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 week's edition of Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and its nearly 120,000 members who work in public schools across the state. Overseeing the work of a lot of those members is the Ohio State Board of Education. You'll remember, the legislature recently made some changes to the traditional role of the State Board of Education and folded some of their previous duties into the work of the newly formed Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, but the 19 members of the State Board of Education still play a critical role in Ohio's education landscape and in the professional lives of educators. They handle everything from licensure and professional conduct issues to educator evaluation systems, local professional development committees, the Resident Educator program and more and ohioea and Ohio Education Association members who serve on the OEA Fund screening and endorsement committees have made several recommendations about who they think would be best for the State Board of Education seats that are up for election this fall. One of those recommended candidates is Rhonda Johnson, who is running to represent District Seven on the State Board of Education. She's an OEA-Retired member, a former president of the Columbus Education Association, and as she tells us here, ready to do the work on the State Board of Education. Let's listen.

Katie Olmsted 2:03
Rhonda Johnson, State Board of Education District 7 candidate, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the podcast to help us understand who you are and why you are a good person to fill that role. Let's start with the backstory on this one. Talk to me a little bit about what people should know about you as a human

Rhonda Johnson 2:25
Well, I am a retired teacher. That is first, and I have lived in Columbus most of my life. I grew up in the south during the era of segregation, and so for the first eight years of my schooling, not counting kindergarten, I attended segregated schools, and I went on to graduate from high school and graduated from an HBCU, Alabama A&M University, which is also the school my grandmother graduated from, and she was also a teacher. She taught elementary school. I have a sister who is a retired teacher. So education is in our DNA, so I'd like to say it's a family business. And, you know, we've always been also advocates for teaching. I remember my grandmother being a member of the American Teachers Association, and that was because in the south the Black teachers were not allowed to join the NEA, and so a merger did not take place, I believe, until, like, the late 60s, maybe. So I remember her being an advocate and attending her meetings. I didn't really understand all of what was going on. She was also it was also a very important to her to vote in elections, which was not easy. During that time, she had to pay a poll tax. The polling place was at the police department, but she always took her grandchildren with her, so we started to understand the importance of voting in elections. And so when I became of age to vote, I have voted in every election, and so has my sister. So all of that impressed me to become a teacher and to become a teacher leader. One of the first things she told me to do was join the union. She was a teacher in Alabama, where there weren't any unions, and she said, the first thing you do is join the union, which I did. And so I was an OEA member from the very first day of teaching. I still have my form that I filled out back in 1978. I've always been that person in the school building who teachers would come to so that I could help them fix things, whatever the fix was, you know, it. May have been talking to an administrator, or calling the CEA president at the time, who was John Grossman. And I think because I called the President so much that he said, Hey, you want to be on the bargaining team. And so I became active, and it went from bargaining team to committee chairs to the executive committee, and then vice president and president over time, and that was 36 years.

Katie Olmsted 5:31
10 of those years, you were the Columbus Education Association president, so certainly have a lot of experience in leadership, in that educational setting, but also just working with different personalities. That after you retired, you stayed in education. What did you end up doing?

Rhonda Johnson 5:53
I stayed in education. You know, it's hard for teachers to retire, and especially union leaders to just do nothing. And so the mayor at the time, Michael Coleman, asked me to be the Director of Education for the City of Columbus, and so I did that work for five years. So I do have some executive experience as well. I was able to manage a budget of $6.5 million and our main focus was on providing high quality pre-K to children in the city of Columbus.

Katie Olmsted 6:28
What a difference having high quality early childhood education really makes. I mean, it makes a huge difference in student outcomes, doesn't it?

Rhonda Johnson 6:36
It makes a huge difference in student outcomes. I mean, it changes everything for them. You know, we have data that show that if children attend high quality pre-K, they're going to be successful in kindergarten and they're going to be successful in life. We have lots of studies that even show the how successful children are and how they're not part of the justice system just by attending high quality pre K. You may not think that far out, but we have studies that show that these kids remain successful throughout their lives.

Katie Olmsted 7:15
And I think part of being a strong leader in the education sphere is being able to look down the road if we do this now, what happens then? So in your role, if you're elected to the State Board of Education, what do we have to do now to be successful down the road?

Rhonda Johnson 7:31
Well, one of the issues we have right now is we don't have enough teachers in classrooms. I went to a graduation at my former university. One of my cousins graduated, and I looked in the program and there were four elementary education majors, and that just really bothered me. When I was in school, there probably were 400 education majors who graduated. So my concern is, what do we do to prepare for the future? And it's here right now. And I think we look at what do I do today, but what we need to look at is, what do we do down the road? Do we start at the middle school with encouraging children to become educators. I think we should at least then, when you ask young children, what do you want to be when you grow up? A police officer? I want to be a firefighter. I want to be a professional football player, and now it might be well, I want to be a doctor, or I want to work in a STEM field, but what about education? I don't think we do enough to encourage children to be teachers, and so we need to. One of the things we I think we need to do, is to start early on that work, but not expect an outcome tomorrow. This is not a tomorrow fix. This is a fix down the road, but still we have to do that work. And I think too, that if we do that work now, we can solve for some of the issues that we have around diversity and inclusion in our teaching workforce. We cannot wait until people have graduated from high school and then talk about, Hey, you want to be a teacher? We have scholarship programs for people in our community. Well, that work has to start very early.

Katie Olmsted 9:29
Part of that work, I'm sure, has to be making sure that education is a attractive career and a sustainable career. It's one thing to have a passion for education, but it has to be an actual career option for people is there, are there things you can do as an education leader to help make those conditions reality?

Rhonda Johnson 9:50
Well, as a CEA leader, we were probably one of the first locals to negotiate $40,000 pay. And this was many, many years ago, for our teachers. Money does matter, and we pay for what we value. We should not expect teachers to live in genteel poverty. We have to pay wages that are attractive. We have to have working conditions that are attractive. And throughout my career, we have, you know, supported teachers in that work. But it can't be just the unions. We all have to stack hands, whether that's the business community, our elected leaders, our legislators and say, we're going to solve for this problem. We're going to make it so people want to come to Ohio to work. I mean, it's very attractive to come here and open businesses. It should also be attractive to come to the state of Ohio to be a teacher.

Katie Olmsted 10:58
What is the State Board of Education's role in setting the conditions in our schools? I know that things have changed in recent years. A lot of what was State Board of Education business has been spun out into the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. But what can you affect on the State Board of Education?

Rhonda Johnson 11:19
I think what we can affect is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. You're right. A lot of the work has spun off, but the work that remains is very important. If we have the single most important factor of success in the classroom is the quality of the teacher in the classroom, and we can do that by supporting teachers in their growth, beginning from induction and then throughout their whole careers. We have to have high quality professional development. Teachers have to have access to higher education no matter where they live. You know, maybe one of the good things about the pandemic was we found out we can do work, and it doesn't have to be sitting in a classroom on a university campus. That work can take place online, over zoom or in alternate settings in your own school district, that work is very important. The other thing too is certifications and licensure have to be the same across the teaching workforce. We can't have a standard for a charter school, a private school, and a different standard for public schools. Having worked in an urban district, I know that the children move back and forth from district to district, from setting to setting, and the education and the quality of the teacher that is in front of that student needs to be the same the same good across areas, and that is certainly not the case, and I think that's something that we can work on. I don't think any teacher goes in the classroom to say, I want to be a bad teacher and I don't want to have support. Everybody needs to have support, and I think the state board can be a leader in providing that support to teachers in classrooms.

Katie Olmsted 13:23
Very important work for the State Board of Education to do. But why do you want to do it? What makes you the perfect person for that job?

Rhonda Johnson 13:30
Well, we have done it. We have had in Columbus and in central Ohio. We have had relationships with the Ohio State University and other universities in central Ohio, where we provide an opportunity for teachers to get to go to college and to get credit and in settings in their own school systems. And so we were, we've been able to be leaders at providing that type of professional development. So I have the experience, and I know how these things work. You know, often times we have mandates, we have these great ideas about what we need to do, but we don't know how I've actually been there. I know how things operationalize. And so I think I can do that because I have had the experience and I have done that work. I've supported that work, and let me say, and that is, along with also OEA leaders in central Ohio, we have been on the same teams, on fee waiver committees, working with Ohio State University, Capital, Ohio Dominican and so forth.

Katie Olmsted 14:43
What do you think your grandma would say about your candidacy and and your your trajectory here, going from when she took you to the polls in those conditions to now you are running for an elected position? Your name is going to be on that ballot.

Rhonda Johnson 15:02
I think she would be very proud, but maybe not surprised. I think it was and just an expectation that you it's your job to do this work, and so you should. She would be proud that I am continuing her legacy, but I don't think she would be surprised, but she would be very happy that I did.

Katie Olmsted 15:26
And I'm sure anybody who knows you would not be surprised either. Rhonda Johnson, District 7 State Board of Education candidate, OEA-Retired member, former CEA President, thank you for joining us.

Rhonda Johnson 15:40
Oh, thank you. Katie.

Katie Olmsted 15:47
Rhonda Johnson is one of several candidates who will be on the ballot this fall that we are hearing from in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Make sure you subscribe to Public Education Matters wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any of these conversations with our potential leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, or any of the other conversations we're having with other educators about the big education issues of our day. Remember, new episodes of this podcast drop every Thursday this season, so we'll see you back here again next week, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai