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New Oklahoma Bible directive faces pushback from several schools

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New Oklahoma Bible directive faces pushback from several schools


Several Oklahoma schools are speaking out against State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ directive to teach the Bible in public school grades 5 through 12.

Walters recently released guidelines on his controversial Bible mandate in public schools after ordering educators to incorporate the religious text into their lessons, arguing that the Bible is necessary to ensure “students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”

In a June 27 meeting, Walters spoke on the requirement, saying, “every teacher and every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.”

The order was followed by intense backlash from civil liberties groups and the Oklahoma Education Association – a collective of educators, administrators and other school employees — who say it infringes on students’ and educators’ freedom of religion.

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Now, several Oklahoma schools have publicly stated that there will not be any changes to their curriculum and that they will continue to adhere to current school standards despite Walters’ recently announced guidelines.

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In a July 25 statement, Owasso Public Schools Superintendent Margaret Coates said the district “will continue to adhere to the curriculum and instructional materials previously adopted by the district.”

“As a public school system, it is crucial that we maintain neutrality and objectivity in our curriculum and instructional practices,” Coates continued.

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Many school district superintendents noted that Walters cannot solely mandate curriculum or instructional resources — pointing to the state law that requires standards to receive legislative approval on a six-year cycle and state statutes that give local districts the ability to determine reading and instructional materials.

Currently, the 2019 approved Oklahoma state education standards include religion as it relates to its historical role and to cultures around the world. According to the current “World History Content Standards,” educators are to discuss “the origins, major beliefs, spread and lasting impact of the world’s major religions and philosophies, including Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, and Sikhism.”

Bailey Elementary, one of several schools in the Owassa Public School system, is seen in this photo, July 31, 2024.

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Stillwater Public Schools Superintendent Uwe Gordon said in an online statement that the school will neither be purchasing class copies of the Bible nor will it deliver lessons from Bibles or any other religious text.

“SPS prides itself on being respectful of the myriad religions, cultures, traditions, worldviews, and belief systems inherent in our community,” said Gordon. “The district also holds itself to adherence with the state’s established academic standards and the laws of the land.”

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Gordon also reaffirmed students’ abilities to pray in schools, read religious texts on their own, wear religious garb and meet with religious student-led clubs.

In a statement on the Bixby Public Schools district website, Superintendent Rob Miller said he agrees with Walters on “the importance of studying the role of religion in historical and cultural contexts.”

However, the district argues that the teaching of any specific religious doctrine or ideology is not part of the current state standards. Therefore, Bixby Public Schools said it will not change its curriculum.

Moore Public Schools Superintendent Robert Romines clarified in a statement on July 18 that while students should learn about religion’s role in historical and cultural contexts, the teaching of specific religious doctrines or practices is not a part of the current education standards.

“Our goal is to continue providing a respectful environment that acknowledges various perspectives while adhering to the set and approved Oklahoma educational standards,” said Romines.

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Walters told ABC News in a statement: “Some Oklahoma educators have indicated they won’t follow the law and Oklahoma standards, so let me be clear: they will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.”

ABC News asked for clarification on the consequences educators or schools could face if they did not comply, but his office did not provide a response.

Walters’ guidelines require educators to incorporate the Bible by looking at “only its historical, literary and secular benefits” by noting the Bible’s influence on Western civilization, American history, literature, art and music.

The guidelines also repeatedly state that the Bible “is not to be used for religious purposes such as preaching, proselytizing or indoctrination” and that “maintaining neutrality and objectivity is crucial.”

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters spoke with ABC News about Nex Benedict’s death and issues of anti-LGBTQ bullying in Oklahoma schools.

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When it comes to the constitutionality of religion in schools, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against mandated religious practices or texts in schools.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that Kentucky’s then-law requiring that a copy of the Ten Commandments be posted in public classrooms “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “plainly religious in nature.”

Nearly 20 years before that, the Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored devotional prayer and Bible readings in public schools are unconstitutional.

Local news outlet Tulsa World recently reported comments from Walters in which he appeared to welcome lawsuits against the Bible directive, in hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn previous precedent on the separation of church and state.

Miller, from Bixby Public Schools, noted that these comments seem to be a “tacit acknowledgment that this directive may not pass constitutional muster based on current statutes and legal precedent and may require a future review by the Supreme Court.”

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“Bixby Schools will continue to comply with existing case law to ensure that the rights of our students and employees are fully protected,” Miller said.



