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 0:26
Thanks for joining us for this edition of Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association. If you tuned in for last week's episode of this podcast, you would have heard me say this week, we're talking about AI and digital tools in the classroom, and I promise you that episode is still coming, but there had to be a change of plans for this week, because some Ohio lawmakers are trying to ram through an incredibly bad bill that would hurt our public school students. And this conversation could not wait. We have to talk about Senate Bill 295 which would shut down or recklessly restructure schools based in large part on, you guessed it, standardized test scores, which we all know measure the impact of poverty on students and schools, more than anything else. Senate Bill 295 was introduced as basically a placeholder bill at the end of the regular session, and the actual language of the bill was only released in the waning days of Lame Duck. And there's a good chance it's going to be amended into a House bill that's already passed, so against all the ways things are normally done or should be done, the really harmful stuff in Senate Bill 295 could become Ohio law without any public input in the House, or really any true consideration of it in that chamber of our legislature. That's wrong, and we have to stop it. We know policies like this hurt Ohio kids and communities, and really just punish poverty. And we've been here. Senate Bill 295 repeats the mistakes of the failed state takeovers with academic distress commissions under House Bill 70. A little later in this episode, we'll hear from Lillian Tolbert, the president of the East Cleveland Education Association, about exactly why the state takeover under the last failed state policy like this was so harmful to her students, and why we can't go down that road again. But first we're talking to OEA's Director of Government Relations, Dan Ramos, about exactly what Senate Bill 295 would do, and why every educator in Ohio needs to call or write their state lawmakers right now to say no way to this bill.

Dan Ramos, Director of Government Relations, what in the world is going on?

Dan Ramos 2:51
Well, Katie, thanks again for having me on. You know, it is Lame Duck season here in the Ohio General Assembly, which means we have to, unfortunately, sometimes take up bills that have not had full consideration as the General Assembly is ending its session, and one of which is Senate Bill 295, which is proposed by state senator Andrew Brenner from Delaware, Ohio. This bill is a you know, a heavy handed approach in how the state requires school districts to handle and to plan for, you know, quote unquote -- and I say this, you know, with effect - quote unquote, underperforming school buildings. And it essentially lowers the bar on requirements that would create criteria for these buildings to be considered impacted by the law, and then it expands the menus of options that a school district must and is required to take if one of these buildings is underperforming based on these criterias for more than three years.

Katie Olmsted 4:01
What are those criteria? That's, I think, something we need to make sure people hear about.

Dan Ramos 4:05
Yeah. So a district that falls underneath of the new bill, if passed in the law, would be a district that is a building that essentially has grades three and above. That is at the bottom 5% of performance index of all buildings in the state, and is at the bottom 10% on value added performance of buildings in the state. And what we've seen is that that is an essentially lowering of the bar of the criteria that pulls districts into academic distress. And I should, I should clarify this. This applies to school buildings, not to districts. So school buildings themselves. And if a building meets these three requirements, and they have to meet all three for three consecutive years the following year, the following school year, by the end of the school year, the school board is compelled to do one of the following options: Outright, close that building and redistribute the students and staff amongst the buildings in the district, which we know is - that's existing law that has never yet been, that has never been triggered at the, you know, for a traditional public school - and we know that could be challenging given both space and you know, availability of facilities to house the additional students and staff, and it would have a really detrimental impact on on school districts that are single building for a grade band, in particular in our rural and our smaller communities across the state; Another option that the district will have at its hands, at its fingertips, which the bill expands upon, is that it hands management of that building over to one of several entities, including a charter school operator or a a private school operator that has quote, unquote experience with school improvement, another school district, which is an interesting concept. However, the school district and the charter school operators have different criteria to qualify to take over management within the within the bill. The bill has a lower standard for charter school operators, they have to have only a three star rating, whereas a traditional public school that takes over management has to have a four star rating on the school report cards. Yeah, exactly. It permits the building or the district to work with a private college or a public institution of higher education or another external entity, as defined by the Department of Education and Workforce, which has no definition in the bill, and it will likely will be what we would consider charter school advocates, or private school advocate organizations that are out there selling curriculum and sponsoring charter schools across the state. Another option, and this is expanding on current law, another option is to essentially get rid of the building administrator and at minimum half of the certified staff in the building. Current law says that they have to eliminate all staff in the building.

