, the park will cut it and then charge the resident. He also said that all residents share a water bill that is divided evenly, meaning he can potentially pay for more water than he uses.

Rollins said he has a job and makes decent money, but when he falls behind and gets an eviction notice, it takes time to get back on his feet.

“At first I thought I would be OK,” Rollins said. “It’s not like I’ve actually been evicted. I’ve paid the late fees. I’ve never not paid it.”

He said he’s used his 401(k) to pay rent and late fees when eviction notices come.

“It sucks to have to dig that deep and have my bank account be in overdraft all the time,” Rollins said.

Profiting Off Poverty

What Rollins and several other residents have experienced at Westmoor is a serial eviction, when a landlord files multiple eviction cases against the same household to collect rent and late fees while the tenant remains in the property.

The Eviction Lab found that each eviction filing results in an estimated $180 in fines and fees for typical renters. That raises their monthly housing cost by 20%, according to the study.

In Oklahoma, most eviction records remain publicly available indefinitely. Even eviction filings that were dismissed in the tenant’s favor, filed mistakenly, or were discriminatory are easily retrievable in public court records.

Rollins said when he does look for his next property, he’s worried about the uphill battle he’ll face.

“It’s about finding somebody now that will look past these things (the evictions),” Rollins said. “Look how many times I paid the late fee and the eviction fee.”

Amy Coldren, the advocacy and communications director for Mental Health Association Oklahoma, said landlords are less likely to rent to tenants with an eviction on their record.

“Which then means they’re likely to spend more in seeking new housing because they’re going to have to pay repeated application fees for multiple properties before they find a landlord that’s willing to rent to them,” Coldren said.

Coldren said the eviction filings are not just financially damaging to a tenant, but they can also harm a tenant’s health and educational outcomes.

While the serial eviction process is damaging to the tenant, it also creates a system by which landlords can make additional profit.

“It (the serial eviction) would be a useful tool if they’re trying to manage a tenant out by creating a system that feels untenable for that resident,” Coldren said. “And there is also the ability to then add on additional fees, which they could be profiting from.”

She added that Oklahoma’s Residential Landlord-Tenant Act is what attracts out-of-state landlords such as Westmoor’s owners.

“If you were an out-of-state entity looking for where to purchase property, then of course it’s going to be more appealing to buy property in a state that has laws that fit into that business practice,” Coldren said. “If you are looking for properties in a state with a rapid eviction process that costs very little to file an eviction, then it would be appealing if that is a part of your day-to-day operation.”

Oklahoma’s eviction timeline is among the fastest in the nation, and the filing fee for an eviction can cost a mere $58 in the highest-evicted counties, including Oklahoma County.

Mobile Home Evictions

YES! Communities was flagged before in Eviction Lab research that analyzed evictions in mobile home parks in Florida.

Though the company’s evictions were not the focus of the analysis, Jacob Haas, the author, said YES! showed up frequently in the data for his research.

Haas, now a doctoral student at New York University, was a senior research specialist at The Eviction Lab for five years.

“In a few places across the country, mostly places where mobile home parks are prevalent, we were seeing some of these mobile home parks pop up among our top evicting buildings or complexes,” Haas said.

That piqued his interest.

“Mobile home parks are kind of the last bastion of affordable home ownership,” Haas said.

Haas described it as halfway homeownership, in which the mobile home resident owns the mobile home, but rents the lot underneath.

Haas found that it was significantly easier for a landlord to file an eviction than it was for a banker or lender to start the foreclosure process; trailer park residents were less protected in their homes than other homeowners.

The Eviction Lab found that when mobile home residents are evicted, they often lose everything they put into the home.

Rollins leases the home and the lot, though that is changing. He said that Westmoor will not be renewing his lease; instead, they want him to sign a rent-to-own agreement.

Rent to Own

At the entrance of the mobile home park, a sign sticks out of the ground.

“Why rent? Own for less!” is written on the sign, with a phone number for potential residents to call.

In rent-to-own deals, tenants are lured by a seemingly easy path to home ownership. However, legal experts have long called foul on rent-to-own arrangements, and a rent-to-own trailer is an even greater legal gray area.

Eric Hallett, a Tulsa-based attorney with Legal Aid Services Oklahoma, said lawmakers should rethink how the state approaches trailer park evictions, particularly when a resident owns, or is buying the home.

Hallett argued that anyone purchasing a mobile home should not be in landlord-tenant court, where mobile home park residents often find themselves evicted from the lot.

“It can have mixed ownership, like with the tenant owning or purchasing the unit and then renting the lot,” he said. “That makes it really difficult because of the consumer protection problems if we don’t have laws that clearly define how those debts should be collected in court and what rights the purchaser has.”

Hallett said he generally discourages rent-to-own deals, especially a mobile home rent-to-own, adding that a mobile home is not a house; it’s a car, according to the law.

Rollins said that it’s scary and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He said he had enough money at the beginning of the year to purchase a new trailer in the park, but after the constant evictions and added fees, that money’s gone, leaving him feeling even more vulnerable to corporate whims.

Jake Ramsey covers evictions, housing and homelessness. Contact him at (405) 370-3798 or jramsey@oklahomawatch.org.

The post Serial Evictions, Rent-to-Own Deals and $58 Filing Fees: How a Colorado Company Profits From Oklahoma’s Weak Tenant Laws appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Multiple sources report that hospital prices have risen substantially since 2000, with one citing a 281% increase, outpacing general inflation and wage growth, among other things. 

A 2022 report from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and a 2025 report from the Paragon Health Institute found that since 2000, hospital prices increased 220% and 281%, respectively. Both noted that hospital prices increased at three times the rate of general inflation. The latter report also found that hospital prices increased at double the rate of hourly wage increases. 

Both reports found that hospital prices increased at almost double the rate of other medical service prices, highlighting hospitals as a driving factor in the rising cost of health care. 

Compared with lower-cost hospitals, higher-cost hospitals had operating costs, revenue, and profits that were 2%, 24%, and 66% higher, respectively, suggesting that higher prices are associated with larger hospital profits rather than higher operating costs.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Oklahoma Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

Sources

• Baker Institute for Public Policy Prices Versus Costs: Unpacking Rising US Hospital Profits
• Paragon Health Institute How Government Policies Drive Consolidation, Undermine Competition, and Fuel Soaring Prices

The post Have hospital prices increased nearly 300% since 2000, outpacing inflation and wages, as Rep. Hern claimed? appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

An AI-powered, billionaire-backed chain of private schools promises to educate students with two hours of virtual learning a day and entrepreneurship workshops. 

There are no teachers, and tuition is nearly double the most expensive private school in the state. 

This is Alpha School and, come August, it’s touching down in Oklahoma. 

Here’s how it works, according to Alpha: Students start each morning on a laptop, with two hours on Alpha’s adaptive, AI learning platform. Half an hour is allotted to each core subject: math, reading, science and social studies. Then, in the afternoon, students learn through projects and workshops that build life skills. 

Alpha’s rejection of tradition is its draw; for one soon-to-be Alpha parent, whose son will start eighth grade at the Tulsa location, the workshops and highly personalized learning convinced her family to commit.

Alpha opened its first school in Austin, Texas, in 2014 and has since expanded to six states and 12 spinoff schools. Alpha is opening 28 new campuses this fall, including in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, more than tripling its footprint across the country. 

Before ChatGPT, Alpha students learned directly from online platforms such as IXL, Khan Academy and YouTube. Now, Alpha uses a proprietary artificial intelligence program it developed called 2 Hour Learning, which personalizes curriculum and claims to teach students twice as fast as traditional school models.

Alpha has been the subject of enthusiastic coverage from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and others. Few outlets have flagged concerns with the technology or the company. 

News outlets 404 Media and Wired published stories in the past year that accused Alpha of scraping online learning platforms to develop 2 Hour Learning, though an Alpha spokeswoman disputed that claim and said the company respects the intellectual property of the companies it works with. 

A line of broken contracts and licenses with the companies follows Alpha, 404 Media reported, as do concerns about the AI program’s efficiency and privacy: 404’s investigation found examples of AI hallucination and seemingly unsolvable quiz questions in the curriculum. 

There are privacy concerns, too. Alpha’s AI programming employs screen monitoring and takes photos of students when the program notices a lack of progress or unusual screen patterns. The system once captured a video of a student working on schoolwork in her pajamas in bed, the Wired investigation revealed.

Anna Davlantes, chief communications officer for Alpha, said the 404 Media and Wired stories relied on cherry-picked examples and sources who’d been fired from Alpha. Alpha may pursue legal action against the news outlets, she said.

But Alpha’s fans are loud. Alpha earned the backing of top Trump administration officials, sent an 11-year-old student to the State of the Union address on the arm of Melania Trump, and hosted and wooed Gov. Kevin Stitt at an Austin Alpha school site in December. 

Alpha plans to open a kindergarten-through-10th-grade school in Edmond, branded the Oklahoma City campus, and a kindergarten-through-8th-grade school in Tulsa. As of July 20, 26 students were enrolled at the Edmond site and 32 at the Tulsa school, according to Alpha’s website. 

The schools are arriving as debates over the Parental Choice Tax Credit program, AI in schools and Oklahoma’s dismal education ranking play out loudly across the state. For excited families and skeptics alike, the opening of the schools will be a test of how Oklahoma responds to a new frontier of unconventional, ultra-expensive schools.

A School with No Teachers

Guides are the closest stand-in Alpha has for teachers. There’s one key difference, though: guides don’t touch any curriculum. 

Guides monitor students’ progress and productivity with the AI tutor, but aren’t in the room when students are learning, according to job postings. In the afternoons, guides run one-hour skill workshops for students as young as 5. Past workshops have focused on sailing, programming toy cars and completing Navy SEAL challenges. 

At one Alpha workshop in San Francisco, the school sent middle school students to a Starbucks with preloaded cards, Wendy Vassiliou, whose son will start at the Tulsa location come August, said. Unbeknownst to the students, their guide had zeroed the account balance for at least one student, meaning their card was rejected at the checkout. The lesson aimed to teach students how to handle disappointment.

Guides earn $100,000 to $150,000 per year, according to Alpha’s Oklahoma job postings, two to three times the salary of a first-year public school teacher.

Alpha doesn’t require guides to have teacher certification, and intentionally recruits people with unconventional education backgrounds. The San Francisco guide had a career as a sports psychologist.

Guides can hold a bachelor’s degree in any subject. Alpha says it vets candidates with a cognitive test, an intensive background check and a months-long training camp in Austin. From there, guides are sent across the country to Alpha sites. 

Rep. Cyndi Munson, D-Oklahoma City, took issue with Alpha’s no-teacher model. 

“These types of schools and models that are being implemented are taking away the seriousness of what it takes to be a classroom teacher,” she said. “It is very disturbing and should worry all of us.”

Alpha students won’t get the vital educational and emotional support students receive from certified teachers, said Erika Wright, founder and leader of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition Facebook group and a community organizer with the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. 

“This is a travesty for those kids,” Wright said. 

Tuition is Steep

The school is endorsed by hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and funded in part by software investor and Alpha principal Joe Liemandt, who recently committed $1 billion to schools including Alpha. 

Families still pay a premium.

Alpha’s tuition in Oklahoma will be $40,000 per year, toppling the prices of the next-closest private schools in both areas: Edmond’s Oklahoma Christian School is $14,640 per year and Tulsa’s Holland Hall charges $21,625 annually. Bordering Edmond closely, Oklahoma City’s most expensive, Casady School, is $27,950 for high school students. In some states, Alpha families pay $75,000 per year. 

Any family that joins Alpha for the 2026-2027 inaugural academic year receives a $10,000 discount for five years, bringing tuition down to $30,000, Davlantes said. Beyond that, there’s no school-sponsored financial aid, at least for the first year of the new campuses.

Vassiliou said she knows that $30,000 or $40,000 is a significant amount to most Americans. She respects public schools, she said; her dad was a school superintendent, and she worked at Jenks schools. She said Alpha is worth it anyway. If her son, Cullen, had continued at the private school he’s attended for 10 years, eighth-grade tuition would’ve cost $16,000. 

Vassiliou doesn’t consider herself especially experimentalist and said committing to Alpha, sight unseen, is out of character for her. Alpha’s extensive library of promotional materials and a series of glowing profiles in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal helped assure her. 

Alpha’s Edmond campus was initially included on the Oklahoma Tax Commission’s list of schools approved for the Parental Choice Tax Credit, a voucher-like program that pays families up to $7,500 per year for private school tuition and other educational expenses. The tax credit program requires schools to be in Oklahoma and accredited, though schools have until March 2027 to meet the accreditation provision.

In response to questions from Oklahoma Watch, the tax commission removed Alpha from its approved schools. 

A spokeswoman for Alpha said they didn’t apply for the tax credit program. Alpha School is accredited by Cognia, but the accreditor will need to conduct site visits and ensure compliance with its standards at the new Oklahoma locations before they are included, which could occur by next school year. 

The tax credit program was pitched as a way to make private schools more accessible for families who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford tuition. But critics argue that the tax credit directs public funding to families making above-average incomes. Of the nearly $248 million allotted to families by the program in the 2025-2026 academic year, $169 million in tax credits went to families earning more than $75,000 a year, more than the state’s median household income of $65,039. 

That’s especially true among Alpha’s families, for whom the tax credit may only shave off a minimal amount of the tuition. All founding Alpha families will have to pay the $30,000 tuition for the first year in full, with no financial aid or tax credit at their disposal.

“What scares me is they’re going to try to take even more public school funds to do their little pet school projects,” said Jami Cole, an elementary educator and leader of the public school advocacy group Edvocates.

AI Guardrails for Public Schools, Not Private

The Legislature this year introduced guardrails for AI in public schools, but those rules won’t apply to Alpha, which is a private school. 

The Oklahoma Responsible Technology in Schools Act, introduced by Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, passed unanimously through both chambers of the  Legislature in May. The law requires all school districts to establish an AI policy and mandates educators maintain final decision-making authority over any AI-assisted instruction, grading or placement.

At Alpha, both tenets are broken. 

Seifried said she’s fascinated by Alpha and will be monitoring how it fares. Seifried is a strong proponent of the Parental Choice Tax Credit, and celebrated that Alpha parents may qualify for it in years to come. 

Still, she warned that AI must be coupled with caution. 

“AI and technology are moving at such a quick pace that we just want to make sure that we’re not hamstringing our teachers or our districts, but also making sure that students are safe,” she said.

Alpha promises an education, courtesy of its AI program, that laps the public school system, which, in Oklahoma, is ranked second-to-worst according to sites such as WalletHub. The average SAT score of Alpha seniors is a 1545, an Alpha spokesperson said. A perfect score is 1600. Alpha’s students score an average of 4.2 to 4.4 on Advanced Placement tests.

Sen. Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa, still doesn’t get it. 

“I understand we have challenges with our public education,” she said. “But the answer is not to just eliminate human involvement that is certified.” 

The Governor Wanted to Bring Alpha to Oklahoma 

Alpha is at the forefront of an AI-friendly governor’s office. 

Stitt has been vocal in his support of AI, throwing support behind concepts like Alpha, even if not publicly addressing Alpha by name. In December 2025, Alpha’s Texas Sports Academy hosted a conference for the National Governors Association, which Stitt chairs. Stitt filmed and uploaded a video to Facebook lauding new technology and AI, including AI schools. He vowed to bring programs like the school back to the state. 

Stitt’s support of Alpha’s methods is at odds with his sharp pushback against virtual schooling in the state’s public schools. In May 2025, he signed a bill into law limiting virtual instruction in any public school district to 12 hours per academic year. 

“Governor Stitt is talking out of both sides of his mouth,” Wright said. “This concept is a complete slap in the face for all of the districts who have been working diligently to have quality virtual stuff that’s been shut down by the Legislature.”

Rhett Jones, a 2024 graduate of Alpha’s Austin campus, said he saw Stitt in the Austin Alpha offices in February. Stitt’s staff made contact shortly after and asked him and other Alpha graduates to travel to Oklahoma, as arranged by Stitt’s team, to meet prospective Alpha Oklahoma families. Jones agreed and made the visit on February 23. 

Jones credited Alpha with pushing him to launch two businesses, a mountain bike park and Cased, an e-commerce action sports apparel company.  

Until Alpha mentors encouraged him to pitch investors in his junior year of high school, he thought being a business founder wasn’t in the cards for him. 

“I thought high school entrepreneurs were prodigies and I was a very regular kid,” he said. “I just played video games, played sports.”

He decided to drop out of the University of Austin, an unaccredited university founded in 2021 backed by Palantir founder Peter Thiel, to go all-in on Cased. Alpha supported his less-traditional pathway. 

“The school truly unlocks kids educationally in a way other schools can’t,” he said.

Alpha is Recruiting Families and Staff

Alpha School’s first day is August 12. Alpha leased more than 6,000 square feet of industrial space in Edmond for the Oklahoma City school, but the building was barren and bore no Alpha signage when Oklahoma Watch visited. 

Alpha hasn’t yet secured a location in Tulsa. In mid-May, the school sent a report, prepared with AI, detailing two potential Tulsa sites, to prospective parents. One user noted that the report cited incorrect data. 

The campuses are still recruiting new students, too, for a $100 application fee. 

Alpha warns applicants that the school isn’t equipped to meet the needs of students requiring intensive behavioral, therapeutic, or one-to-one academic support. Applicants are asked to disclose any Individualized Education Program, 504 plan, or behavior or learning plan or risk being withdrawn. 

Weeks away from the first day of classes, families are eager. 

Cullen, Vassiliou’s son entering eighth grade at the Tulsa campus, said he thinks Alpha will be more fun and set him up with better opportunities and education than the school he now attends. 

Vassiliou has researched the drawbacks of Alpha — the data-scraping claims, accreditation inconsistencies, and legislative criticism — and is still confident in her family’s decision. 

“I’m going to look and scour the internet for every bad thing I can find about Alpha,” she said she decided before her family locked in their choice. “And so I looked at everything I could find, and I still was not deterred.”

Maya Henry is a summer 2026 intern at Oklahoma Watch. Contact her at mhenry@oklahomawatch.org.

The post A $40,000-per-Year AI School With No Teachers Is Opening in Oklahoma This August appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Here is the audio of Oklahoma Watch’s published stories for the week of July 13, 2026.

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The post Audio Stories: July 13, 2026 appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Summer Parker didn’t understand why. She just knew she didn’t feel right.

“I’m not coherent, I’m not speaking correctly,” Parker said. “I try to open the door to the car thinking I’m going to try to stand up. I collapsed, lost consciousness, had to have EMSA come get me.”

She didn’t immediately connect it to the marijuana pre-roll she had just smoked. But after it happened other times, and each time was just after smoking a pre-roll produced by Graves Farm Organics, she and her partner, Charles Hrabina, submitted samples of the company’s medical marijuana products to a testing laboratory.

According to the couple’s lawsuit, filed in Tulsa County District Court against the company, the results showed five pesticide test failures, one for microbial contaminants, and one finding that it was less potent than the producer described.

Attorney Felina Rivera, who represents Graves Farm Organics and its owner, Michael Graves, denied her clients’ products had anything to do with Parker’s symptoms, or that there was anything wrong with the pre-rolls produced by the company.

But she does agree with Parker about one thing: There’s something very wrong with the system for testing cannabis products in Oklahoma.

“If you take a product to seven different labs, you’re going to get seven different results,” Rivera said.

Disputes over inconsistent results, laboratory oversight and the scope of required testing have raised questions about whether the system is delivering the reliability patients expect.

The debate has drawn together an unusual group of voices: patients who say contaminated products harmed them, laboratory operators who argue testing standards have improved, researchers who question whether current safeguards go far enough and regulators who have spent the past several years trying to standardize testing across one of the nation’s largest medical marijuana markets.

Every legal medical marijuana product sold in Oklahoma must pass through a licensed testing laboratory before reaching consumers. State law requires laboratories to test samples from each final harvest or production batch for seven categories: microbials, mycotoxins, residual solvents, pesticides, cannabinoid potency, terpenes and heavy metals. Products that fail contaminant testing cannot legally be transferred to dispensaries. 

Laboratories operate under licenses issued by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority and must obtain accreditation, participate in proficiency testing programs and comply with state standards governing testing procedures, quality control and recordkeeping. State law also requires laboratories to maintain policies designed to prevent financial or commercial interests from influencing test results. 

The testing process culminates in a certificate of analysis, commonly called a COA, that documents whether a product passed required screening and reports information such as potency and contaminant results. State regulators may require products to be submitted for testing and are authorized to inspect laboratories, review underlying testing data and audit compliance.

Lab Shopping and the Search for Favorable Results

At the center of Oklahoma’s cannabis testing debate is a simple question: if two laboratories test the same product, should they get the same result?

According to Marion McNabb, a public health researcher who serves as president of the Cannabis Center of Excellence, the problem comes down to the economics of Oklahoma’s cannabis market.

“Lab shopping is exactly the core of the problem,” McNabb said.

Tetrahydrocannabinol is the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis. Because many consumers use THC percentage as a shorthand for product strength, even relatively small differences in reported potency can influence demand and price.

Yasha Kahn, vice president of Massachusetts-based MCR Labs, said the issue extends well beyond Oklahoma and was blunt about how common lab shopping is.

“An honest lab in a state where there’s any dishonest labs will not be profitable,” Kahn said.

Keeping the Labs Honest

Keeping laboratories honest is the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority’s job.

OMMA Communications Director Carmin Acupan said in a written statement that lab shopping remains an issue in medical marijuana programs across the nation, but added that rigorous oversight can help expose and mitigate this practice.

Since Oklahoma’s medical marijuana program began, OMMA has taken 29 enforcement actions against independent testing laboratories. The agency also acknowledged that some laboratories failed proficiency testing and were required to take corrective action within 30 days.

Senate Bill 813, passed in 2023, authorized OMMA to establish and operate its own quality assurance laboratory as part of its oversight of Oklahoma’s medical marijuana testing system. The lab is intended to independently verify testing results and evaluate laboratory performance.

Three years later, however, the laboratory is still working toward full accreditation and has conducted only preliminary testing on a small number of products, with results still under review.

The laboratory is accredited to test for potency and pesticides in marijuana flower, oil and concentrates. It is now working on full accreditation in other areas, including heavy metals, microbial contamination, mycotoxins and residual solvents. If successful, it will begin full testing this year, Acupan said.

Once fully accredited, OMMA’s QA lab will conduct three types of oversight. Round-robin testing will compare identical samples across multiple laboratories to measure consistency. Parallel testing will independently analyze products involved in complaints or targeted investigations. Proficiency testing will evaluate whether licensed laboratories are using appropriate, accurate and consistent testing methods.

OMMA also operates a secret shopper program authorized by the legislature in 2022. Under the program, investigators purchase cannabis products from licensed dispensaries and submit them to multiple licensed laboratories, including the agency’s own quality assurance laboratory, for testing. The Office of Investigations and Enforcement visited 52 dispensaries during the program’s first year in 2024. Beginning in 2025, state law required the agency to randomly inspect at least 10% of licensed dispensaries each year.

Other Tests, Other Concerns

Unlike inflated THC numbers, inaccurate contaminant testing raises concerns that extend beyond marketing claims to patient safety.

For Summer Parker, those concerns became personal.

“We just kept testing,” Parker said. “I think we went hard and tested probably 40 products in two years. We tested other companies too. Not just Graves.”

Parker and Hrabina became advocates. They founded Patients for Safe Access of Oklahoma, a patient-led organization that encourages independent testing of medical marijuana products and advocates for stronger laboratory oversight. At one point, she said, products were sent to a California laboratory capable of screening compounds beyond Oklahoma’s required testing panel.

“They found 19 different chemicals,” Parker said, referring to compounds she said were not included in Oklahoma’s standard pesticide screening.

Researchers said Parker’s experience reflects a broader debate over whether Oklahoma’s required testing panel adequately addresses the contaminants patients are most likely to encounter.

Are Oklahoma Laboratories Testing Enough?

Even if laboratories consistently produce the same results, another question remains: Are they testing for enough contaminants in the first place?

Oklahoma requires licensed laboratories to screen medical marijuana products for 28 pesticide analytes, up from 13 before March 1. 

That question prompted Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, D-Norman, to file House Bill 3013, which would have expanded Oklahoma’s required pesticide screening panel to 72 compounds, a number developed with laboratory experts and by reviewing pesticide screening requirements in other states.

House Bill 3013 never advanced from committee. Rosecrants said the proposal encountered questions from legislators and OMMA, and after discussions with House Alcohol, Tobacco and Controlled Substances Committee Chairman Rep. TJ Marti, he agreed to pursue an interim study instead.

“We need to educate folks at the Capitol before pushing legislation,” he said.

Outside the Regulated Market

The debates over laboratory testing, pesticide screening and quality assurance apply only to products sold through Oklahoma’s licensed medical marijuana system.

Outside that system, consumers may encounter intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC, delta-10 THC, THC-O and HHC, sold in convenience stores, smoke shops and other retailers.

Mark Woodward, public information officer for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, said OBN does not consider products containing THC in any form to be legal outside of the regulated system.

“We don’t believe it’s a gray area and we believe it is clearly regulated in statute,” Woodward said. “If it’s got tetrahydrocannabinol in it, which these do, it’s a controlled substance and cannot be sold in gas stations.”

Woodward said OBN has responded to complaints by visiting retailers and advising them that such products may violate Oklahoma law. In many cases, he said, stores voluntarily removed the products after speaking with agents.

“A lot of them have been told that it’s a legal product,” Woodward said, referring to information retailers received from distributors or sales representatives.

For consumers, the distinction is significant. While experts continue to debate whether Oklahoma’s regulated medical marijuana testing system is consistent enough, products sold outside that system are not subject to the same testing requirements, regulatory oversight or consumer protections.

Ed. Note: This story was updated on July 20, 2026, to clarify that OMMA had taken 29 enforcement actions against independent labs.

Stephen Martin is an Oklahoma City-based journalist and contributor to Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at smartin0170@gmail.com.

The post Marijuana Testing Hampered by Lack of Consistency, Lab Shopping appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Though the Department of Homeland Security has self-reported zero releases of non-U.S. nationals since May 2025, immigration data from TRAC suggests that the number of aliens released rather than detained, despite significant decreases, remains more than 500 per month. 

From May 2025 to May 2026, 6,524 individuals facing charges for entry without inspection, including those apprehended at a port of entry and those apprehended within the country, were released. Another 1,542 were intercepted attempting EWI during that time. 

DHS is generally required to detain aliens who appear subject to removal, including those who have not been legally admitted or paroled into the United States. 

Though a number of circumstances may constitute a release, releases are not to be confused with humanitarian paroles, despite Mullin prefacing his claim with another that exaggerates the number of such paroles under the Biden Administration. Those currently average 20,000 per month.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Oklahoma Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

Sources

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection Trump administration delivers 13 straight months of zero releases at the border
• TRAC Reports New Proceedings Filed in Immigration Court
• TRAC Reports Stopping "Inadmissibles" at U.S. Ports of Entry
• Congress.gov Immigration Detention: A Legal Overview
• Oklahoma Watch Were 150,000 – 250,000 noncitizens paroled into the United States per week under the Biden Administration?

The post Were there zero releases into the United States for a year under Trump, as Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed? appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

At a recent monthly meeting of the state’s police pension board, the only sign of GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Mazzei was his nameplate in the corner of a meeting table. 

Mazzei last attended a meeting in April 2025, right around the time he kicked off his campaign for governor. 

His meeting absences go back farther. Since Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Mazzei to the Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement Board in March 2023, Mazzei has missed three-fourths of the meetings. He’s made just 10 of the 40 monthly meetings since joining the board. 

The missed pension board meetings would typically be just a curiosity or blamed on a busy campaign schedule. But Mazzei’s public and professional life has been dominated by financial management. He was chairman of a budget committee and the chief architect of pension reforms during his 12-year tenure as a senator in the Legislature. Mazzei was Stitt’s budget secretary for 18 months. Professionally, he founded a Tulsa financial planning company, helping grow it into a firm managing $1.5 billion in assets. 

Mazzei missed hundreds of votes as a state senator in the years after a catastrophic car accident in 2008. He’s spoken several times on the gubernatorial campaign trail and in campaign ads about his faith and resilience in recovering from that car crash. 

“It’s not something I like to talk about,” Mazzei said in a video posted May 1 to his campaign Facebook site. “I’m back to my old self and I can do all the things I used to do, except swing a golf club, which might be a good thing. It’s an expensive sport.” 

The 13-member police pension board has six members elected to three-year terms by active police officers across the state. Retired police officers elect one board member. The other six are appointed to four-year terms by various officials, including the governor, House speaker and Senate president pro tempore. 

The board oversees the nearly $4 billion police pension system. Its other duties include approving new members, paying death benefits and deciding on disability cases for officers injured in the line of duty. 

After providing an initial response, Mazzei’s campaign did not respond to follow-up questions about his meeting attendance. A communications advisor, Jahan Wilcox, accused Oklahoma Watch of manufacturing a controversy. Wilcox previously worked for Scott Pruitt when he headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the first Trump administration. 

“This is an unpaid, volunteer position, and upon becoming a candidate for governor, Mike Mazzei offered to step down but agreed to remain only until a replacement was selected if his financial expertise was needed,” said the written statement sent by Wilcox but attributed to Carissa Mazzei, a campaign spokeswoman. 

Ginger Sigler, the pension system’s executive director, said any action regarding board members would have to be initiated by the board. 

“I think it’s the duty of any board member to come to meetings,” Sigler said. “I totally understand that he is running for governor and he doesn’t have time. I don’t think he would be opposed to being replaced, but I also don’t think it’s his position to go to the governor and say, ‘Replace me.’” 

Chris Cook, the board chairman, said there is no board policy about meeting attendance. He said he hasn’t had any conversations with either Mazzei or Stitt about the absences. 

“He is the governor’s appointee, so it would be up to the governor to make a change,” Cook said. “We have certain people that are gone from time to time. I think we all know why he’s been gone a lot, because he’s running for governor. Again, it’s up to the governor if he wants to keep him on the board or not.” 

Stitt’s office did not answer questions about Mazzei’s police pension board service or replacing him on the board. Deputy Chief of Staff Abegail Cave instead emailed a general statement praising Mazzei’s senate record and his service to the pension board. 

Paul Monies has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2017 and covers state agencies and public health. Contact him at (571) 319-3289 or pmonies@oklahomawatch.org. Follow him on Twitter @pmonies. 

The post Oklahoma Gubernatorial Hopeful AWOL From Police Pension Board appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.