“Local school officials often justifiably complain that they have to deal with a lot of needless regulation and paperwork requirements imposed on them by the state,” Byron Schlomach and Vance H. Fried write in a recent policy brief (“Conversion Schools: Local Districts Have No Excuse”) published by the 1889 Institute.

Indeed, one count of mandates from administrative rules and statutes in Oklahoma numbers them at about 640. Some are a major imposition. Others are trivial. Some seem to be silly. All, however, have the force of law and require time and effort in order to comply. Oklahoma’s school boards now have a tool at the ready to unilaterally deregulate schools that they oversee. There is a relatively new law in town, only a few years on the books, that allows a school board to designate any campus a “conversion school.” 

In short, “school boards can make those mandates disappear for any school under their control. ... The conversion school option for public school districts, barely exercised so far, opens districts to legitimate criticism for not taking their fate into their own hands. Complaints about mandates will ring increasingly hollow.”