Last updated: April 25, 2024, 3:26 PM | Published: April 25, 2024
OKLAHOMA CITY — A mother was arrested Thursday after refusing to leave her room during an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting while complaining about the building's poor accessibility for people with disabilities.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers escorted Audra Beasley, 45, of Oklahoma City, in handcuffs from a conference room at the Oklahoma State Department of Education headquarters.
Her three children were also in attendance. One of them broke down crying in her wheelchair.
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Officers repeatedly asked Beasley to leave after his three-minute public comment period. Instead, she went on to criticize state Superintendent Ryan Walters for policies that affect transgender students and for not providing changing tables in state public restrooms.
“You guys are arresting me in front of my kids because this guy here is a bigot, a bully, he bullies trans kids, he bullies disabled kids, he bullies me. They bully other kids,'' Beasley said as he was taken into custody by police.
She was arrested on misdemeanor charges of intentionally obstructing state affairs and refusing to leave after causing a disturbance. She was booked into the Oklahoma County Jail on $500 bail. It is unclear whether she has a lawyer.
Walters declined to comment on the arrest.
This wasn't the first time Beasley attended a State Board of Education meeting to push for stronger compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Beasley, a former candidate for Oklahoma City Council, is advocating for adding adult-sized changing tables to all restrooms in state facilities. The public restroom in the lobby of the state Department of Education does not have a changing table of any size.
This month, she brought her own folding table and threw it in front of the board. Without a changing table, she said she would have to use the floor while taking care of her son's hygiene needs.
“You intentionally denied my child access to the restrooms of this building,” she told board members.
Nicole McAfee, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, said in public comment after the arrest.
“It's a really terrible feeling to see parents who want their children to be the only ones in and out of these spaces being arrested and removed in front of their children,” McAfee said.
Beasley's three children left the building with their friend's parents after the meeting.
Republished in partnership with Oklahoma Voice under the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by a coalition of grants and donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact her editor, Janelle Stecklein. [email protected]. Follow Oklahoma Voice on Facebook twitter.
Nuria Martinez-Keel covers education for Oklahoma Voice and can be found at @NuriaMKeel on Twitter. She worked at the newspaper for six years, spending more than four of those years covering education and courts for The Oklahoman. She is a graduate of Oklahoma State University.