Katie Olmsted 7:17
Which is probably why this has never been used.

Dan Ramos 7:19
It's why it's never been triggered. I mean, I don't understand how a district can eliminate the all staff, all teaching staff, in a building, and then, you know, or at minimum, under the new proposal, one half of the staff and replace them with what? We have a ongoing educator staffing crisis as is. And these districts that you know, you know, traditionally, will fall into this criteria already have a even greater challenge, you know, attracting and retaining staff than other other districts in the state. And here's the big kicker with this provision, the bill proposes that if a district chooses this option that they can they have to eliminate up to half, or at minimum, half, my apologies, non withstanding collective bargaining law, so bumping rights, RIF language that are included within collective bargaining agreements, the ability for labor and management to sit down and come up with solutions to dealing with these problems, those are completely eliminated if a building, if this bill is passed into law. So this is a an attack on our fundamental rights and the voices of educators to advocate for students. So yeah, the overall, the provisions are extremely heavy handed. And I would, I would be remiss to say that the bill also does apply similar language to charter schools and to STEM schools in its, in their approach on how they close lower performing charter schools and STEM schools. Interesting to note yesterday, the Ohio House Senate educate or the Ohio Senate Education Committee, had all testimony on the bill. President DiMauro from OEA, President Cropper from OFT, testified in opposition, and because of this, Bill is so poorly drafted, Chad Aldis who is with the Fordham Institute, testified in opposition.

Katie Olmsted 9:05
Not usually on our side on a lot of issues...

Dan Ramos 9:07
Not usually on our side. Strange bedfellows, especially when they're trying to ram through policy like this.

Katie Olmsted 9:13
So I want to actually bring up the what may be the only public hearing on this bill that happened on Tuesday. There were a few things that were brought up in the part that I was able to watch. Melissa Cropper, as you mentioned, testified from OFT, and she pointed out that when you're talking about the bottom 5% there will always be a bottom 5%. That's how math works.

Dan Ramos 9:35
Exactly.

Katie Olmsted 9:35
So this bill, as drafted, could eventually - we're gonna ,as any of these Bottom Five Percenters close, the next bottom 5% happens, we could end up closing high performing schools down the road.

Dan Ramos 9:48
Correct. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, that's, that's, you know, the fallacy behind using the, you know, these numbers to determine - and overall, the fallacy of using achievement scores in creating a system of test, blame and shame that we know failed with House Bill 70 and No Child Left Behind to attempt to address this issue. Because, you know, as President Cropper mentioned, and as President DiMauro mentioned, you're always going to have that bottom rung, and it's going to be a revolving door of districts that eventually, as you mentioned, Katie, will impact, you know, school buildings that are in high performing, high performing districts. You know it is, again, the reason why this is a failed, a failed policy that we've seen in the past, and we cannot allow it to happen again here in the future.

Katie Olmsted 10:35
It really fails to address the actual needs of these students. We know that it's based on standardized test scores, and standardized tests generally are a measure of poverty rather than anything else. And so I think it was Senator Ingram brought up the question, Where will these kids go if the schools close? And Senator Brenner said, well, to another school. But my question, and I'm sure this is, you know, the giant elephant in the room is, what good does that do? The barriers to learning that come with poverty follow the child. It has nothing to do with the brick and mortar of that school building.

Dan Ramos 11:09
Correct, and that is the, again, you're hitting the nail on the head. And the fallacy with the logic behind why they are proposing this. You know, I mentioned previously House Bill 70, which was the academic distress commission bill that, obviously, you know, I know you're talking with leaders from the our districts that were impacted by the ADCs and No Child Left Behind are built upon a, what I would call a test blame and shame scheme, which, you know, uses a standardized test to identify, you know, what they quote, call, quote, call quote, unquote achievement gaps. And then, obviously, these are pretty top down, heavy handed approaches in solving those issues. But as you pointed out, really a standardized test in many of these instances is a measure not of the students abilities or what they what they understand, it's really showing, you know, the pervasive impact of chronic poverty, of unaddressed potential mental health and social wellness issues, of community disengagement, of and ultimately of underfunding and staffing shortages that are pervasive in many of the school districts that would be impacted by this by this legislation. And the bill does not, as many times in the past as We said, with House Bill 70 and we're seeing in Lorain, Youngstown and East Cleveland, does not address the wraparound and holistic issues that we know need to be put in place to see success in these communities and with these schools. Just look at Lorain. I mean, Lorraine got out of their ADC not because they took draconian measures of school closure or elimination of collective bargaining laws, which are punitive and point the finger at educators. They worked with community partners. They worked with leaders in their community, with members of that school board, with staff and parents, to come up with a plan that talked about how as a community, they can come together with real solutions to solve the problems within their schools.

Katie Olmsted 13:06
And that's nothing to do with HB 70.

Dan Ramos 13:09
Nope.

Katie Olmsted 13:09
Just like SB 295. Would actually cause more problems than help.

Dan Ramos 13:15
And I might want to, I might point out, and for those that don't recall HB 70 when it was passed, you know, years ago by the General Assembly in Lame Duck, mind you, this was at the very last moment.

Katie Olmsted 13:26
Huh. That sounds familiar.

Dan Ramos 13:26
It's very familiar. It's kind of interesting how past is prologue here. The bill itself was a bill to expand on the successes that we saw in Cincinnati Public Schools around community learning centers and at the 11th hour, was hijacked and rewritten as the academic distress commission legislation, and we saw the decades long problem that that imposed on those three communities, and for the last success of general assemblies have passed safe harbors, because we know that these policies do not work. So no other districts fall into the academic distress commission language. And we're going to continue to push for repeal of the ADC language, but 295, isn't, isn't the solution. 295, again, as I mentioned, you know, builds upon and it re repackages the test, blame and shame game that we know don't work, you know. And I know President DiMauro said this in his testimony yesterday, and we said this, you know, we were continuing to say this to our legislative partners in both chambers, in both parties, that the state should look at solutions to address the systematic challenges that we see in our school districts that invest in our schools so that every single one of our students, regardless of their zip code, regardless of their economic status or their background, have access to, you know, the opportunities, the support and the resources they need to prevail with whatever challenges they have. You know, whether it's that, like I said before, like pervasive issues with poverty. We know that, you know, across the state, even in economically wealthy districts, we're having an issue with students with special needs because of a staffing crisis. You know, and obviously, especially as we have more migrants, you know, calling Ohio home, you know, we need to figure out ways to offer adequate education and adequate services to students where English may not be their first language.

Katie Olmsted 13:32
So yeah, and all of that is is far beyond what 295 even pretends to try to do. In these last few seconds, what do our members need to know?

Dan Ramos 15:37
Yeah. So ultimately, 295 is, you know, on the potential for a fast track in the Senate. It may be amended into another bill that the Senate is going to send back to the House in these last weeks. The House would only need to concur with those amendments in order to make it law that abridges, you know, normal order, that would be only one testimony, which was yesterday, Tuesday. You know that, you know, would be the opportunity for anybody to put any input on this. The House would have zero hearings on this measure, and we are arguing that that's a breach of normal orders. So we really need all members, you know, family members, parents, community leaders that care about their public schools and want to see a you know wraparound services and full solutions to these challenges, call your legislators you know, make sure to tell them that you know, to oppose House Bill 295 and take part in OEA's Action Alert and send them a letter urging that they do not support this top down mandate.

Katie Olmsted 16:41
Dan, thank you so much for helping us understand this issue.

Dan Ramos 16:45
Thank you, Katie, anytime.

Katie Olmsted 16:48
As we mentioned, Senate Bill 295 would continue the trend of harmful failed policies like House Bill 70, the failed state takeover law that relied so heavily on standardized tests to make high stakes decisions that harmed our students, our communities and educators. East Cleveland and Youngstown Schools are still under state takeovers with academic distress commissions and their appointed CEOs making decisions for them instead of their elected school boards. And these systems have not helped students. As we can see in East Cleveland, the gains made by students over the last few years have happened in spite of the state takeover, not because of it. And while East Cleveland schools are not currently on the list of quote, unquote, underperforming schools that would be covered by Senate Bill 295 criteria as they stand, the East Cleveland Education Association president says the goal posts just keep moving with HB 70 takeovers and Senate Bill 295 is the last thing Ohio students, educators and communities need.

Lillian Tolbert 17:53
Hello. I'm Lillian Tolbert. I teach in the East Cleveland City School District up in East Cleveland, Ohio. This is my 32nd year of teaching, and I am also a product of East Cleveland. So I graduated from Shaw High School. The one thing that I always talk about here in East Cleveland is success. I became a teacher and came back here because I had great teachers who poured into me and made me what I consider to be successful, and so I wanted to come back and give that back to this community, because this community has changed in the years that I've been here. So I'm very upset about what is happening with this new Senate bill. Of course, we know state takeover didn't work in East Cleveland, because we're still sitting in the same position. And here we go again.

Katie Olmsted 18:46
Here we go again. For those who don't remember, what happened in East Cleveland?

Lillian Tolbert 18:52
So we found out that our school was, our district was being taken over by the state. Again, you must remember that we live in a community that is impoverished and don't have all the information. So as soon as we found out about state takeover, we did what we could. We had people come out, we had community people come out, but it was obvious that they didn't really understand what was going on, and then quickly, before we knew it, we were interviewing five CEOs from different parts of the state, outside of the state and our -

Katie Olmsted 19:30
- people without a connection to East Cleveland or an understanding of East Cleveland -

Lillian Tolbert 19:33
Definitely. And then, you know, we got a CEO. The one important thing you have to remember about our school district is it's built on relationships. Relationships are very important. If the people in this community trust you, then they will make sure that their kids do everything that you can for them. So somebody coming in from the outside was a big blow to this community. They were unaware of what all it meant, but when it came to fruition, it was very different for them.

Katie Olmsted 20:11
And it took away the local control. It meant that your elected school board really didn't have a say. The voters didn't have a say.

Lillian Tolbert 20:19
No. No. They thought that they had to say when they voted those people in, and then that was taken away from them. And as you know, East Cleveland has a history with government, you know, with our mayor, like our current mayor now, was under investigation. So they're very wary about, you know, people who are in control. So to take that away from them, these were people who are people in the community that they know and that they trust, and they voted in to make the decisions for their children, and to have that taken away was very difficult for them.

Katie Olmsted 20:49
And you mentioned the relationships here. You know more than anybody what Senate Bill 295 would do. They're saying you can either close schools, which are the centers of the community. And I'd love to talk about what that would look like in would look like in East Cleveland, or what that does look like. We were lucky enough to have the Summer Celebration of Diverse Readers there over the summer, and truly, the schools are the center of the community there. So you either close the school building or you fire at least half of the staff, the people who have the relationships with the students, with the families, or you, you give away the local control and let some outside operator take over.

Lillian Tolbert 21:29
Yes.

Katie Olmsted 21:30
What do you think when you hear that?

Lillian Tolbert 21:32
Right. And what you have to remember in East Cleveland, I don't know if everybody knows this, but the teachers are the biggest tax base here in East Cleveland. We don't have big corporations here. We had GE, but the people work from home, so that is where they get their biggest tax base. So just imagine if you just took over it, and that tax that you know, income didn't come to East Cleveland. They depend on that, you know. So that would be different. And also, like, I'm in 32 years of teaching, I'm teaching generations of kids now. You know kids that I taught, I'm teaching their kids or their grandkids. So when they come into school and they see me, they're like, oh, it's Miss Tolbert. I had Miss Tolbert as a teacher. You better do what Miss Tolbert says. You know what I mean? Because it's built on relationships, and so that's so very important in the community where you don't get out of East Cleveland, so all you know are the people in East Cleveland. And you learn to trust that. We're a two mile, two and a half mile radius. The school is the center of East Cleveland. You know, there's not a street you can't go down, and then there's a school there. And then we have one charter school that's near here, and the charter schools aren't doing any better than we're doing, so why will we have them come and take over? As a matter of fact, many of our kids try the charter schools, and by January, they're back in our classrooms because they cannot, you know, meet the needs of these students. And I'm not talking about academic needs. We're the exception, you know, we're the unicorns. We have students who need sincere love, you know, just sincere understanding, just knowing what students and being able to understand what they're going through. And strangers can't come in here and do that, which is why these people shouldn't be making decisions about East Cleveland. And anywhere else!

Katie Olmsted 23:26
And to be clear, Senate Bill 295, East Cleveland is not currently in the group of schools that would be considered under that, but you know, it does overly rely on those standardized test scores, which is exactly how East Cleveland ended up in the state takeover in the first place under House Bill 70, which was all about the state report cards and the standardized test scores. And in your community, especially where you're saying these kids need sincere love as much as they need anything else, they also have a lot of other needs beyond academic needs, because it is a high poverty community.

Lillian Tolbert 24:02
Yes.

Katie Olmsted 24:02
What are some of the barriers that our lawmakers really need to be focusing on and not punishing people for their poverty?

Lillian Tolbert 24:09
Well, I think one of the biggest barriers is just coming here and actually seeing what East Cleveland is about. Because many people don't know what East Cleveland is about. We just were able to send 44 band members to Hawaii. They marched in the parade in Hawaii. They just got back this morning. Our community supported that effort. Those kids didn't need anything. They picked up a bag of luggage that had everything they needed, from their foot to the top of their heads. They got haircuts. They love these kids, and they will do anything that they can within their power. Come here and understand what the issues are so that you can address those barriers and those issues. Understand that there's not a major company here. There's not you know what I mean. They have to go out and the type of jobs that they have is during school hours or late at night, you know. So they're entrusting the teachers and the educators and the whole community, you know, in East Cleveland to look after their kids, you know. And they don't want strangers doing that. They don't trust strangers to do that because of these things that have happened. We can't, you know, you walk around and on every street, there's an abandoned building that they have to walk by every day. You know, they had to come in during COVID and they had to put Internet access because we didn't have it here. So they appreciate the things that people do for them. But you have to know what it is. You can't wave a magic wand and fix all the issues here in East Cleveland.

Katie Olmsted 25:46
295 is far from a magic wand.

Lillian Tolbert 25:49
Yes.

Katie Olmsted 25:49
And so - I mean, the the academic distress commission was kind of the opposite of a magic wand. Would you say it fixed anything?

Lillian Tolbert 25:58
No, it did not. I don't think it fixed anything. We're still in the same boat as far as Ohio state tests are concerned. Now, are our students making growth? Yes, they're making growth. They are making growth. You can look at that, and I know they don't do value added, but you can go on the report card and you can see where the growth spots are. They come to us and they leave us with a half year, a year's growth. So we are meeting their needs, and we're trying different things. Last year, we two years ago, we opened up a performing arts school. Look at the look at the ratings on those, those kids who started in third grade and now are in sixth grade, they have made tremendous growth with the materials and stuff that we're using. So we are making growth. We just we're just at a different starting point. And so allow us to start and do what we can and intervene and help us with interventions. Help us to intervene in these lives. Help us to make the school the community, the center of the community like it once was.

Katie Olmsted 27:00
So when it comes to Senate Bill 295, what is the thing you need the lawmakers who are currently considering this bill at the state house to truly understand?

Lillian Tolbert 27:09
I want them to truly understand that school is not a business, that these kids are not kids that you could just put on an assembly line and manufacture them. They have specific needs, and if you really want to help them, you need to come and find out what those needs are and address those needs. Help the parents understand, you know, what they could do to help their children. Taking away the people that they trust is not going to do it. Kids learn from teachers who love them, who they trust, who they have a relationship with, and East Cleveland is one big relationship. Come in here and help build homes so that these kids have homes that they can go in that are not, you know, infested with lead. Come and help in the tear down some of these empty houses, repair some of these streets. Bring - we don't even have a grocery store. We don't have a major chain grocery store in East Cleveland. There's plenty of space. Come and build that up so that this is a community and looks like the community that other children live in. Because guess what? Our kids deserve that too.

Katie Olmsted 28:21
And don't hand down these heavy handed state overreaching laws that hurt these kids.

Lillian Tolbert 28:27
Yes.

Katie Olmsted 28:28
Lillian Tolbert, thank you so so much for taking the time to help us understand the context of this whole thing.

Lillian Tolbert 28:35
And please come. Our doors are open. Tell them to come and visit. We'll roll out the red carpet for them.

Katie Olmsted 28:45
Our students need you to call your Ohio lawmakers right now. You need to send them emails and tell them why they have to block Senate Bill 295, for moving forward. There's an action alert on the OEA website to help you do that, and the link is in the show notes for this episode too. Next week, we are back on schedule with our regular podcast content, so we will be back to bringing you that much anticipated conversation about artificial intelligence in our classrooms - the pros, the cons, the opportunities, the red flags you need to watch out for. Join us for new episodes of this podcast every Thursday this season, because in Ohio, public Education Matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai