Public Education Matters

Various student voices 0:08
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.

Scott DiMauro 0:15
This is Public Education Matters brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:25
Welcome to Season 5 of Public Education Matters, the Ohio Education Association's regular podcast, back once again as we start a new school year. I'm your host, Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the OEA's communications team, helping amplify the voices of nearly 120,000 K-12 teachers, education support professionals, higher ed faculty members and other public school educators across Ohio every day. Over the summer, we asked those OEA members to share their thoughts on this podcast and in podcasts in general, to make sure we were delivering the most impactful episodes possible and really giving our listeners what they want. It turns out a lot of different people want a lot of different things, and there really is no strong consensus about a perfect formula or some magic pill. But I am taking all of the feedback to heart, and we're making a few changes around here for the new Public Education Matters season. For one thing, we're moving back to a weekly format, and we're moving back to shorter episodes to make sure each installment is easily digestible and more convenient for educators who want to listen during their commutes. Plus almost 70% of the people who answered the survey question about how long they like episodes to be said either 10 or 20 minutes. So my goal is to bring you an insightful, helpful conversation each week in 20 minutes or less, starting with this conversation with Ohio Education Association President Scott DiMauro, digging into the big issues we're tracking as the new school year gets underway. Take a listen.

Katie Olmsted 2:14
Scott DiMauro, OEA President, thank you for sitting down with us to start off Season 5. As the new school year is getting underway, what are you hearing? What are people saying?

Scott DiMauro 2:26
Yeah, this is an exciting time of year every year. This is my 34th year in education -

Katie Olmsted 2:32
- which is amazing when you're only 29 -

Scott DiMauro 2:34
Can you believe it? I know, hard to imagine. But you know, 12th year as an officer. And one of the things that is always been a favorite part of of my work is going around and visiting new employee orientation events, new teacher dinners, breakfasts, membership meetings. And, you know, we're talking here in the middle of August, and I think every day for the last two weeks and every day for the next week or two, I've had at least one of these meetings. Just came from one with a group of our ESP members in Ross County. And I'm sensing a lot of excitement about the new school year. I think people had a pretty good summer. We're definitely back in the some sense of normalcy, you know, after having some disruption for a couple years related to the Covid and everything else. But it's also interesting as we think about this educator shortage issue, one thing that I notice is, while many districts have a lot of new hires, not seeing a lot of new teachers, per se.

Katie Olmsted 3:45
Interesting.

Scott DiMauro 3:46
Lots of people moving from one district to another, some second career folks coming in, people who had been away from the profession coming back. But the average age of the new folks in any given room, I would say is probably around 35, you know, so, just based on my anecdotal observations. So I think that's interesting, that that we see a little bit more mobility between districts, but it does cause some concern for me that that pipeline of new educators coming out of colleges of education, that decline in numbers that we've seen over the last decade is very much on display right now,

Katie Olmsted 4:27
And what you're saying really does track with the data that we have seen in terms of just the number of people going into those programs, not just the people coming out, but we have a lot of young people who aren't considering education as their career choice, and they're not entering those those programs. Obviously, we have a lot of work to do to change that and to make sure that people do see education as a great profession, a great career that will last their entire career. What are some of the things - I know you just got back from Education International, are there any lessons from that about what we can be doing here in Ohio?

Scott DiMauro 5:04
So Education International was a convening. It happens every four years. And it's educator unions from around the world. There are over 150 countries represented. I was part of a delegation of 50 people from NEA, and then we had some observers. So it was just an amazing experience. Countless languages. It was like being at the UN wearing headphones to listen to people speaking in any number of languages being translated into English for us. But what struck me in that experience was how common the issues are all around the globe. And one of the very top issues that got a lot of attention and had a lot of discussion was the global educator shortage, for all the reasons that we talk about here. And quite frankly, we have a lot of privilege in this country and in the state and, and we talk about challenges with recruitment and retention of educators, compared to the people who are working in the developing world under oppressive governmental regimes and and seeing class sizes of 80 and and, you know, and active oppression of public education. You know, things are, things are a lot better here than than they are in a lot of places. But some of the underlying themes are the same. When people aren't adequately compensated - It's the number one issue. In fact, there was a special UN panel that Education International helped to get convened, and it had a series of recommendations at the very top of the list was pay educators what they need and deserve. That's true everywhere. So addressing pay, addressing working conditions, things like class size, but also the importance of having a strong union, was a strong issue across the board. Where people have the ability to collectively bargain and to unite their voices and to advocate for better conditions. they get them. And where they don't, where you have a government that takes away the rights of working people to organize and to bargain, then that's where you see terrible conditions for educators and terrible conditions for students. So I came away with a lot of hope. I mean, it's pretty overwhelming. 44 million open education positions globally right now.

Katie Olmsted 7:38
Wow.

Scott DiMauro 7:39
We have a shortage of 44 million educators, most of those in places like Latin America and Subsaharan Africa and Asia, but, but it's true everywhere. It's true in North America. It's true in in Europe. So those are some of the common issues. We also talked about, you know, the importance of politics and education. We talked about the importance of standing up for the rights of our marginalized communities. You know, women's rights. We talked a lot about mental health and the importance of wellness for students and educators. I mean, it is pretty amazing to see just how much we have in common with people all around the world.

Katie Olmsted 8:21
And I want to go back to something you just touched on there: the importance of politics in education. We know what happens in our classrooms. So much of it depends on what is happening at our state house or on Capitol Hill. What are some of the big things we'll be watching for at the State House and on Capitol Hill this year?

Scott DiMauro 8:38
Yeah. I mean, and again, that was a huge takeaway from the experience in this - this World Congress was in Argentina, which also was amazing to just experience that culture - But, yeah. A big takeaway. Elections matter. And the difference between having, you know, public officials who support public education, support educators, and support worker rights versus places where they don't. And all eyes are on the United States in our election that's coming up in November. I will say, you know, let's talk about the top of the ticket with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And I have a very special warm place in my heart for Tim Walz, who is a teacher and a coach, is a social studies educator, just like me. And I'm like, wow, this guy is is the real deal. Because here's somebody who has consistently been delivering as a teacher, as a coach, as a member of Congress, and for the last six years as governor of Minnesota, recognizing how important public education is. And so it starts there. I mean, we have to look at what's at stake nationally. You know, what happens if the Trump administration comes back into office and if you've never heard of Project 2025, I mean eliminating the Department of Education and taking away educator rights is at the top of the list, so we have to be paying close attention to that. But then we have a Senate race that's very critical here in Ohio. Sherrod Brown, running for reelection. He's been a champion for working people. He's been a champion for public education. And one of those issues, and I know Katie, we've talked about this before, is the issue of Social Security fairness. So many of our members who get penalized because they had time in the private sector or their spouse has earned Social Security benefits, and then they don't get to keep what they've earned because they happen to be in a public pension like STRS or SERS. So so electing Sherrod, returning them to the to the Senate, and then electing pro public education candidates in the legislature, regardless of party. We've got a we've got a good working relationship right now with the Republican Speaker of the House, Jason Stephens, and we've been able to stop a lot of bad things from happening and protect our collective bargaining rights because of those relationships. We have to make sure that we're stepping up for pro public education legislative candidates for the House and Senate,for Congress. We have a chance to switch control of the Supreme Court, and there's a school voucher case that's working its way through the courts. We need to make sure that we have a fair court that will really look at our Constitution and uphold the rights of our students to learn. And then, of course, we have our ballot issue that we've talked about before, and I hope people are paying close attention to, to reform our broken system of redistricting, end partisan gerrymandering, once and for all, create a system where the voters choose their representatives, not politicians hand picking their voters. Add some accountability, add some moderation, get better results for kids and for educators. All those things are on the ballot in November. We're paying close attention.

Katie Olmsted 11:58
And shameless plugL If you want to learn more about Citizens Not Politicians and thatthat ballot initiative, go back to the last episode of Season Four. We had a really great conversation with the former Supreme Court justice. It's a bipartisan issue. So we had a Republican, a Democrat, and it continues to be a bipartisan issue, just like public education issues at our state house. A huge one is school funding. We know the state budget will be coming up and the Fair School Funding Plan has to be fully implemented. It was a six year plan. We made big progress, but there's work to do. What are we looking for this time around?

Scott DiMauro 12:37
Well, again, this is going to very much depend on electing pro-public education candidates in November, but the first thing that the legislature is going to - the new legislature is going to be doing when they come into office in 2025 is crafting a new two year budget. And we have seen some success over the last two budget cycles where the Fair School Funding Plan, which is crafted on a bipartisan basis, led by former Republican Speaker Bob Cupp and former Democratic Representative and OEA member John Patterson.

Katie Olmsted 13:09
You can hear him on Season 1 of the podcast.

Scott DiMauro 13:12
Thank you for those shameless plugs. That's really good. But you know where they put together this plan that says we're going to fund schools based on the actual cost of providing a quality education to every student, and we're going to fairly distribute state funding based on the reality and the needs of local communities and their ability to pay. Made good progress, but we're not there yet, and depending on who's in power, we're going to see whether we finish the job in 2025 or we take a step backwards. Of course, the headwinds that we're facing: Just this week, saw a new article in Cleveland.com our friend Laura Hancock, who does great job covering education issues, reported that as of August 7, $966 million was spent this past school year on private school vouchers, subsidizing private school tuition, almost completely for families that were already sending their kids to private schools. That's the problem. We got to stand up for public education. That's nearly a billion dollars that would be far better spent on the 90% of Ohio's kids that are attending our public schools to make sure that every student, regardless of who they are their background, is going to be successful.

Katie Olmsted 14:34
So much at stake this coming General Assembly, so much at stake in this election, and so much excitement and so much to look forward to as we get this new school year underway.

Scott DiMauro 14:45
No doubt! I mean, and I just, I just have to say, and I want to lift up one example, one of the really exciting things for me, last week, I had a chance to go down to Mason,right by Kings Island. And our embers there had been they've been working on contract negotiations for months and months. They've been organizing internally, building absolute unity among their membership, and then strong parental and community support. They turned hundreds of people out for a rally while their bargaining team was at the table, and by the end of the day, they had a contract settlement. A very good one. It still needs to be ratified, but, but I think it's, I think their members are going to be pleased, and it's going to help everybody raise the bar for what we expect, as far as resources and supports and respect for our educators. That's only possible when we stand strong together, when we're working really hard to make sure that as many people who are eligible for membership are joining our union, but more importantly, becoming actively involved and stepping out and standing up for themselves, for their colleagues and for their students.

Katie Olmsted 16:00
And you know what? That's something I'm seeing on Facebook as this back to school session time is happening from a lot of different educators, that all of the new educators who are eligible to join are joining. 100% join rates with a lot of these locals, and that is so important because of that collective voice and that collective power to make these changes

Scott DiMauro 16:22
100%. Yeah, I'm seeing it too, and there's a lot of excitement. Some of the most powerful stories that I've heard from individual educators are people who are coming from private schools, or coming from STEM schools, or coming from charter schools, or coming from places where they didn't have a union and they saw what that meant as far as not having the resources and supports that they needed, and what a difference it makes to have a union and to have a strong, unified union. Makes all the difference in the world, And those districts where they have strong unions are Lighthouse districts, destination districts for educators from across the state.

Katie Olmsted 17:07
Scott DiMauro, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I can't wait to see what's ahead in the school year and bring more conversations with these educators who are using their strong union voice.

Scott DiMauro 17:18
Thanks, Katie. Keep up the good work with this podcast season five. I can't believe it. That's amazing.

Katie Olmsted 17:27
Again. This is one of many, many conversations you'll hear on public education matters throughout season five. I mentioned that survey we sent out over the summer, and so many of you gave us so many great ideas about people we should be talking to and the subjects that would be most helpful to you. Make sure you like or subscribe to Public Education Matters wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss an episode. And keep those ideas coming, just email me at educationmatters@ohea.org. Remember new episodes are dropping every Thursday this season, so we'll see you back here again next week for another insightful conversation about the big education issues in our state, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai