Paul Everts teaches music outside Sacramento. Short and solidly built with a shaped grey beard, it’s easy to imagine him and his vibrant baritone conducting a high school band, which he did with success at California public schools since, as he says, “nineteen hundred and eighty-nine.” In 2021, Paul’s school began receiving complaints from students.
The first incident, in his telling, alleged Mr. Everts declared his proud Christian faith and love of Jesus in class. The second alleged he told one or more of his students that he loved them. In meetings with school administrators and union representatives, Paul freely admitted to all of it. The union decided not to defend Paul in the ensuing disciplinary hearing, so he defended himself, telling the principal and school board to make sure he was on the record before he delivered the line he repeated to me as he tightened his starred-and-striped tie: “I love God, I love my wife Diana, and I resign.”
I met Paul by the Moms for Liberty booth at the opening exhibition of the Teacher Freedom summit. Hosted in July at the Sheraton Dallas, the summit is the annual conference of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, founded with $2.5 million in contributions in 2024 and headed by Ryan Walters, the firebrand former Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction. When he announced his resignation from public office and new role as TFA’s CEO on Fox News last September, Walters stated the organization’s objectives plainly: “We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers’ unions once and for all.”1
I began teaching in fall 2024, two months after Walters issued an order for all Oklahoma public school classrooms grades five through twelve to keep a Bible and a copy of the Ten Commandments on display. At the time Tulsa Public Schools was a frequent target of Walters’ scrutiny for legitimate concerns over student outcomes and a case of executive-level embezzlement. But he also fashioned himself into the state’s leading culture warrior, leaning fully into a modern political style of meme authoritarianism. He campaigned on hoaxes, picked fights with the media, threatened to decertify Tulsa Public Schools, and called out specific teachers for their “woke ideology.”
One public school, Ellen Ochoa Elementary, received bomb threats for days after Walters retweeted Libs of TikTok. Hundreds of LGBTQ+ and civil rights groups called for his removal after the death of Nex Benedict, a gender-nonbinary student at Owasso High School. Even some Oklahoma House Republicans tried to start impeachment proceedings against him.
Walters’ years-long reign over the state’s education system was often rumored to be an audition for a job within the Trump administration. When I told friends I was moving back home to Tulsa from New York City to teach, their first question, no matter where they lived, was about Walters.