AFT President Randi Weingarten and Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper respond to the continued lies and political vitriol directed at the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio
“The Springfield community needs help, not hate. Instead of working with city leaders to address issues like affordable housing, healthcare access, education and transportation, divisive politicians like JD Vance, Donald Trump and Senate candidate Bernie Moreno have been spreading hatred in a cynical attempt to score political points.
“There is no place in a civilized nation for conduct like Vance’s bald-faced admission that he is telling lies to fuel bigotry, and Trump’s planned visit to Springfield to fan the flames. The candidates’ deeply racist remarks are unacceptable on their face, but the consequences are real: They have incited bomb threats and led to an influx of white supremacist groups.
“We stand with the Springfield community—including educators, healthcare workers, migrant advocates, and city and state officials—as they work constructively to address their city’s growing pains while remaining a welcoming home for Haitian migrants, many of whom have fled violence. We commend Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine for correctly labeling these stories as ‘garbage that was simply not true’ and for denouncing the hate groups that are descending on Springfield.
“The United States was built on immigration. We look after our neighbors and believe in a shared future. We stand with all of Springfield’s residents as they resist the forces of darkness and demagoguery determined to exploit their city for rank political gain.”
The American Federation of Teachers is a union of 1.8 million professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.
Melissa Cropper, executive director of the Ohio Federation of Teachers said the decisions DeWine made appear to be pushing out members and candidates who supporters of public education and topics like diversity and inclusion. The lines as established under the unconstitutional maps would impact candidates focused on topics important to the OFT, like diversity and inclusion in education.
Amid the chaos and uncertainty of the redistricting process, a deadline loomed that would decide representation on the Ohio State Board of Education. It depended on having district lines to reference.
Legislative and congressional maps are both in limbo after the Ohio Supreme Court rejected both maps, the legislative maps getting sent back for a second time last week.
Gov. Mike DeWine was forced to assign the Ohio State Board of Education districts himself because the deadline for establishing districts for the board was January 31. Using the state senate map adopted by the Ohio Redistricting Commission on Jan. 22, DeWine signed the letter notifying board members of their districts on the day of the deadline.
Ohio Revised Code states the board of education districts must be established by Jan. 31 in a redistricting year, and if the General Assembly doesn’t create those districts themselves, the governor must take on the job.
Each board district has to makeup three contiguous state senate districts.
“Each state board of education district shall be as compact as practicable,” the state law reads.
The Ohio State Board of Education districts as they have been prior to redistricting efforts this year. Source: Ohio Department of Education
Many of those districts didn’t change, but the most significant changes seemed to be in four particular districts; the districts represented by Dr. Christina Collins, Dr. Antoinette Miranda, Michelle Newman and Meryl Johnson.
Collins’ new district would have stretched from Union County through Holmes County, and includes parts of Franklin County in between.
Being a resident of Medina County, this plan would push her out of her district, and though the board of education races are considered non-partisan, Collins said it put her in a district that voted “overwhelmingly for significantly right-leaning state board candidates,” namely District 1 board member Diana Fessler and two candidates who unsuccessfully ran against Miranda and Newman.
“The distance presents its own challenges given I do try to be involved in the counties I represent, but I also question my philosophical appeal as a representative to what appear to be this territory’s political preferences,” Collins wrote in an email to the OCJ.
Newman’s three senate districts would have included her Newark residence in the 31st District, along with the 33rd district that brings her representation all the way to the Pennsylvania border. She would also represent the rural 30th district, that rolls from Jefferson County down the state line to Meigs County.
Newman said she’s going to continue to serve kids and support public schools whatever her district lines.
“However, when I saw my new district jump from 13 to 18 counties, lost the compactness of its previous state and also shifted to nearly all rural vs the urban/rural mix I had before, my eyebrows definitely raised,” Newman told the OCJ. “The fact that the Ohio Supreme Court just ruled the new maps unconstitutional proves my wariness was correct.”
Miranda’s districts were set to go from the Columbus area near Ohio State University to Nelsonville near Ohio University.
State Senate districts in Northeast Ohio, as shown on the most recently struck down legislative map. State board of education member Meryl Johnson would have represented districts 22, 23 and 24 under this plan, districts separated by another board member’s area in Senate district 27. Source: Dave’s Redistricting App
Johnson’s 11th district would be broken by a peninsula of the 27th Senate district, covered by board member Tim Miller. That break separates the 22nd Senate district, which includes Ashland, Wayne and Medina counties, from the 23rd and 24th, which include pieces of Cleveland proper and Cuyahoga County.
Only 11 members of the state board are elected, with the other eight appointed by the governor.
Education officials don’t see the changes as coincidental. They see a connection between the changes made to the districts, and the four board members choices on the board, most importantly, their decision to support (and refuse to rescind) a resolution that condemned racism in state schools.
“The governor certainly signaled an intent in terms of who they seem to be trying to protect on the board and who they seem to be drawing into competitive districts,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association.
A spokesperson for DeWine corroborated state law that said it was his job to assign districts if the legislature fails to do so, but did not answer questions as to how DeWine decided on the district lines or whether he contacted incumbent members about the changes before making them official.
Some incumbent members of the legislature were told as the map-drawing process went along what changes would be made to their districts, and were asked for input before the maps were officially presented to the public.
DiMauro said the state board of education is an important entity to watch because of the power they hold over curriculum decisions, licensure law enforcement and even the hiring/firing process for teachers.
“There’s a sense that you want a state board that is above politics,” DiMauro said.
Melissa Cropper, executive director of the Ohio Federation of Teachers said the decisions DeWine made appear to be pushing out members and candidates who supporters of public education and topics like diversity and inclusion. The lines as established under the unconstitutional maps would impact candidates focused on topics important to the OFT, like diversity and inclusion in education.
“I think ideally we wouldn’t even be talking about what the school board lines are until we have fair districts drawn,” Cropper said.
With the senate maps among the three maps struck down by the Ohio Supreme Court, the education districts are at the mercy of the new redistricting plan, which the court has asked for by Feb. 17.
With no changes planned for the state education funding formula included in Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposed budget, education advocates and some state legislators are left wanting more.
“The devil is always in the details,” said Scott DiMauro, head of the Ohio Education Association, in a statement after the release of the budget. “Education spending must be a top priority in Ohio to ensure our students, educators and communities receive the resources they need to succeed.”
Scott DiMauro
DeWine’s budget proposal brings funding back to pre-pandemic levels and includes a jump in non-academic wraparound services, but saves the bulk of changes to education funding for the legislature to figure out.
The OEA said they were encouraged by an expansion to broadband access and mental health services as part of the support for schools.
“However, OEA is disheartened to see the same amount of general revenue fund money is going into the state’s foundation formula as in (fiscal year) 18,” the association wrote in their statement.
Another of Ohio’s biggest teachers unions, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, agreed that DeWine “chose to punt” on overhauling the school funding system without acknowledging the Cupp-Patterson plan, some of which went into the capital budget last year, but for the most part stays in limbo as the General Assembly begins anew.
Melissa Cropper
“Additionally, the governor’s budget maintains the disastrous local funding deductions for charter and private schools that have been draining public school budgets,” said OFT President Melissa Cropper in a statement.
The non-profit Ohio Children’s Alliance praised the “key investments for Ohio’s children and families” that the governor carried over from the previous biennial budget, and said they were pleased to see more money go toward student wellness and youth services.
“With the unprecedented challenges COVID-19 has caused to communities and providers, targeting investments in telehealth and the child and family services workforce are critical parts of a comprehensive solution,” said Mark Mecum, CEO of the OCA.
State Sen. Teresa Fedor
State Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, called the governor’s proposal “shortsighted” when it comes to education and support for children.
“We should be fixing our unconstitutional funding formula — not continuing to siphon more public school dollars to private education,” Fedor said after the budget proposal was released.
With the school funding now in the legislature’s hands, House Minority Leader Emila Strong Sykes, D-Akron, said it would be a primary issue as the House Democrats begin their work, including “fully and fairly funding our public schools.”
“We look forward to digging into the details of the governor’s proposal to see how it makes sense long-term without one time money and that it delivers on the promise of opportunity for all Ohioans,” Sykes wrote.
On Feb. 1, as Black History Month began in Ohio’s classrooms and virtual classrooms, Gov. Mike DeWine unveiled his proposed budget for the next two years, which continues the education funding policies that systematically underfund public schools that educate Black students and even shift some of that funding away toward unaccountable, for-profit private schools.
Black History Month is an important time for our nation’s educators to focus their curriculum around the contributions that African Americans have made in government, industry, art, science, literature, and every field of human endeavor. However, we do a disservice to our students if we don’t also teach about the harder, more painful history of slavery, segregation, disenfranchisement, and racist violence, and if we do not weave it into our everyday curriculum as deeply as it is woven into the fabric of our country.
