Re-elect E'Lena Ashley to Tulsa school board District 4

We have exactly one conservative, one Republican, on the school board of one of the largest school districts in Oklahoma. Her name is E'Lena Ashley. In 2022, she defeated the incumbent to win Office 4 to represent east Tulsa on the Tulsa Public School board, where she has been a constant and often lone voice for wisdom and accountability. E'Lena Ashley is up for re-election on April 7, 2026, and TPS taxpayers and parents need her back on the board. Since taking office, E'Lena Ashley has held monthly community meetings where she has communicated news from the school district, listened to the concerns of the community, and invited speakers on a variety of topics related to TPS, including Superintendent Dr. Ebony Johnson. On the board, she has been a constructive critic of the administration and the board majority. In 2025, Ashley and then-board member Dr. Jennettie Marshall held a press conference to spotlight the findings of the State Auditor's report on TPS financial mismanagement, complaining that, although the leadership at the top had changed, the administration was still not providing board members with the information they requested. Ashley and Marshall also joined forces in a lawsuit challenging the board majority's lack of transparency and move to hire interim Superintendent Ebony Johnson without following the board's written policy requiring a nationwide search. Ashley has been blamed for the money the district spent to defend against the lawsuit, but surely the expense could have been avoided by the board following its policies and striving for transparency. Although the lawsuit was unsuccessful, I admire Ashley's willingness to take a stand for transparency on behalf of the taxpayers and parents of the district. Four years ago, we briefly had some hope of a majority of Tulsa school board members committed to financial responsibility and accountability. Jennettie Marshall and Jerry Griffin had been advocates for transparency on the board, and E'Lena Ashley was running to defeat an incumbent while former District Attorney Tim Harris was running for the open seat in Office 7. Harris was narrowly defeated in a very expensive campaign, but with Ashley's election there was a substantial minority of three reformers on the board. With a rubber-stamp member missing from a July 2022 board meeting, Ashley, Griffin, and Marshall were able to block a consent agenda packed with controversial items, including accepting Chinese Communist funding for "Confucius Classroom" at Booker T. Washington High School. In the end, Ashley was the only vote against accepting the Confucius Classroom grant. And now, with Griffin and Marshall deciding not to run for re-election out of frustration with administration stonewalling, Ashley is the lone voice for transparency and fiscal sanity. The administration continues to waste money on consultants and outside vendors, continues to be driven by unaccountable philanthropocrats. When the administration tries to smuggle questionable spending and controversial proposals into the consent agenda, E'Lena Ashley uses her seat at the table to pull those items aside for scrutiny. Despite her willingness to stand alone on many issues, E'Lena manages to remain gracious in her questions and her interactions with the administration. If we lose her, we lose that lone voice. We need E'Lena Ashley back for another four years, and we need to elect conservative Republican Michael Phillips, who is running against incumbent Democrat Susan Lamkin for Office 7. Ashley's opponent is former Tulsa City Councilor Connie Dodson. Dodson was defeated for re-election in 2022 by Christian Bengel. As a councilor, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dodson advocated for drive-thru private dances to keep strip-club dancers employed:

An enterprising owner of a Tulsa "gentlemen's club" wants to go all Las Vegas and offer drive-thru service. So City Councilor Connie Dodson -- ever responsive to the needs of her constituents -- has asked city legal the question everyone is wondering but no one will say out loud: In these grave times of economic peril, deadly disease and social distancing, can we do the same thing here in Tulsa? "When the owner reached out to me, I said, 'I applaud your efforts to be creative,'?" Dodson said. "I mean, that is what everybody is trying to do now ... be creative so that they can stay in business and keep people employed."... "Set up one of those large white tents that you can drive through, so the patron would literally drive into the tent, pay their money, get a private show or a private dance, and not get out of their car," she said.... Dodson said what she's heard is that the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 outbreak has hit dancers particularly hard. "So they are trying to be real creative in keeping their businesses running, and this was something that came up, and I thought, I'll reach out," she said.

After I endorsed Bengel over Dodson, I received an irate and bizarre Facebook message from D. Richard Dodson, who appears to be Connie Dodson's husband. Mr. Dodson accused me of being full of "donkey bullsh[**]." This person's Facebook "likes" revealed a great deal of interest in strip clubs, sex toy shops, BDSM, and barbecue, which might explain Councilor Dodson's legislative concerns. The profile has since been taken over by a Vietnamese spammer, but those "likes" are still there. (I have screenshots of the state of the profile as it was at the time of Mr. Dodson's unhinged complaint.) My suspicion is that Dodson was asked to run because she can be counted on to be a rubber-stamp and not to ask uncomfortable questions. Having just one board member who asks questions is too many for the people pulling the strings, because it exposes their plans to public scrutiny. I'm proud to endorse E'Lena Ashley for re-election and urge east Tulsans to vote for her on Tuesday, April 7, 2026.
- March 29, 2026 at 09:33AM
Re-elect E'Lena Ashley to Tulsa school board District 4
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