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Retired St. Louis Cardinals Star Matt Holliday Selling Oklahoma Home With a Baseball Field and a ‘$2 Million Pool’

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Retired St. Louis Cardinals Star Matt Holliday Selling Oklahoma Home With a Baseball Field and a ‘ Million Pool’


Retired St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday is selling his Oklahoma home, and fittingly, it has its very own baseball field. 

The gated 136-acre estate in Stillwater—about an hour north of Oklahoma City—is asking $12 million, a price tag that makes it the most expensive single-family home on the market in the Sooner State, listing records show. 

MORE: Arizona’s Most Expensive Home—With a Shark Tank, Basketball Arena and Shooting Range—Lists for $40 Million

Holliday, 46, a Stillwater native, acquired the lot for $3 million in 2018, records with PropertyShark show. He and his wife, Leslee, built the home in 2022.

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“One of the things I’ve loved most about this home is the opportunity it has given us to gather people together,” Holliday said in a statement to Mansion Global. “Some of our favorite memories here revolve around hosting college students and professional athletes for meals, conversation and meaningful fellowship.”

The property is “a super unique home for Oklahoma,” said listing agent Wyatt Poindexter of the Agency, who brought the home to the market on Wednesday.  

The field is a real rarity. “I’ve never seen one [before] in my life, and I’ve been in real estate for 31 years,” Poindexter said. It has professional lighting and turf, stands, and right behind home plate there’s a massive fire pit, according to Poindexter. The property also has batting cages.

Both were added “for practice for the boys, and for fun,” Poindexter said.

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Two of Holliday’s sons are following in their father’s footsteps. Jackson was selected first overall in the 2022 Major League Baseball draft by the Baltimore Orioles and made his MLB debut in 2024, and Ethan went fourth overall to the Colorado Rockies in 2025.

Holliday “pretty much trained them on site,” Poindexter said.

During his 14-year career, Holliday, a seven-time All-Star, played for the Colorado Rockies along with the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees. But his longest and most well-known tenure was with the St. Louis Cardinals, with whom he won the World Series in 2011.  

The property’s amenities extend beyond baseball, though. There’s a putting green, a gym, an indoor pickleball and basketball court, and a two-level pool with a waterfall.

“The pool is massive,” Poindexter said. “It has a swim-through grotto with seating and benches. It’s a $2 million pool.” 

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There’s also a hot tub, an outdoor kitchen, a pond, a guest house, a workshop and running trails. 

The house itself, meanwhile, spans 7,500 square feet over a single level and was inspired by Texas Hill Country homes with their metal roofs and stone exteriors, Poindexter explained.  

The house is being sold furnished, with the exception of the MLB memorabilia. It has oversized windows; an open-plan main living space with a lounge, kitchen and dining area; a butler’s pantry; two offices; and five bedrooms, including a primary suite with dual closets. 

“There’s something special about a home that naturally invites community, and this one has been the backdrop for so many unforgettable evenings, shared stories and lasting relationships,” Holliday said. 



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Chemical engineering researchers earn first publication for Oklahoma in top AI conference – Oklahoma State University

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Chemical engineering researchers earn first publication for Oklahoma in top AI conference – Oklahoma State University


Thursday, February 19, 2026

Media Contact:
Desa James | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-2669 | desa.james@okstate.edu

Dr. Zeyuan Song, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the School of Chemical Engineering at
Oklahoma State University, and Dr. Zheyu Jiang, assistant professor for CHE, have achieved
a milestone rarely seen in Oklahoma’s research landscape: acceptance into the International
Conference on Learning Representations 2026, one of the world’s most competitive and
influential academic conferences in artificial intelligence and machine learning.  

ICLR ranks among the top AI venues globally – second in the field by h-index – and
is known for debuting many of the breakthroughs that have shaped modern AI, including
the variational autoencoder and the graph attention network. Each submission undergoes
a monthslong, double-blind review and rebuttal process, making acceptance highly selective.  

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“I am proud of the research excellence Zeyuan achieved during his Ph.D. study in my research
lab,” Jinag said. “I have been impressed by his ability to bring in new ideas from
diverse fields in mathematics, engineering, and AI. This, when combined with a deep
understanding of the cutting-edge breakthroughs in the field, leads to this outstanding
work published in ICLR.”  

Song’s paper, titled Adaptive Fourier Mamba Operators, introduces a powerful new machine
learning framework for modeling complex natural and engineering phenomena described
by partial differential equations.   

Song and Jiang’s publication is the first ICLR paper from the state of Oklahoma.

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“Imagine you are baking a cake,” Jiang said. “The temperature of the cake isn’t determined by
time alone. The outside heats faster than the inside, and the top browns more quickly
than the bottom. Partial differential equations describe changes that happen simultaneously
in space and time, like how heat moves through a cake as it bakes.”  

These types of equations govern real-world phenomena such as fluid dynamics, heat
transfer, quantum mechanics  and even the financial market.  

Unlike traditional numerical solvers, which can become extremely time-consuming to solve,
Song’s AFMO method uses a mathematically grounded neural operator framework to learn
how these systems behave, often with greater efficiency and generalizability.  

According to the paper, AFMO integrates two computational frameworks, Adaptive Fourier
decomposition, a novel signal processing technique that builds orthogonal spectral
bases tailored to the problem, and state-space models, an emerging neural network
architecture that can efficiently handle long-range dependencies, to solve general nonlinear partial
differential equations.  

“Imagine you are playing piano,” Jiang said. “Standard Fourier neural operator plays every
song on a standard piano. The piano keys are fixed, and you play by mixing those fixed
notes. It works great when the song fits that instrument well, but it can struggle
if the ‘song’ has unusual rhythms. Adaptive Fourier decomposition, on the other hand,
is like a custom keyboard tailored to the particular song one wants to play.

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“Meanwhile, a state-space model is like a super-fast musician who reads the music
left-to-right and keeps a small memory of what happened so far, so they can play very
long songs efficiently. Therefore, AFMO builds a custom instrument for each song first,
and then has the super-fast musician to play it, so it has the right instrument and
efficient playing.”  

By uniting these in a novel way, AFMO can solve PDEs on irregular shapes and complex
geometries, capture sharp features and singularities, and produce results that are
both highly accurate and computationally efficient. 

“These are especially challenging problems to solve due to the intricacies of the systems
involved,” Jiang said. “They require us to think out of the box and develop truly innovative solutions.” 

In extensive testing, the method consistently outperformed leading neural operator
models across diverse benchmark problems, ranging from modeling fluid flow in airfoils
and pipes to predicting European option prices in financial mathematics.   

Song’s accomplishment represents more than an individual’s success.  

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This publication is the first ICLR paper from the state of Oklahoma. Notably, this work comes from
a chemical engineering department, rather than a traditional computer science or electrical
engineering program.  

“As AI continuously transforms the world, we are in an exciting era for interdisciplinary
research,” Jiang said. “We are thrilled to see the broader impacts and implications
of this work in helping OSU recruit talented students, forming cross-department collaborations,
and competing for more federal and industry funding to support AI for Science research that pushes
toward AI capacity and workforce development in Oklahoma.” 



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How earmarked funds help upgrade Oklahoma communities

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How earmarked funds help upgrade Oklahoma communities


WASHINGTON, D.C. –

Earmark is the term many know, but technically it’s congressionally directed spending in the Senate, community project funding in the House, which is exactly what earmarks are: funding directed by members of Congress for projects in their community.

Fifth District Congresswoman Stephanie Bice visited the Edmond Water Treatment Plant on Tuesday to present city leaders with a symbolic check for $4 million.

The money is part of the Housing and Urban Development budget and is to be used to update the electrical grid in a city that, like all municipalities in Oklahoma, is funded predominantly through sales tax.

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“Sometimes the revenue doesn’t meet the need, and this is one way that I can actually bring federal dollars back home to Oklahoma to help my communities across the 5th district,” said Bice.

Federal dollars like this have helped upgrade the 911 center in Logan County, the airport in Chandler, and the Forensic Science Institute at UCO.

Bice facilitated funding for 15 projects this way, and she’s certainly not alone. According to the nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation, Fiscal Year 26 appropriations contained just over 7600 earmarks, totaling about $14.3 billion, less than 1% of all discretionary. The Oklahoma delegation accounted for 66 of those earmarks, worth about $314 million.

“These are dollars that would have been spent by agencies, by federal agencies, and I think it’s incumbent upon me as an elected official representing this community to be able to secure those dollars and bring them back home for projects that are really vital,” said Bice.

By law, the projects are listed on each member’s website.

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