Even then, we are not telling the full story if we teach about these topics as relics of the past, as dark chapters of our country’s past that have ended. Racist structures in our society didn’t cease to exist when the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified following the Civil War, or after Brown vs. the Board of Education desegregated schools, or after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or even after Barack Obama’s historic election.
Each of those events has been an important step along the way, but as we are reminded all too often, the vestiges of white supremacy live on in our current institutions. We see it in the over-policing and incarceration of Black, brown, and immigrant communities, we see it in our city neighborhoods that were shaped by redlining, and we see it in Ohio’s school funding system.
When we teach Black history, educators can make the connections about how the racial injustices of the past have turned into the systemic racial disparities of the present, and how we can demolish the underpinnings of injustice. There is no better place to start than with our broken school funding policies which underfund and segregate schools with large populations of Black students.
In Ohio, we underfund schools in Black communities with a school funding formula that was found unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court more than 20 years ago because it relied so heavily on local property taxes that it denied an equitable and adequate education to students in low-income areas.
We segregate schools in Black communities with voucher and charter policies that divert students and drain funding from local public schools. Often cloaked in the language of racial justice, vouchers and charter schools have the opposite effect when put into practice. The NAACP has often opposed these policies because they “divert much needed funding for public education to private or charter schools, thereby further dismantling the viability of the public education system and limiting the number of children who would be afforded the opportunity of an adequate and effective education.”
This vicious cycle of underfunding schools in communities of color, and then punishing them for not being able to meet their students’ needs by underfunding them further, must end. We must stop pitting parents and communities against one another, and instead renew our commitment for high quality public schools for all Ohio students.
Last year, the Ohio House passed the Fair School Funding Plan with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, yet the Senate refused to take the issue up. The Plan would have put Ohio on a six-year path toward equitable funding of public schools in Ohio, and would have immediately ended punitive and harmful deductions for vouchers and charter schools from local public school funds.
This would ensure that public school districts receive money only for the students who are enrolled to attend but without the added penalty of deducting money due to students opting for private or charter schools. These changes would strengthen schools in Ohio’s cities and in our rural areas, giving students from all backgrounds increased opportunities. Despite the Fair School Funding Plan receiving an 84-8 vote in the House, the Ohio Senate allowed the bill to die without even receiving a vote.
DeWine had the opportunity to take the hard work and bipartisan agreement for this new school funding formula and insert it as a framework into his budget proposal. Instead, his proposal continues the status quo which is actively undermining our ability to provide an equitable education.
As educators, we can not teach Black History without also being activists in our own realm, fighting for an education system that gives every child, no matter their race or where they live, equal access to a high quality, free public education.
A school funding bill originally sponsored by new Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp is getting a fresh look and hopefully time in front of legislative committees before year’s end, according the legislator now heading up the bill.
The other original sponsor of the proposed legislation, state Rep. John Patterson, said a substitute bill is in the works that should touch on longstanding concerns the Ohio Supreme Court had about the constitutionality of the state’s education system.
“We’re taking a more balanced approach in the new bill,” Patterson, D-Jefferson, said.
The state’s contribution to education budgets has stagnated over time, while private schools have benefitted from the EdChoice scholarship program, in which some state funding for public school districts has been redirected to religious, charter and community schools.
EdChoice scholarships were frozen at current levels in an omnibus bill responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
State Rep. John Patterson, D-Jefferson.
Patterson said a substitute version of House Bill 305 seeks to address “overarching criticisms” of the original bill, and the education system itself. One of the major criticisms is the distribution of money in the school funding formula between school districts with varying financial situations.
“Under the current formula, districts are all interconnected, so as one district becomes wealthier, another becomes poorer,” Patterson told the Ohio Capital Journal.
So, in the new plan co-sponsored this time by Rep. Gary Scherer, R-Circleville, the legislators want to reassess the amount that districts are able to raise on their own before they decide what the amount of state aid would be to schools.
The proposed bill would also take the weight solely off of property taxes for school funding, something the 1997 decision by the Ohio Supreme Court in DeRolph v. State of Ohio ruled was a big reason the education system violated the state constitution.
The new plan will combine property and income taxes along with a calculation of a district’s wealth level to “determine a district’s true capacity to raise its fair share,” according to Patterson.
“The question is what is fair for the locals, and what is fair for the state,” Patterson said. “We have fine-tuned for that.”
Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp (Ohio House Photo)
Disadvantaged students would receive more immediate help than in previous funding models if the new bill is made law. In the original proposal for the bill, aid would have been phased in over time for school districts, but legislators are now looking to channel that aid to districts immediately.
Patterson planned to meet with interested parties — teachers’ unions, public school officials and community school representatives on Tuesday to discuss the plan. One of those parties is the Ohio Federation of Teachers, who said school funding needs a direction that accounts for social and emotional learning as well as test proficiency.
“We’re hopeful that (the sponsors) are moving in the right direction,” said OFT executive director Melissa Cropper. “No school funding formula will be perfect, but having no school funding formula has been a disaster.”
In the next month, simulations of financial situations will be run to test the effectiveness of the bill as it stands, and Patterson hopes the bill will be ready when the Ohio House returns to regular session in September.
After anticipated amendments and passage of the bill, Patterson said implementation of the new formula could take years.
With EdChoice pitting private schools and public schools against each other for funding in the state model, Patterson said concerns were brought from both sides, and his bill plans to address private school issues as well.
“What I’ll say is we have heard their criticism and have addressed their concerns in the substitute bill,” Patterson. “I think they’re going to be pleased.”
The changes made to the bill Cupp once authored have the blessing of the new speaker, according to Patterson.
“Speaker Cupp understands the absolute necessity of passing House Bill 305 in this General Assembly,” Patterson said.
Neither Cupp nor Scherer responded to requests for comment.
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Columbus, Ohio – Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine laid out reopening guidelines for state K-12 schools on Thursday, including a mask requirement for teachers, but no such mandate for students.
DeWine said it is “the state’s strong recommendation” that children from the third grade on wear face masks, but maintained that local control for school districts will be in place as reopenings begin.
“A great deal of flexibility is allowed, as it should be,” DeWine said in his Thursday COVID-19 press conference.
Ohio Department of Education’s 36-page planning guide
The governor announced that the Ohio Department of Education published a 36-page planning guide that includes recommendations on everything testing to field trips and recess precautions.
The guidance is specifically noted as “not mandatory” in the documents and emphasized the need for schools and districts to develop and implement their own protocols, while using the information provided by local and state health departments.
“Planning teams should include school leaders, local health department officials, local school board members, educators, education support professionals, school health professionals, parents, students, community partners and local business leaders,” the planning documents stated.
In developing coronavirus related-protocols, DeWine said before anyone enters a school facility, parents and school officials should “vigilantly assess” symptoms, and take the temperatures of everyone coming into the schools. In the guidance, outside individuals such as delivery personnel, student teachers and faculty of student teachers are all treated the same as official school personnel.
The Loveland District is currently working on models for reopening school in the fall, “which can be adjusted based on the pending guidance from state and local health agencies.”
The planning guide said flare-ups are considered “expected” by state officials, and warns that school buildings may need to close in the event of said flare-up.
Schools were told to work with local health departments to develop a testing strategy, thoroughly clean and sanitize schools, and teach and practice social distancing and hand-washing.
Social distancing in places like school buses will be more difficult, and DeWine said as much distance as is possible will benefit students and staff.
“(Specific measurements of distance is) all relative and it’s somewhat arbitrary,” DeWine said. “But the more distance you can have the better.”
COVID 19 Health and Prevention Guidance for Ohio K-12 Schools
Face coverings are required by staff unless it is unsafe or if doing so “could interfere with the learning process,” DeWine said on Thursday.
Ohio Federation of Teachers Executive Director Melissa Cropper appreciated the moves by the governor, but said the OFT worries about the financial demands of the new protocols.
“We are concerned that local governments and school districts will have to make decisions about the governor’s recommendations at a time when they are anticipating budget crunches and beginning to make spending cuts,” Cropper said in a statement.
DeWine said it “is not right for me or (other departments) to micromanage” school buildings or districts.
The governor did say he plans to meet with House Speaker Larry Householder, Senate President Larry Obhof, and minority leaders to discuss extra funding, along with the use of CARES Act funding.
Cropper said schools would benefit from HEROES Act funding as well, a bank of about $2 billion in monies for K-12 education, but the act is still awaiting U.S. Senate consideration after passing the House.
The guidance comes as the state faces continual growth in coronavirus cases, and data showing that cases are passed through the individuals within the area. DeWine noted that 80% of confirmed cases in Montgomery County have been linked to community spread.
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