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Oklahoma
Posted: Mar 06, 2026 9:57 AMUpdated: Mar 06, 2026 12:12 PM
Toni Hasenbeck for State Superintendent
Tom Davis
Former teacher and State Rep. Toni Hasenbeck is running in the GOP primary race for state superintendent.
Appearing on COMMUNITY CONNECTION, Hasenbeck, said she was a teacher for 19 years. She grew up in Stillwater and later moved to southwest Oklahoma because of marriage. She has three children: a 28-year-old daughter, a 25-year-old son, and an 18-year-old daughter.
Haseback said the idea to run for this office was instilled in her by a teacher she met at the Quartz Mountain Art Institute about 22 years ago. She realized a little later that one day maybe running for office will be a positive thing.
Hasenbeck is in her eighth year in the state legislature but she said, "The days that I left school frustrated were typically those days that followed something that we had to do because the law said we had to do it, not necessarily because it was the very best thing for the child." She added, "The idea of being able to create statute that changes the day of an Oklahoman was really a powerful idea. And I just mentioned this morning about how giving up the ability to make law and being the executioner of law will be a little bit different, but something I really look forward to."
If elected to the office of State Superintnedent, Hasebeck has something in mind for principals based on a great ecperiance she had as an ducator. She said, "I had maybe the best principal in the world my first year teaching. He came to my classroom and said, here are the past objectives. This is what you're supposed to be doing. And I was like, OK, I can do that. And then a couple of weeks later, he came to my classroom and said, hey, I really want you to go to Great Expectations this summer, and it's a great tool for learning how to manage your classroom. And so he also gave me a mentor teacher who was a former state Teacher of the Year runner-up."
Hasenbeck said she had this excellent start to her educational career, and would like to make sure that every teacher has those types of supports and creating an army of building principals who are empowered to help teachers and to do the things in the lives of teachers to make their career better.
Regarding being ranked 50th in the nation in education, Hasenbeck said, "There's a lot of factors that get counted into those things. When you actually look at the data, most states are doing equally poorly." She added, "What happened in Oklahoma is over time, the legislature just unhinged every one of those parts of the statute that said, we're going to do what's right for kids." She said, "Now, we, as a group of people in the legislature, have decided it's probably a really good idea to make reading a priority. I think it's frustrating to look that somewhere along the line, we decided that kids knowing how to read for the purpose of learning was not a top priority."
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