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
Welcome back to public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association. Every week here on this podcast, we try to lift up the voices of OEA members, some of the nearly 120,000 educators around the state who are represented by OEA. Today, I want to bring some other voices into the conversation too, voices like that of Brielle Shorter, a junior at Ohio State University who testified in front of the Ohio Senate Higher Education Committee on February 11.

Brielle Shorter 0:58
SB, one only protects one kind of speech, and that is the speech that upholds the status quo.

Katie Olmsted 1:02
Now listen to this voice, Michelle Huang, a high school student in Olentangy local schools who also testified

Michelle Huang 1:10
Ohio students deserve an education that actively encourages thought and not one that stifles it.

Katie Olmsted 1:16
These students are just two of the more than 850 Ohioans who testified in opposition to Senate Bill one earlier in February, either in hours of in person testimony or in written testimony submitted to the Senate Higher Education Committee, 850 plus people standing together to stand up against attacks on Higher Education and workers rights in Ohio under Senate Bill one, the reintroduced version of Senate Bill 83 from the last general assembly. You'll remember Senate Bill 83 was called the Ohio higher education Enhancement Act. Senate Bill one is being called the advance Ohio Higher Education Act by the same sponsor, Senator Jerry Serino. Most of us know it as the higher education destruction act, and despite huge opposition, it was pushed through and approved by the Ohio Senate with a vote of 21 to 11, with Republican senators Louis blessing and Tom Patton joining Democrats in opposing the bill on February 12, it now goes to the Ohio House to consider. So what are we talking about here? The legislation heavily restricts the teaching of so called controversial subjects, bans most diversity policies and programs, places entire departments, majors and courses at risk, bans meaningful tenure and more. It doles out top down unfunded mandates to take the place of policies that are best developed locally by faculty and administration in determining systems that work best for their campuses. It prohibits faculty and staff from striking and prohibits them from bargaining over things that directly impact their ability to shape the learning conditions their students need OEA Vice President Jeff Wensing addressed that workers rights piece when he had his turn to address the members of the Senate Higher Ed Committee a few weeks ago. Take a listen.

Jeff Wensing 3:10
I would like to take a moment to focus on the anti labor elements of the bill. OEA vehemently opposes the prohibition of evaluations, retrenchment and tenure as subjects of bargaining. These matters are essential pieces of the terms and conditions of employment that have been successfully negotiated with all involved parties and are a clear erosion of the rights of our educators at Ohio's public universities and colleges, institutions of higher education already have faculty evaluation systems in place. These systems allow faculty to have a voice in how they are evaluated, because they best understand the complexities of their work, which include teaching, research and service, fair and transparent, locally developed evaluation systems, rather than state mandated systems, ensure that faculty are assessed on meaningful criteria. Locally driven evaluation systems support quality education and long term institutional success. For these reasons, OEA is opposed to the mandates outlined in the bill regarding faculty evaluations and request that these provisions be removed from the bill. Additionally, the bill uses an excessively broad definition of retrenchment, the process for reduction in force. This definition will effectively allow academic programs and staff to be terminated for just about any reason, without warning, resulting in instability for students and faculty as an alternative, OEA recommends deference to the good faith efforts of each institution's president, board of trustees and faculty to reach consensus on these matters that best meet the interest of those involved. OEA opposes the proposal in Senate Bill one to eliminate the right to strike for employee of state institutions of higher education, the right to strike is a final dispute resolution process expressly authorized under Ohio's long standing public employee collective bargaining law. The purpose of the right to strike is to ensure hard working, dedicated public employees have a meaningful voice in negotiating fair compensation and working conditions that help them provide high quality services to Ohioans. Strikes are always a last resort. The actual occurrence of strikes is extremely rare due to the well balanced bargaining framework and dispute resolution structure in Ohio's collective bargaining law, for example, only one strike has occurred in the last decade at public institutions of higher education with employees represented by the OEA. Further, Ohio law has strict limitations on how and when a strike can be authorized. OEA requests this provision be removed from the bill. In summary, college students deserve to be respected as adults, they should be offered a wealth of learning opportunities and not sheltered from challenging or different ideas. In closing, OEA opposes Senate Bill one as it will cause harm to higher education students, colleges and universities and Ohio's workforce and economy. This concludes my testimony, testimony, and I'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Very good Mr. Wensing, thank you for your testimony. Are there any questions for this witness now?

Katie Olmsted 6:23
OEA's opposition testimony that you heard, there is just one small piece of the many, many problems with Senate Bill, one that were laid out during that committee hearing over and over again by faculty, students, organized labor leaders, parents and concerned citizens. Again, we're talking about more than 850 people testifying against this bill, compared to just 10 who submitted testimony in favor of it. The president of the Columbus State Education Association really laid out the full case against Senate Bill one in the opposition testimony he submitted to the Senate Committee. He read some of that testimony out loud for us so you could hear it here on this podcast.

Adam Keller 7:04
Hello my name is Adam Keller. I am the president of the Columbus State Education Association, which represents over 350 full time faculty at Columbus State Community College. I find it alarming that this proposed Senate Bill one would make it illegal for college faculty to go on strike and also add a variety of restrictions to what issues are subject to collective bargaining. I mean, it is critically important for faculty and administration to work together to address all the issues and solve problems that an institution may face provide the best possible learning environment for the students. This is simply not attainable unless both parties are at the table with an spirit to achieve a consensus and to operate with a modicum of transparency. The ability for a faculty union to strike is paramount in order for faculty to be able to protect academic freedom, prevent censorship, ensure that they are afforded a due process when necessary, improving the overall working conditions for the faculty, and also just to protect quality education. Most of all, competitive wages benefits and good working conditions are necessary if you're going to attract highly qualified faculty and ultimately ensure the best education for the students and really, perhaps more importantly, a faculty strike in the very rare instances it's happened in Ohio proves to be the most efficient diuretic when an institution was suffering from gross mismanagement and a toxic work environment. I mean, I guess the sponsors of the bill prefer a prolonged, passive, aggressive labor dispute in such instances, which are far more disruptive and over a much longer period of time to the student learning environment in general. Perhaps the authors of this bill also prefer if faculty no longer engage in voluntary service at the college, such as administrative functions, program support at Columbus State faculty administration collaborate on a daily basis, and they're partnering to serve the students and the community by toppling collective bargaining rights, it simply invites a skewed dynamic that would eliminate the administration's need to achieve a consensus, operate with transparency, and ultimately seek out mutual agreement and understanding and how to Adjust the workforce to address any emergent needs. All the work that we do together and the collaboration that that we do in our workplace is really intended to minimize the risk to the institution and also to the workforce, ultimately to the students, and that is under this bill, could be rendered moot on any given day when and if a board decides to just operate unilaterally and change how those risks are mitigated without any attempt to achieve a consensus. I mean, isn't it more healthier and more efficient and just ultimately mutually respectful, if a faculty and the institutional leadership have a transparent agreement and then they come together when it needs to be modified? Given how the funding for higher ed continues to wane, while the costs of doing business continue to increase, the erosion of collective bargaining is just going to further disenchant faculty from serving in the public sector. That's going to drive them into more profitable endeavors. And in case you didn't know, highly qualified faculty do not work for a profitable, profitable paycheck in the public sector, the state should be respectful of their service. This is Ohio, not some proving ground for national level political interest. Can only ask that Ohio is not added to the list of states that have, quote, defeated collective bargaining so that we can just join the ranks of states like Utah, where higher ed is not a major economic driver for their state. In the end, we're public servants. We do the work because we believe in the work we do, particularly at a community college. We strive every day to meet our students where they are, which means we work hard and continuously to learn about where they came from, what challenges they need to overcome in order to become part of the Ohio workforce. We continuously do more and more every day, every semester, to provide our students with a career path and also the resources and knowledge and the skills required to be successful, yet we find ourselves doing it with less and less funding and support from our state. The requirements and restrictions put forth in this bill will take dollars away from our mission and add time to degree completion for in demand careers such as nursing and health care. I mean requiring the BSN program, to now add an American civics history economics course, will mean students will be required to take an additional semester to graduate compared to their current plan. There's simply no room in our programs for the state to inflate the number of credit hours required for graduation. Our administration and faculty have a joint commitment to make our community or to provide our community with firefighters, police officers, teachers, health workers, manufacturing professionals, and frankly, this bill is doing nothing to help with that. But this bill does aim to add millions of dollars of bureaucracy, administrative bloat, and to do so at our own expense in an already severely underfunded enterprise, we had already been experiencing enrollment declines during the pandemic. This past couple years, we've shown improvements. We've returned and exceeded enrollment compared to pre pandemic levels, and now this bill comes along that's going to do nothing to help with recruiting, retaining or preparing students. Companies and businesses in Ohio know that a diverse, diverse workforce, armed with the soft skills to operate in a multicultural environment is profitable. So how long are they going to trust in a state like Ohio to provide that profitable landscape if the state legislature continues to overreach into higher ed by imposing bans and restrictions and requirements that are simply blind to the needs of the state institutions and the businesses and workforce that they serve overall, the Columbus State Education Association urges you to consider the detrimental impact the Senate Bill one would have on our students, our faculty and our institutions as a whole. We need legislation addressing the cost of college and student debt, declining full time faculty ratios and support for student retention. We need the state to support a collaborative learning environment among students and faculty and administrators. Instead, we have this bill, which is the worst attack on organized labor since Senate Bill five, which I may remind you, was repealed by an overwhelming majority of Ohio voters. We urge you to support higher education and not commandeer it in the name of partisan politics.

Katie Olmsted 13:20
You can find a link to read Adam Keller's full testimony, and another one to watch the full Senate committee hearing in the show notes for this episode. More importantly, you can find the link to an action alert to help you connect with your representative in the Ohio House, so you can tell them they need to oppose this extremely dangerous, damaging bill, make sure you subscribe to public education matters wherever you get your podcast, so you don't miss a conversation in the future about the big issues facing public education in our state. New episodes drop every Thursday this season and next week. We're talking about how music education impacts students lives far beyond the classroom. Make sure you tune in, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai