Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment Becomes The ROPE Report

- note: This blog will remain our repository for all our work prior to 2015, so the name will remain Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment. You can find ROPE Report website and www.rope2.org

Back in 2008, as President Obama took his seat in history, several of us realized that something was not right with the world. We created an organization called, the OKC912Project and were deep into learning the way the legislation and elections worked, when we also realized that there was something rotten in Oklahoma’s public education system.

I had four of my five kids in Quail Creek Elementary – in fact, we’d sold our modest home in The Village (an older neighborhood in Oklahoma City) to move to Quail Creek just so my kids could go to the WONDERFUL school where I’d learned as a child.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as I’d planned. There, my kids were taught Global Warming as fact, they weren’t actually educated much, and one was mercilessly bullied by his teacher and fellow students.

By the time 2nd grade ended for my oldest child, he was moved to homeschool. The rest were moved home the next year and, as parents, we never looked back.
In 2010, a friend from OKC912Project and I started a group called Restore Oklahoma Public Education (ROPE). We naively believed that if we shone light on the antics of public school, we could ‘restore’ it to the way it was before political correctness (DEI/SEL) and propagandist teaching standards.

One of our first jobs was removing Common Core State Standards from law. It took four years of lobbying a Republican legislature to scrap just one of Obama’s federal education initiatives (Governor Mary Fallin and State Superintendent Janet Barresi brought in every single one of them). Though it was successfully repealed from Oklahoma law, we learned the hard way that the repeal was meaningless in practice and schools carried on as they had been before.

Frustrated and realizing we were going to have to go at public school reform in a different way, we renamed ourselves Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment in 2015, making use of our previous initials and agreeing to focus more on educating parents about Oklahoma’s public education system and how to make changes at the local level.

Sadly, we were never able to gain a lot of traction with parents. No matter how many places we spoke, no matter how many times we explained the importance of the local school board, there seemed to be little effect.

In April of 2023, new Board Member Michael Grande, Board Member Julia Seay and I, started what Julia dubbed, “The ROPE Report” – a podcast. Something we’d never tried before, but seemed to be something God was calling us to do, when I got the impression several times over the week of Christmas in 2022, “my people perish for lack of knowledge”.

I had always been the primary writer and researcher, but that was our focus – the written word. With the world turning to the point that few people even read for longer than five minutes at a time, but would watch endless hours of TikTok videos, it seemed the next logical step. We kept the name Reclaim Oklahoma Parent Empowerment, but moved to a two-day-a-week podcast on Wednesdays and Fridays – The ROPE Report.

This change ushered in a different way of doing things altogether. Instead of really focusing on researching and writing, we were bringing in people who had important information about important topics affecting our state. We’d interview them for as little as an hour or as much as two. It was – and still is – very organic, not driven by time, but by what’s being said – how we can help viewers gain knowledge to make changes to increase our individual liberty here in the state.

After nearly two years now, the focus of ROPE is no longer parents, or education, but ALL things Oklahoma, from climate change to legislation, we try to find interviews with interesting people to educate viewers. Consequently, it just made sense to change our name to the ROPE Report.

Today, you’ll see our new logo on our social media pages and website, but we’ll still be the same group we’ve strived to be from the beginning – a source of news and information you can turn to that will report the truth the best we can about the things that affect you in your own back yard, right here in Oklahoma.

We’re glad you’ve been with us for the ride, but STAY TUNED, there’s lots more to come.

The Grift Of Economic Development; Making small towns corporate towns - Julianne Romanello

In this clip from our podcast of 8/14/24, Julianne talks about the real 'end game' for the grift of economic development. Does it really help create jobs? Yes, while it's simultaneously degenerating everything about the small town it claimed it would 'help'. 

As so many of us have learned subsequent to the plandemic, to everything there is a scheme. In the case of economic development, it's for the people at the top to get a pay check while plugging the 'have nots' into WalMart greeter type jobs as the mom and pop stores go away. In the end, the small town will falter only to be taken under the wings of the larger, greener, plugged in, tyrannical big city so that all can be funneled into the one world government model.

Find the full LIVE video on YouTube and Rumble.

Can You Hear Us Now?

Today no fewer than two articles have come out in EdWeek online utilizing work that is being done by Restore Oklahoma Public Education (Pressure Mounts in Some States Against Common Core and Opposition to Common Core Grows Across the Political Spectrum).  TWO.  In a NATIONAL online education journal.

Hmmm...to what were the articles pertaining?  COMMON CORE.

It is hard for many to remember at this point - but hard for us to forget - that ROPE took it upon ourselves four years ago now (2009) to research and write about the this so-called "state led" (only to prevent the Core from being illegal as a national curricula is against federal law, not because it is in any way "state led") effort.  This, just one year after our Oklahoma legislature passed SB222 in a conglomerate bill addressing nearly every education "reform" produced by the Obama administration in order to attract Race To The Top funding.

Here are a few of my comments on those two articles that further articulates our position:

It was clear to us from the beginning that this was NEVER about kids. It is about elitist Republicans who say they eschew federal funding in public education, all the while propagating overreaching education policy generated by a Democrat-controlled federal Department of Education in order to get kickbacks and federal funding enough to enlarge their fiefdoms.

Common Core, the associated testing mechanisms (PARCC and Smarter), and the vast data collection system (State Longitudinal Data Systems or P20) being promulgated at the federal level and accepted by the states for their 30 pieces of silver, are about as much about kids and education as fishing is to space travel.

The recent expose in the Washington Post by Valerie Strauss should be the nail in the coffin that wakes up a sleeping public to realize what dupes they are in this little Kabuki theater our states call education "reform".

Heck NO this isn't about kids. None of this is about anything other than adults wanting to line their pockets on the backs of children attached to parents who don't know enough to be skeptical when the education elite of their states tell them, "Relax, we've got this covered. We know better than you what your kids need. We need to make sure our state is in line to pick up that 'free' money. After all, we send it from our state to the feds, we need to get it back somehow and if we don't do it, some other state will!"

 And:

Many governments past and present have utilized public education as a change agent for society. Disconcertingly, many of these have done it in a very similar way - using wealthy individuals and government elitists to broadcast and monopolize their message.

Many states (like Oklahoma) adopted the Common Core sight unseen. How do you as a legislator explain that to parents? "Parents, we believe that some educational standards we have never seen nor read, which were developed outside of our state by well-connected people in business and government, that have no track record at all, will be better for your child than those standards your child has in place currently through your local school board."

Awkward isn't it? This might explain why none of our authoring legislators ever bothered to explain why Oklahoma was signing on to Common Core before they planted it in state law.

Please see this blog by my colleague Danna Foreman where she found solid proof that this Common Core thingy is about changing society.

Ultimately, the goal of P-16 (a state longitudinal data base (SLDS) to collect information on children from Pre-K to 16 - now "workforce and beyond) reform is to create, as Harold Hodgkinson wrote in All One System, "a single system of education underlying all of the segments" (Institute for Educational Leadership, 1999). As the Consortium for Policy Research in Education said, the time has come to end the long history in American education of segments acting "independently and at cross-purposes from one another" (June 2000).

Wow.  This isn't at all like creating a little society full of Borgs is it - or Stepford Wives?

Truly, this has to stop.  Between the testing and the usurpation of privacy that comes with the exciting SLDS that will collect all the information any pervert (I mean person) could ever want on other people's children, not to mention the associated costs, this can not stand. 

Apparently other states are thinking the same thing.  Missouri, Indiana, Utah, California, Alabama, Washington and others are actually looking to abandon this rickety ship before it goes down and takes their children with it.  Just like so many of the states signed on sight unseen, they should jump off now, now that their eyes are being opened to the size of the iceberg they're about to hit.

What Happened?

Many of you who have actually read this blog across the years are doubtless wondering what in the world happened to my posts.  I went from fairly regular writer/researcher to nearly complete vacuum status starting September last.  What has happened indeed?

In March of last year, my husband David and I made a long-desired purchase of an acreage in a small town east of the city.  Though a truly perfect piece of land on which to build the farm of our misty, water-colored dreams, the home on which it sat could really only be completely appealing to anyone with a moderate case of 'beer goggles' and - at least in our case - a rather overactive imagination.   

For weeks before and after the purchase of the house, we created and poured over extensive plans for its renovation - including removal of the roof and addition of a second story.  The scope and depth of the plans never really phased us much, as we believed they would be carried out in an empty house while we bunked elsewhere.  Ahhh...the best laid plans of mice and men... 

And so it was that in August, Dave and I, the three kids, two dogs, a parrot and some fish, moved from a 3200 square foot home made nearly perfectly comfortable over a ten year period, to a 1700 square foot home previously inhabited by a young couple with a predilection for drug abuse, and quite possibly a Sasquatch. 


It must be said that while we all (even the children) understood the move was guaranteed to come attached to a certain amount of frustration, none of us really understood exactly what that would look like.  

Moving from an idyllic older neighborhood replete with local public elementary school and playmates on every corner, to the near-equivalent of Little House on The Prairie, has caused numerous arguments, an enormous gasoline bill and an organizational level necessary to complete tasks while 'in town' akin to Seal Team 7.

"Mom, can Kaitlyn come over to spend the night?"  Gosh, that sounds like an innocent enough question, but when Kaitlyn now lives 50 miles away round trip and the drive is made in a Ford Expedition that gets 16 if we're driving with a tail wind, Mom's and daughter's end-games don't always line up!  Thank goodness the boonies has wi-fi!  Since we don't allow TV watching (other than oldies-but-goodies on Netflix) if it weren't for the X-Box and "Just Dance", she might wither and die for lack of stimulation!

The boys, as could be imagined, have gone missing for hours as they scout the 20 acres of woods next door (they have yet to locate the Sasquatch) and assist their father and I in our endless quest to modify our landscape with hoop houses and chicken coops and giant gardens and loafing sheds for goats and horses and alpacas (?).  They don't really complain much (thank you Jesus!) and beyond hoping they might be able to play a sport in the spring - I think mainly to feel as though they're not the only children in the world - they are pretty easy going. 

The re-construction (it's beyond a remodel at this point I fear) of the house is loud.  Period.  The dogs - a combination of old, cataract and cancer-ridden red healer mix and a very young, very energetic, VERY PROTECTIVE, Catahoola (tall blue healer) - are convinced that anytime the contractors move from one place to another, they are a different person completely and therefore not to be trusted, so they bark and bark and bark and bark and bark...My sanity is definitely being tested just with the noise.  I can't wait until the guys tear the ceiling out in my living room and kitchen and all that insulation and gypsum flies out onto my already-dusty bare cement-slab floor.  How exciting that will all be!  Of course I am the middle-man in the whole deal, working between the general contractor and the inspector - copying, pdf'ing and emailing endless documents all the while keeping a running total of costs and any possible overages in my head!

But wait, this was the year that I began schooling all three kids at home!  We use a program called Classical Conversations (CC), and that really helps a lot, frankly.  We all go to 'school' one day a week.  There, tutors (not teachers, parents are the TEACHERS) guide the kids through the lessons that will need to be reinforced for the rest of the week at home.  We learn mainly English and history, but science, art and music are also covered.  It is a classical, Biblically-based program - something I long to be returned to PUBLIC school - with basic memorization of facts, oftentimes sung to a fun tune that helps aid in retention.

I add spelling and Math at home for now, but though the 7-year-old is able to keep up in Spelling, I have to do two separate math programs - one for him and one for the other two (10 1/2 and 11).

Most mornings (flexibility is a hallmark of home schooling and that definitely applies to ours!) we start with a devotion and brief Bible study (we're using Jesus Calling for kids right now), then on to spelling and math.  We're usually finished by 1, so we then have lunch.  After lunch, the older kids work on their writing and grammar assignments from CC.  I try to work on ROPE business during this time, all the while knowing I will be interrupted for 100 different reasons - certainly to include, "Mom, I don't get how to write this paragraph!"

Of course, days when I have meetings, or we have doctor appointments or household errands, this schedule goes right out the window and we have to carve out a different strategy for getting the work done.  Still and all, the day goes on and we go right along with it whatever that looks like!

And so, thus is the way of the world for me at the moment and I haven't even gotten my garden in, or my animals capably installed on the land, so it can only get MORE hectic if that's possible!

It should be said, as I close, that I wouldn't have it any other way.  In fact, I weep for the years I spent believing I couldn't educate my own children and it was better to have them in school so I could have time to get 'my stuff' done.  

Last December I reached the milestone of 50 years.  I've been through a lot in those years (marriage, child, divorce, marriage, child, loss of a child, child, cancer, adoption of two girls - one of which we've been unable to parent...).  I've changed a LOT across that span of time and I have lots of regrets, but my true regrets are two; it took me until I was 41 to know Christ, and I turned my kids over without even a second thought to public school starting in Kindergarten.   

Oh, yes, there are days I want to run screaming from house and live in the woods with the Sasquatch, but the days that everything clicks, Heaven on Earth seems possible and I wouldn't trade my hectic, farm building/renovation-laden/kid intensive way of life for anything!  

So it goes that just as God put me on the job four years ago of bringing public education to the public eye through ROPE, He hasn't seen fit to let me quit yet.  Consequently, I will be continuing on in life juggling as many balls as I can get into the air at one time, doing the best I can at everything I can, but all the while knowing I'll fall short somewhere.  Hang in there with me.  Read our Facebook page.  It is most often updated with the stories I still try to read everyday because it is the easiest to do in the shortest amount of time.  If you keep up with the literature, it will be easier for you to understand our emails when I have time to get them out!

More than anything, though, thanks for your time, patience and understanding.  Our kids - and the society they will create - are worth our time, energy and attention and the girls and I (board members Julia Seay, Lynn Habluetzel, Danna Foreman, Stacy Willis, Jo Joyce and Lori Womack) will need your help to continue our work whether I have time to blog or not!