Snapshot of Plaza Towers Elementary School
Plaza Towers Elementary, the school in Moore where seven children died in a massive tornado strike today, has more than 400 students, most of them low-income.
Oklahoma Watch (https://oklahomawatch.org/)
Oklahoma has shied away from requiring tornado shelters in schools, paying for them or knowing which schools have protective rooms or basements.
Residents of Moore again see a portion of their city reduced to splinters by a giant tornado. But no one ever gets used to the scenes of devastation, grief, hope and strangeness in the wake of such storms.
This interactive wheel lets you track the state budget by category -- and see changes over last year and since 2009.
A consultant hired by Oklahoma to propose ideas on state health care for the uninsured is recommending the state adopt a plan similar to one in Arkansas that channels state and federal money to private insurers. The earliest realistic time to implement that plan would be in 2015, the company said.
Hospitals in Oklahoma charge very different amounts for the same medical treatment, even within a city or community. Now, with this interactive, you can see what those charges are.
Plaza Towers Elementary, the school in Moore where seven children died in a massive tornado strike today, has more than 400 students, most of them low-income.

Women make up a slight majority of Oklahomans, but that doesn’t translate into representation in the Legislature and Congress. Oklahoma has the fourth lowest percentage of female legislators in the nation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. There are four women among 48 Senate members, and 16 women among 101 House members. Altogether, women [...]
Undocumented immigrants given temporary legal status under a new immigration bill would be denied access to Medicaid and other subsidized insurance offered under the federal health-reform law. That would mean thousands of immigrants, while waiting for up to 10 years to be fully legalized, would likely continue turning to Oklahoma hospitals, clinics and other providers [...]

The amount of money owed to Oklahoma mineral-rights owners who can’t be located has exploded in recent years as oil and gas production increased sharply across the state. Most owners will never know that they’re missing out on their share of the state’s oil and gas boom.

Oklahoma City has joined Tulsa in pursuit of a seemingly impossible goal: to eliminate chronic homelessness within two years. Both are using a strategy that breaks from conventional wisdom.

Little in the national Storm Prediction Center's summary of U.S. tornado activity through April suggested Oklahoma was about to experience a tornado assault. With a preliminary count of 87 tornadoes at EF1 level or stronger in the first three months, "the year is off to a slow start with about half the average number of tornadoes for this period of the year.

More than a fifth of Oklahomans under the age of 65 do not have health insurance, giving the state the sixth highest uninsured rate in the nation.
Q: Does it matter that Oklahoma has relatively few teachers with master’s degrees?
Q: Are Oklahomans falling for another version of predatory loans?
An Oklahoma Watch project on Hispanic immigration was awarded first place in general news reporting in the Great Plains Journalism Awards, in which publications and news sites from eight central U.S. states compete.
