Ohio’s Public Schools Had a Rough 2022 and Face Bleak Legislative Prospects in 2023

In the midst of the big 2022 Christmas week storm, a frozen sprinkler-system pipe burst at the Ohio Statehouse and flooded the state senate chamber.  This year in Ohio’s gerrymandered, supermajority Republican legislature, democracy itself has been so severely threatened that many of us wondered if the event was an expression of cosmic justice.

As Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor retired due to the state’s mandated age limit, O’Connor—herself a Republican—condemned legislators who created one gerrymandered legislative and Congressional district map after another, O’Connor told the Associated Press: “My advice to them was, please review the Constitution and maybe go back to, what is it, fourth or fifth grade and learn about our institutions… And maybe, just maybe, review what it was like in Germany when Hitler intimidated the judiciary and passed those laws that allowed for the treatment of the Jewish population… This country cannot stand if the judiciary is intimidated.” The AP reports that, “In retirement, she has pledged to champion a constitutional amendment that fixes Ohio’s redistricting process…”

Ohio legislators have shown that in 2023 they are determined to increase the threshold for passing a state constitutional amendment from a simple 50 percent majority to a 60 percent majority. Here is Brent Larkin, the Plain Dealer‘s editorial page director from 1991 to 2009: “Many of these same Ohio officeholders and legislators involved in the scheme to limit citizen involvement in state government are the same ones who ignored the Ohio Constitution when they defied the will of the people by drawing gerrymandered legislative districts designed to remove any element of fairness from the redistricting process.” “The betrayal of public trust is breathtaking, though hardly surprising. The legislature leaving office is probably the most unscrupulous in Ohio’s history. Statehouse insiders believe the one taking office this week will be worse.”

With such serious threats to democracy and a mass of controversial bills on a range of issues, one danger is that concerns about public education will just slip through the cracks.  Because it is essential that the public be informed about our state’s most pervasive and influential institution—our public schools, here is a summary of what happened in Ohio public education policy this year.

Bad Things that Did Not Happen in 2022

The 134th Ohio General Assembly did not pass Ohio Senate Bill 178 to hollow out the Ohio State Board of Education and shift its primary responsibilities (including overseeing the Department of Education itself) to a new cabinet Department of Education and the Workforce under the Governor.  Politics have already to some degree invaded the Ohio State Board of Education, because the governor already appoints 8 of its 19 members.  And during the past two years there have been several legislative/gubernatorial interventions to gerrymander the districts of elected members to favor Republicans, and to fire unruly members and appoint new members who would be more faithful to Ohio Republicans’ priorities.

In 2022, the Ohio Senate passed SB 178 to move the important functions of the State Board of Education under the governor’s control, to insulate the state board from the will of the people, and to remove many of the State Board’s responsibilities. In December, during the last week of the legislative session, SB 178 was heard by the House Education Committee, but the bill never came up for committee vote and never was acted on by the Ohio House.  At 2:30 AM, before the the 134th General Assembly permanently adjourned at 6:30 AM,  Senate President Matt Huffman inserted the entire 2,144 page SB 178 into HB 151 to ban transgender girls from sports, inserted another amendment to ban school vaccine mandates, and sent the entire package back to the Ohio House, where it failed by 6 votes.  Although this problematic bill failed in the 134th General Assembly, Senate President Matt Huffman has pledged another attempt during 2023 to politicize the State Board of Education in the 135th Ohio General Assembly.

A Mass of Culture War Bills Will Die Because They Never Came Up for a Vote (For details, see Honesty for Ohio Education or the Northeast Ohio Friends of Public Education.)

• • HB 322, HB 327, and HB 616 to ban teaching and materials about divisive concepts including racism and sexual orientation.
  • HB 529 to demand that school curricula be posted online.
  • HB 454 to ban gender affirming care for minors.
  • HB 704 to affirm that gender identity is identifiable at birth according to DNA.
  • HB 722 to ban discussion of any ‘sexually explicit’ content and establish a ‘parents bill of rights.’
  • SB 361 to enable former military troops to become teachers with relaxed credentialing.
  • SB 365 to include curriculum about free market capitalism in educational standards.

HB 290, the “Backpack” universal education savings account voucher program never came up for a vote in the 134th General Assembly. Most people expect, however, that a similar bill will be introduced in the 135th General Assembly, perhaps as part of the FY 2024-2025 biennial budget bill.  For more information see here.

Good Things that Did Not Happen in 2022

The Ohio Legislature did not pass HB 497 to eliminate the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. After HB 497 passed the Ohio House by a margin of 82-10 and after the bill was unanimously endorsed by the Ohio State Board of Education, HB 497 was never considered by the Ohio Senate Primary and Secondary Education Committee and never forwarded for a vote by the full Ohio Senate. The bill died with the end of the 134th Ohio General Assembly. The bill would have eliminated mandatory retention in third grade of any student who does not reach a proficient score on the state’s third grade achievement test. Research demonstrates that holding kids back in grade damages self esteem and makes it more likely that students will drop out of school before graduating from high school. For background see here.

Bad Things that Happened in 2022

The Ohio State Board of Education adopted, by a 10-7 vote, a resolution to oppose the Biden Administration’s proposed addition of LGBTQ protections to Title IX.  On December 13, 2022, the Columbus Dispatch‘s Anna Staver reported: “After months of debate and hundreds of personal testimonies, Ohio’s State Board of Education voted 10 to 7… to push back against the Biden Administration’s plan to add LGBTQ protections to Title IX.”  For more information, see here.

The Ohio Legislature passed an amendment to HB 45 to weaken state incentives to improve preschool and childcare programs.  HB 45 eliminates the requirement that preschool and childcare centers participate in the state’s own Step Up to Quality program to receive state funds. Signal News‘s Paul Rochford reported that before this bill passed, “all early childhood and preschool providers funded by the Department of Education… (were) required to participate in the rating system and…  receive a rating of three or more stars to be eligible for state funding.” The change is likely to undermine the quality of childcare and preschool for Ohio’s poorest children. (Governor DeWine has not yet signed HB 45 and could still potentially line-item veto this provision.)

Mysterious Ohio State Tuition Tax Credit Voucher Program surfaces two years after it was established in the fine print of HB 110, the 2022-2023 state budget. Suddenly parents have received flyers from private schools announcing a new tuition tax credit program that will fund private and religious schools at the expense of the state’s general revenue fund.  Here is one brand new article covering this program.  The only news I could uncover about this program at the time it was passed is this summary from The Highland County Press.

Something Good that Happened in 2022

Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page denied the state’s request that she dismiss the Vouchers Hurt Ohio Lawsuit filed nearly a year ago by a coalition that now includes 130 of the state’s 610 public school districts.  The case may now proceed to trial.

In their lawsuit, plaintiffs declare: “The EdChoice Scholarship Program poses an existential threat to Ohio’s public school system. Not only does this voucher program unconstitutionally usurp Ohio’s public tax dollars to subsidize private school tuitions, it does so by depleting Ohio’s foundation funding—the pool of money out of which the state funds Ohio’s public schools… The discrepancy in per pupil foundation funding is so great that some districts’ private school pupils receive, as a group, more in funding via EdChoice Vouchers than Ohio allocates in foundation funding for the entire public school districts where those students reside. This voucher program effectively cripples the public school districts’ resources, creates an ‘uncommon’, or private system of schools unconstitutionally funded by taxpayers, siphons hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds into private (and mostly religious) institutions, and discriminates against minority students by increasing segregation in Ohio’s public schools. Because private schools receiving EdChoice funding are not subject to Ohio’s Sunshine Laws or most other regulations applicable to public schools, these private facilities operate with impunity, exempt from public scrutiny despite the public funding that sustains them.”

Public policy to support the state’s 610 public school districts will continue to face dangerous legislative opposition in 2023.  As I watched a televised hearing of the Ohio House Primary and Secondary Education Committee considering the bill to subsume the functions of the State Board of Education into a new Department of Education and the Workforce appointed by the governor, I was disturbed by two serious problems.  First, many of the legislators on the committee were quick to blame teachers for everything—for the problems students brought to school when they returned to classrooms after remote learning and for the drop in standardized test scores due to COVID disruption. Many of the members of the committee did not look for other explanations.

Second, a number of members of the committee failed to distinguish issues of education practice—the realm of school leaders, teachers, and the State Board of Education—from issues of education policy— the primary responsibility of the Legislature. One member of the committee suggested, for example, that a Department of Education and the Workforce under the governor’s control would be far more effective and efficient in making sure that teachers improve their disciplinary and classroom management skills to help stop students from being disruptive, as they were last school year after returning from COVID school closures. This legislator expressed no understanding of the value of an independent Department of Education administered by professionals prepared to focus on the complex issues of education practice and overseen by a nonpartisan State Board of Education with the majority of its members elected by the public. The very idea of independent state boards of education is that they can protect the schools from partisan political interference.

I would be less disturbed if this year I had noticed more Ohio legislators concerned about the urgently important strands of education policy they alone control.  What, for example, would be the effect if the Legislature were fully to fund the Fair School Funding Plan to increase school funding equity and provide more support for smaller classes and a more enriched curriculum? What ever happened to the study that the Legislature was supposed to fund, as part of the Fair School Funding Plan, to assess the special needs for state funding in districts serving concentrations of children living in poverty?  And how will the Legislature protect the public schools from the growing expense of the state’s many voucher programs which siphon dollars directly from the public school foundation budget and send the money to private and religious schools?

There is no reason to believe that in 2023 the legislative majority of Ohio’s 135th General Assembly will be supportive of Ohio’s public schools.  Persistence will be required as advocates press for the full six year phase-in of adequate school funding under the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan.  And, as Ohio Public Education Partners declares, we must demand that the Legislature “rejects the school privatization agenda, which includes school voucher schemes (and) charter schools….”