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Tag: Susan Tebben

Ohio teachers demand change as wages lag

A Gahanna-Jefferson Education Association teacher opted to arrive in costume for the first day of a strike outside Gahanna Lincoln High School. By Jake Zuckerman.

By Susan Tebben and Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio teachers are adapting to COVID-19 learning, while also fighting for wages and benefits that are lower than professionals with similar education and experience.

Teachers from across the state shared their experiences in an event hosted by the progressive think-tank Policy Matters Ohio.

Tati Weaks, of the Greenfield Exempted Schools, which serves portions of Fayette, Highland and Ross counties, said investment in the community is an important part of being a teacher. But in an area that lost thousands of jobs when DHL pulled out of the Wilmington Air Park more than a decade ago, and saw the wealth in the area change to poverty as factories went elsewhere, she said keeping teachers engaged in the area isn’t easy.

Despite the fact that Wilmington Air Park has had investment since DHL left, the roller coaster of success and loss creates stress with a state public school funding system based on property wealth.

“We want to attract good teachers, we want to keep good teachers,” Weaks said. “But our base salary is already so much lower due to school funding.”

“Wage Penalty”

Experts call the lower wage that teachers receive compared to other professionals with similar education and experience a “wage penalty.”

In a 2020 study by the Economicy Policy Institute, the teacher wage penalty was shown to have grown from 6% in 1996 to 19.2% in 2019. The year before, the penalty had been even worse, at 22%.

“This is something where there’s been an attack on teachers,” said one author of the study, EPI fellow Lawrence Mishel, during the Policy Matters discussion. “We have not been putting in the resources, and this is something we really need to do to guarantee children have the professionals that they need.”

That lowering came from “widespread strikes and other actions by teachers in 2018 and 2019,” the study stated.

In Ohio, the wage penalty stands at 15.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Teachers actually received a wage higher than those of similar experience — called a wage premium — back in the 1960s and 1970s, when women teachers received pay that was 14.7% more than comparable female professionals., according to the EPI study.

“In 2019, women teachers were earning 13.2% less in weekly wages than their nonteaching counterparts were — a 27.9% percentage-point swing over the last six decades,” the study concluded.

The wage penalty for men was found to be larger than women, and getting worse, according to the policy institute.

In 1979, the teacher wage penalty for men was 16.6%, and in 2019, men received 30.2% less as teachers than men did in other professions.

Teachers sacrifice

With less funding from their school districts, teachers are still sacrificing their lesser pay for supplies for their classrooms and students.

Mandy Wagner had to get a second job for her first 10 years of teaching just to pay rent and make student loan payments. She also wanted to pursue her Master’s degree in English literature so she could teach higher level classes to her students, but that meant spending more money.

“More education means more debt, so trying to benefit the kids, I’m putting myself in more debt,” Wagner said.

Those sacrifices are being asked of them in collective bargaining negotiations as well, as Tamar Gray, of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District, saw first-hand. The teachers and the district just finished contract negotiations in which the district entertained the idea of raising health care costs 250%, with only a total of 8% in raises over the last ten years.

The district and the teachers were able to come to an agreement, but Gray came out with a bad taste in her mouth, especially after teachers were called “heroes” at the beginning of the pandemic.

“The fact that teachers are being asked to settle, to make less, to fix budget problems on one of the most important things that can happen in the state…there’s something wrong with that,” Gray said.

Two education bills were in the General Assembly, and after years of work, House Bill 305 made it through the House. But the end of the lame duck session has run out the clock on the legislation, and the bill floundered in a Senate committee.

The capital budget passed last week included only a small part of the school funding overhaul. Legislators have said they want to make education a priority, but need to see more studies on the cost of the funding formula before they sign on.

House Bill 305’s funding framework would have taken some of the pressure off of property taxes as the main informer of funding levels for local school districts, and put more of the onus on direct state funding.

Many teachers and school district officials spoke in support of the bill, seeing it as a sign of hope for teachers and struggling school districts.

“We’re running education on a budget,” Wagner said. “And what are we doing having budget teachers and budget education? This is something that we should absolutely be investing in and prioritizing.”

The teachers present during the Policy Matters event say the fate of education affects the poor, affects people of color, and affects the disenfranchised. Therefore, it shouldn’t be hard for their representatives in the Statehouse to do something.

