COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Senate passed an education overhaul bill Wednesday that robs the state school board of most of its power, but the plan will likely not be ready for the beginning of next school year.
Senate Bill 1 passed 26 to 7, along party lines.
SB 1 would rename the Ohio Department of Education the Department of Education and Workforce, or DEW, with a director who would be a member of the governor’s cabinet. Currently, the Department of Education answers to the Ohio State Board of Education, which would lose almost all of its powers under SB 1, except for educator licensing, school district territory transfers and hiring of a state superintendent of public instruction, who could be an advisor to the DEW director if the state board so chooses.
An amendment inserted into SB 1 on Tuesday afternoon changed the implementation date from June 30 – which would have had the proposed DEW officials in place for the next school year – to 90 days after the bill’s effective date, or roughly six months after the Gov. Mike DeWine would sign SB 1.
For the DEW to be ready to take over education policy by Sept. 1, the bill must have passed both chambers on Wednesday. But the bill is just now headed to the Ohio House, which is in disarray due to a leadership battle among Republicans.
The House has legislation mirroring SB 1, House Bill 12, which has had two hearings thus far.
Last week a Senate committee adopted amendments after receiving feedback from the education community, although many still oppose the bill.
The amendments require the two deputy directors under the DEW director —one who would be focused on K-12 and the other on workforce and career-technical education — have relevant educational, managerial or processional experience.
The amendments require DEW officials to publicly engage with the education community and other interested parties when considering regulations, similar to hearings that the state school board now holds. Policies and guidance that DEW creates would have to go through the state rulemaking process, which requires public comment and an approval by a legislative committee that makes sure state agencies don’t go beyond the scope of their control.
Cleveland City Council Members Kevin Conwell and Richard Starr traveled to Columbus on Tuesday to testify against SB 1 to the Ohio Senate Primary and Secondary Education Committee. On Monday, the council passed a resolution in opposition to SB 1, which was sponsored by every member of the council. The resolution has no teeth, but council members felt strongly about the bill, Conwell told the committee.
“It’s a power grab, shifting control of public education and giving it to the governor,” Conwell said. “It’s a dangerous bill. He will control the curriculum and the money too. He already controls eight out of 19 (members) that he appoints to the school board.”
The 19-member state board has eight appointees and 11 elected members.
In recent years, the board has spent hours debating culture wars issues, such as LGBTQ students’ rights and educational gaps among student of color. In November, three new Democrats who vowed to stay away from the culture wars were elected to the board, with the help of the state’s two teachers unions.
A week later after the November election, Republicans introduced a version of SB 1, but it failed in the final hours of the two-year legislative session. This year, it’s back,. Sponsor Sen. Bill Reineke, a Tiffin Republican, said Wednesday on the Senate floor that he got the idea to put education under the governor seven years ago from a constituent.
Republicans, such as Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Delaware County Republican who chairs the education committee, say change is needed, pointing to the school board’s failure to appoint a permanent state superintendent of public instruction for the last 18 months. Brenner said that state test scores are low and the state school board hasn’t been able to raise them. Republicans say the bills they pass creating new education programs and initiatives aren’t properly advertised to the public because the state school board isn’t holding the Department of Education to account.
Starr said he represents Ward 5, one of the poorest areas of Cleveland.
“When I think of Senate Bill 1, the No. 1 thing I think about is this bill does not solve the issues that are hurting in our neighborhoods and our communities throughout the state,” he said. “It is bigger than just saying that we’re going to take the authority of education, when you’ve got to deal with a lot of the real life issues in the neighborhood, — such as living in a single parent household, living in a neighborhood with a median income that is $10,500.”
SB 1 won’t do anything to help local schools, Starr said.
Sen. Andrew Brenner hammered Wednesday on the Senate floor on low test scores in Cleveland and other districts throughout the state as another reason why education needs to fall under the governor. For instance, he noted just 30.4% of third graders were proficient in the reading segment of the state English language arts test last year.
“This is a structural problem,” he said. “You’ve got to have somebody in charge that wants to (see) the urgency,” Brenner said. “The governor is somebody that can be held accountable to try to put some urgency and demand and try to fix the system.”
Starr said that the focus first should be on providing needy areas enough resources and improving test scores. Instead, lawmakers are gunning to change the structure of the education department first.
“If you pass it, it will do more harm than it will do good because it’s really not addressing the actual needs,” Starr said. “We need more resources for the community for a child to be able to wake up and have the actual support. Because I can’t learn if I’m hungry. I can’t learn if I have to deal with domestic violence at home or at night. I can’t learn when I have to be the older sibling, helping my siblings to and from school when my mom has to work two or three jobs. So those test scores reflect some of the issues that we’ve dealt with.”
If the House passes SB 1, Gov. Mike DeWine will likely sign it. He said last year he supported the effort to put education under his office as a cabinet-level position.
Laura Hancock covers politics and policy in Columbus for The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com. Read more of her work here.