“We’re supposed to have people that want to do well by the public, so to sit up here and say we can’t find the solution…it’s inexcusable,” Gray said.

Dec 29, 2020
House passes abortion burial bill, now moves to governor for signature

By Susan Tebben and the Ohio Capital Journal

The House passed a bill on Thursday to require abortion providers to bury or cremate fetal remains, despite arguments from religious groups and health clinics in the state.

State representatives passed the bill on a 60 to 35 vote along party lines.

The bill passed out of the House Civil Justice Committee the same day where members of state right-to-life groups acknowledged existing law regarding disposal of fetal remains, but said Senate Bill 27 was needed to further specify the role of abortion providers.

“Current Ohio law requires the humane disposition of fetal remains but it is vague and open to interpretation,” said Meg DeBlase, of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati.

Opponents to the bill noted that the bill requires the burial or cremation of fetal remains from surgical abortions, but leaves out those from medication abortions, stillborns, miscarriages, and embryos from fertility clinics.

Several opponents to the bill held a press conference Thursday morning because they felt due to the pandemic it was unsafe to testify at the Ohio Statehouse. During the press conference, members of clinics who provide abortions and abortion access advocacy groups said the bill had little to do with the need for burial services, and more to do with closing abortion clinics by creating another cost for them.

Chrisse France, of Pre-Term Cleveland, said the law “does not serve any public health interest,” and places the legislature as a faith advisor and doctor, rather than lawmaking body. According to Lauren Blauvelt-Copeland, of Planned Parenthood of Ohio, the laws already made in the state cover what Senate Bill 27 does.

“There are already laws in place that require safe medical tissue disposal and Planned Parenthood and other providers follow them,” Blauvelt-Copeland said.

On the House floor, state Rep. Erica Crawley, D-Columbus, called it “unacceptable” that the General Assembly has quickly taken up the measure while legislation regarding infant mortality and maternal mortality remain stalled in committees. Ohio stands as one of the top states in infant and maternal mortality rates.

“That leaves me to believe that we are okay with women dying during childbirth or after, and babies dying within one year of their life,” Crawley said. “I do not hear the same passion for these women and infants who are dying.”

State Rep. Candice Keller, R-Middletown, one of the authors of the the total ban on abortion in the state which is currently being fought in court, stood in support of the bill, saying the abortion “industry” should take up the cost of disposing of the fetal remains.

She also accused a Democratic legislator, state Rep. and physician, Beth Liston, D-Dublin, of “age discrimination” for arguing that fetal remains at a certain point are about the size of a grain of rice, and therefore “untenable” to dispose of in a burial or cremation.

“This industry can afford to bury these babies, and they deserve it, and their mothers deserve it,” Keller said.

The bill now moves to the governor for a signature, and with a pattern of support for anti-abortion measures, Gov. Mike DeWine is expected to support the bill.

Dec 7, 2020
Teachers unions urge veto on school funding bill

By Susan Tebben the Ohio Capital Journal

Two of Ohio’s top teachers unions are asking the governor to veto a new education bill just passed by the legislature.

The Ohio Senate and House passed Senate Bill 89 last week after it spent months in a conference committee being revised and developed into a bill that, among other things, focuses on the private school voucher program, EdChoice.

The bill passed along partisan lines in both houses of the legislature, with Republican supporters saying the bill was necessary to keep the list of EdChoice eligible schools from ballooning to more than 1,200, and to address one of the biggest barriers to education — poverty.

Democrats challenged the idea that the bill was a solution to the state’s problems, and accused supporters of pushing the bill through without the appropriate amount of public input.

OEA President Scott DiMauro

The leader of the Ohio Education Association said the current version of SB 89 “removes positive aspects of the bill passed by the House and increases voucher eligibility beyond 2020-2021 levels.”

“By grandfathering in previously voucher-eligible students, whether they had used the vouchers or not, SB 89 fails to curb the destructive explosion of the voucher program, contrary to proponents’ claims,” wrote OEA President Scott DiMauro in a statement. “There was no compromise and no consultation with the education community to strike the deal that was passed out by the conference committee.”

Melissa Cropper, head of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, said the bill would only exacerbate the already dire school funding crisis.

Melissa Cropper, head of the Ohio Federation of Teachers

“SB 89 throws more fuel on the fire without providing remedies to ensure that the 90% of Ohio students who attend public schools have the resources they need for a quality education,” Cropper said.

The bill also comes as the House and Senate consider companion bills to overhaul the education system entirely, in response to a decades-old Ohio Supreme Court case that called the system wholly unconstitutional.

DiMauro and Cropper both said if the governor doesn’t veto SB 89, “it is more critical than ever” that House Bill 305 be passed to directly fund charter schools and the voucher program.

Nov 29, 2020
Report: Rate of uninsured Ohio children rises significantly

After hitting a historically low rate in 2016, the number of uninsured children has gradually grown to eliminate progress made in the country. Ohio, alone, had a double-digit jump in the three-year study.

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.

Nationally, the rate of children not covered by medical insurance was down to 4.7% in 2016, but started to increase again the year after, according to a new study by Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families.

In 2019, the rate had jumped to 5.7%, an increase of 726,000 more children since the Trump Administration took office in 2016, the study showed.

“Much of the gain in coverage that children made as a consequence of the Affordable Care Act’s major coverage expansions implemented in 2014 has now been eliminated,” the study noted in its key findings.

The data was collected from single-year estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from the three years.

Ohio was one of several states that saw an increase of more than 20,000 uninsured children from 2016 to 2019.

Ohio’s uninsured rate went up 26% from 2016 to 2019. Data from 2019 show 131,000 Ohio children without insurance, up from 104,000 in 2016.

Ohio child health advocates say a lack of health insurance contributes to worse life outcomes, which extend to education and societal shortcomings.

“This damaging trend will have long-term consequences for children and communities across Ohio because without health coverage, children cannot access the care they need to grow and thrive,” said Tracy Najera, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund Ohio, in response to the study.

The study attributed declines in Medicaid enrollment as the start of the decrease in insured children. Public coverage for children includes Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The largest national increase in uninsured children, 320,000, came between 2018 and 2019, and represents the largest annual jump in more than a decade, the authors of the study said.

“Moreover, since this data was collected prior to the pandemic, the number of uninsured children is likely considerably higher in 2020, as families have lost their jobs and employer-sponsored insurance, though it is impossible to know yet by precisely how much,” the study stated.

The study comes as some K-12 schools see spikes in COVID-19 rates, and cases in ages 0-19 represent the fifth highest age group in the state, according to state data.

Texas and Florida had the highest rates, representing 41% of the overall increase in child non-coverage, with about 1 million children in Texas lacking health insurance in 2019, and an estimated 343,000 uninsured children in Florida.

Oct 12, 2020
Fraternal Order of Police, teachers, former law enforcement against armed teacher policy

by Susan Tebben – and the Ohio Capital Journal

An organization representing more than 23,000 police officers, including school resource officers, says allowing teachers to bring guns to school under only a concealed carry permit could do more harm than good.

The Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio said this in a brief to the Ohio Supreme Court, which is considering a case that would keep schools from allowing a firearms authorization policy. The police organization said they were not taking a stand on whether teachers should be armed, but rather the training involved.

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.

“An interpretation holding that a school resource officer or security guard needs extensive training to carry a gun in school, but the art teacher does not, is neither just nor reasonable,” the group said in a brief to the court.

While 17 other school districts argued that the “plain language” in the Ohio Revised Code allowed them the right to bring guns to school when authorized, the FOP read the “plain language” as advising schools to the contrary.

“A teacher who carries a weapon into a classroom while teaching is, quite

literally, both ‘armed’ and ‘on duty,’” the organization stated. “There is no reason to depart from this plain language because it yields a ‘just and reasonable’ result, as the Revised Code demands.”

Agreeing with the language, a group of 284 current or former Ohio teachers or school staff members said the law was “unambiguous” in its explanation of the training requirements needed to bring guns to schools. The teachers and staff don’t say school districts should be banned from creating weapons policies.

“But the General Assembly has required that, should they elect to arm teachers, school districts must ensure that they have adequate training, which the legislature has determined was satisfactory completion of an approved basic peace officer training program,” the brief by the teachers and staff stated.

The FOP even went so far as to say the Madison Board of Education’s interpretation “would get people killed.”

In arguing against the firearms policy, the police officer’s group brought up gun-retention skills, accuracy in a gunfight and situational awareness that they say would decrease if teachers were given the responsibility of defending themselves and others in a school shooting.

The brief to the court also said a lack of training would make armed teachers a liability, causing law enforcement to have more difficulty stopping an active shooter, and “may get themselves shot in the process.”

“If nothing else, police officers train on the ‘mental preparedness’ necessary to take a life,” the brief stated. “But in the context of a school setting, undertrained teachers will be mentally unprepared to kill one of their own students.”

Several others submitted document in support of a decisions that keeps gun policies out of the board’s hands, including the Ohio Education Association and the Ohio Federation of Teachers. A group of “experts in school safety and firearms training,” including Dayton Police Department Chief Richard Biehl, a former leader of the Columbus Division of Police Training Bureau and a former Madison Local School District teacher who became a police officer after the 2016 school shooting there, joined in the support of the parents against the firearms policies.

The cities of Columbus and Cincinnati also filed briefs showing their interest in the case, and support of the present law on training of armed personnel in schools.

If an Ohio Senator has his way, the law will change regarding armed personnel in school. The bill passed the Senate Government Oversight & Reform Committee, and is awaiting a full floor vote before moving on to the Ohio House.

Oct 8, 2020
Ohio schools ask state supreme court to support armed personnel

Pictured is the Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center where the Ohio Supreme Court meets. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons..

By Susan Tebben

Arguing for their right to arm school personnel, 17 schools from 11 counties in Ohio asked the Ohio Supreme Court to allow them to continue using firearms as an option for student safety.

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.

The schools are asking for the state’s highest court to reverse an appeals court decision that said state law did not allow boards of education to allow armed personnel without training on the same level as police and security officers.

Four of the schools came from Shelby County, two each represented Hardin and Montgomery counties, and one district each from Tuscarawas, Williams, Adams, Morgan, Noble, Coshocton and Portage counties were listed on a brief to the court.

Boards of education or governing boards for all but one of the districts have authorized certain staff members to carry weapons within school zones as long as they have concealed handgun licenses.

One school, Shelby County’s Jackson Center Local Schools, “is currently taking steps in the process of considering the authorization of staff members to become part of its school safety team and to carry a weapon into a school safety zone,” according to court documents.

The school districts argue that Ohio Revised Code allows anyone to carry a firearm into a school safety zone with the written authorization from the board of education. But they argue, just as Madison Local Schools and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost argued, the law does not require teachers or anyone other than police and security personnel to be trained to the standard of the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy (OPOTA).

“By its plain terms, this would apply to law enforcement but not to administrators, teachers, or support staff authorized to carry a firearm in a school safety zone,” the districts wrote in their brief to the court.

The school representatives urged the court to recognize that decisions about student safety “are best left to locally-elected boards of education.”

The schools said giving board of education the right to govern in varying ways is “simply federalism,” calling boards “laboratories of democracy.”

Furthering that argument, the schools said boards were entrusted by the state and the legislature to “serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of (Ohio),” quoting a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated case.

Photo by Dan Galvani Sommavilla from Pexels

They criticized the 12^th District Court of Appeals decision in the case, saying the court took away the meaning of the Ohio law regarding firearms allowances in schools, and made “arming staff entirely impractical.”

“As a result of the 12^th District’s decision, if an Ohio school district desires to arm any administrator, teacher, or support staff, the district is left with two options: (1) hire a police officer to teach English; or (2) send an algebra teacher to the police academy,” the brief from the districts stated.

The schools went so far as to say schools will be “less safe” if the supreme court agrees with the 12^th District’s decision, because of the varying amount of resources from school to school. Hiring more school resource officers isn’t always in the budget, they wrote.

They estimate a school resource officer’s salary to be $50,000 per year. They also say sending a school employee to FASTER, a training given by pro-gun lobby Buckeye Firearms Association and marketed specifically to teachers and school staff, costs “a couple thousand dollars.”

“Unsurprisingly, the resource discrepancy between districts in Ohio is largely exacerbated between larger, suburban and urban districts and smaller, rural districts,” the brief states. “This money gap, though, has a direct impact on the ability of a school district to safely protect its students and staff.”

The FASTER program is later called the state’s and country’s “preeminent active school shooter training program” more than once, and the districts say nearly 200 school districts in Ohio have been sent to it. The attorney writing on behalf of the districts, Jonathan Fox, is named as Buckeye Firearms Association member in a story on the BFA website.

The court case is running parallel to proposed legislation that recently passed a state Senate committee regarding armed school personnel

Sep 28, 2020
Ohio Supreme Court: School district firearms policy can go on, pending appeal

By Susan Tebben at Ohio Capital Journal

Columbus, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court has said a school district can go ahead with a firearm policy for personnel while the state’s highest court decides on their case.

The Ohio Supreme Court granted Madison Local School District’s request to allow the implementation of a policy allowing trained personnel including teachers to be armed on the Butler County district’s grounds Wednesday.

The amount of training the personnel must receive is still up for debate as the Ohio Senate considers a bill to lower that training level.

But just as they allowed the motion, they also sped up the schedule for their own deliberation.

“No stipulations or requests for extension of time shall be permitted, and the clerk of court shall refuse to file any stipulations or requests for extension of time,” the court said in a filing.

The district asked for an expedited timeline because of the upcoming school year, which started Aug. 13. The appeals court decision had “no practical effect” before then, because Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had already closed schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attorneys for the school district parents who filed the initial lawsuit said a last-minute halt to the appeals court decision “threatens to upend the expectations of parents who have used the intervening months to make time-sensitive decisions — and commitments — about how to safely educate their children this fall.”

“While parents face a variety of safety concerns when deciding how to school their children in a global pandemic, Madison’s last-minute request would add to the confusion and concerns that parents are currently grappling with, and have already made decisions about,” attorneys for the families wrote in a response to the motion, filed Aug. 12.

The parents disagreed with the district’s argument that allowing the school to implement the policy before the supreme court makes its final decision is “necessary to prevent irreparable injury.”

While both parties want to avoid a school shooting like the one that sparked the policy in the first place, attorneys for the parents said, being barred from implementing the firearm policy “does not prevent Madison from deploying almost any conceivable option to enhance school safety; it simply bars the use of armed staff whose few days of training fall far short of the state mandate.”

The school district has 20 days to file their arguments with the court, and the families have 20 days following that to respond.

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justice Michael Donnelly disagreed with the decision to expedite the case and temporarily halt the appeals court decision, and Justice Patrick Fischer noted he would have specifically denied the portion of the motion to allow the district’s firearms policy.

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.

Aug 31, 2020
School funding bill to get new look under new speaker

By Susan Tebbenand Ohio Capital Journal

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.

Aug 23, 2020
Reopening begins for Ohio’s colleges: Here’s how it looks

By Susan Tebben – The Ohio Capital Journal

Some of Ohio’s colleges and universities have begun moving students in, but the navigation of a school year amid a pandemic is still a balancing act.

For Miami University, classes began this week, with all undergraduate courses online or remote. The plan is to keep it that way until at least Sept. 21, according to the plan posted to the school’s website.

“When we began planning last spring, we had hoped that the COVID-19 pandemic would be in significant decline before classes were scheduled to begin,” Miami president Greg Crawford told students. “Instead, cases are rising in many states. With 40% of our Oxford students coming from outside Ohio, we’ve been monitoring the situation closely.”

Those that are on campus are required to wear masks, and as students come back, they can be reported to the Office of Community Standards if they repeatedly refuse to comply with an instructor’s direction to use a mask or face covering.

Mask requirements are the norm among Ohio’s public colleges and universities, as are 14-day quarantines for students coming from states considered COVID-19 hotspots.

Also the norm this school year are phased reopenings, like those at The Ohio State University, Ohio University, Kent State University, Shawnee State University, Cleveland State University, and the University of Cincinnati.

The first move-in dates for UC, Aug. 14 and 15 were considered “drop-off only,” meaning students could bring their stuff to campus, but then had to return home until the 16th.

Another regular part of public colleges’ and universities’ schedules is a return to at least some form of in-person class instruction that ends after Thanksgiving break. The last two weeks, including final exams, will be taken remotely at OSU, Central State University, UC, KSU and Wright State University, among others.

Kent State and the University of Toledo have eliminated their fall break to allow students to receive a full semester despite adjusted opening dates.

Toledo said they adjusted their Fall semester “based on the possibility of having a second wave of COVID-19 in late fall,” taking into account CDC data on the pandemic and state recommendations for higher education.

Bowling Green State University went so far as to cancel their Winter 2021 session and provide a $1,500 credit for the first 2,000 students who cancelled their housing assignment before the school year began this week.

“It is important you understand that we are HIGHLY encouraging you not to live on campus this fall,” information on the university’s COVID-19 plan page stated.

BGSU started their staggered move-in this week for those that had no other option than to take up residence, and are set to begin classes on Aug. 31. Students there will also be online only beginning Nov. 30.

OU phased in their reopening by allowing certain graduates and undergraduates “in a carefully selected set of academic programs” to begin their time on campus. Most students will begin remotely on Aug. 24, but students like third-year students in the College of Health Sciences and Professions’ nursing program and juniors and seniors in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) are eligible to participate in the university’s first phase of schooling.

Universities throughout the state sticking with in-person instruction have instituted class-size reductions, along with “hybrid-remote” forms of teaching. Central State spelled out a “cohort attendance” model in its reopening plan, which would break large classes into groups, with the cohorts attending classes on alternating days. This model goes along with a 50% reduction in class sizes, something Wright State anticipates as part of its plan as well.

“At this time, the university conservatively estimates that one-third of classes will have in-person components while the majority of in-person classes will also deliver all content remotely to provide flexibility to students who are unable or do not feel comfortable returning to campus,” said Wright State president Susan Edwards in a letter to the university community.

Many of Ohio’s public higher education institutions have also created pledges for students connected to prevention of coronavirus, and in some cases can spur disciplinary action if not signed.

Testing and contact tracing for COVID-19 are a regular part of all public school plans, though the ways in which the testing is done vary from school to school.

The spring semester plan is still to be determined for most schools. The University of Akron plans to continue hybrid online and in-person instruction into the spring, but others are still watching the success of their fall semesters to plan for the future.

“Decisions are forthcoming,” stated the UC reopening plan.

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.

Aug 21, 2020
Butler County school asks state supreme court to speed up decision on armed teachers policy

By Susan Tebben

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Columbus, Ohio – An Ohio school district hoping to enact a policy to arm teachers is asking the Ohio Supreme Court to speed up their decision in light of an approaching school year.

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Last week, the state’s highest court agreed to hear the appeal of the Madison Local School District in Butler County, after an appeals court ruled they did not have the right to enact a “firearms authorization policy” that would allow armed teachers in schools.

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Several parents sued the district in 2018 seeking an injunction blocking the district from arming teachers and other staff without the training required of law enforcement officials.

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When the court of appeals made that ruling in March 2020, it had “no practical effect” on the district, attorneys for the district said in court documents. The decision came after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine closed schools throughout the state due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“That changes (Aug. 13), when the 2020-21 school year begins for Madison with in-person classroom instruction,” attorneys for the district said in their motion.

Due to the upcoming school year, the school district is asking the court to “expedite” the schedule and consideration for the ruling.

Due to the upcoming school year, the school district is asking the court to “expedite” the schedule and consideration for the ruling. They submitted the request two days after the state supreme court agreed to hear the case.

The request to speed up a ruling also included an argument that the school should be able to go forward with their firearms policy as the appeals court decision is appealed.

Attorneys for the district said the fact that the Ohio Supreme Court accepted the case “implies serious questions going to the merits of the Twelfth District’s decision and that Madison has at least a reasonable prospect of success on the merits.”

The firearms policy was agreed to after a shooting at the junior/senior high school in which four students were injured, and the shooter, James Austin Hancock was sentenced to juvenile detention until he turns 21.

The district also said barring the firearms policy as the school year begins could become a safety issue.

“To be sure, everyone can hope that Madison does not ever experience another school shooting, and it is possible that the absence of this deterrent effect during the upcoming school year might turn out not to have mattered,” the school district said in court documents. “But it might matter, and Madison has made the policy decision that its students and staff are safer with its policy in place.”

The firearms policy was agreed to after a shooting at the junior/senior high school in which four students were injured, and the shooter, James Austin Hancock was sentenced to juvenile detention until he turns 21.

The district noted in its statement to the court that there were no “situations or incidents” during the 2018-19 school year or the part of the 2019-20 school year in which the schools were open.

The court battle is also the subject of a bill currently in the Ohio Senate. Butler County resident and state Sen. Bill Coley introduced Senate Bill 317 in May with the aim to reduce the amount of training needed for school personnel to be armed in schools.

An amendment has been brought up to include a “school marshal program” within the bill. The last hearing on the bill was held July 21.

Susan Tebben

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.

Aug 11, 2020