Public Education Matters

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

Jeff Wensing 0:15
This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:26
Thanks for joining us for Public Education Matters, the first episode of Public Education Matters in our brand new season six. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association, which means I have the enormous privilege of helping to lift up the voices of nearly 120,000 public school educators who make up the OEA in communities across our state. Speaking of educator voices, longtime listeners to this podcast may have noticed a new voice in the intro that is Jeff Wensing, high school math teacher from Parma, OEA Vice President for the last six years, and now the new Ohio Education Association President. Jeff took office July 15th, a few weeks after the new state budget was passed by the Ohio General Assembly, and as we would come to see, a few weeks before, the Ohio House would come back to try to override the governor's vetoes of some of the most harmful property tax provisions our lawmakers tried to put in that budget to say Jeff has been busy is probably a bit mild. Lucky for us, he was able to find some time in his schedule a couple weeks ago to sit down and share his thoughts about where things stand for our public schools and what we need to do to stand up to the ongoing attacks on public education. Take a listen.

Katie Olmsted 2:01
Jeff Wensing, Ohio Education Association President, thank you for sitting down with us today. You've been president, I'm talking to you in mid August, so it's been about a month now. How has it been going?

Jeff Wensing 2:14
Well, first of all, thank you, Katie, for having me on your award winning podcast. You deserve it. It has been going really well, and the reason it has been going so well is because I've had the opportunity to speak with so many educators across the state of Ohio, whether it be our board members, or whether I'm out visiting members in our local associations at back to school events, new teacher orientation. It's just an exciting time sitting down and basically listening to our members and about their daily lives in their work sites.

Katie Olmsted 2:51
What are they telling you?

Jeff Wensing 2:52
They're telling me that they're excited to get back to school. For sure. They are very tan. They look really rested. They look fabulous. They're ready to go.

Katie Olmsted 3:02
And since this is an audio only podcast, I also looked tan and well rested.

Jeff Wensing 3:06
Oh my gosh, you sure do! You look fabulous!

Katie Olmsted 3:09
Nobody will know.

Jeff Wensing 3:10
No!

Katie Olmsted 3:11
okay!

Jeff Wensing 3:12
But our members are looking good. They feel good. They're excited about the new school year. Unfortunately, there are also mentioning about some of the attacks on public education. They're concerned about funding, they're concerned about the State Board of Education. They're also concerned about STRS and how the legislature has changed the makeup of that board as well.

Katie Olmsted 3:40
I mean, I'm so glad you brought that all up, because we have a lot to get up to speed on. When school ended, things were one way. And then that state budget was passed and and there was the veto override vote. What are some of the highlights of what came out of that state budget that educators really need to know as we start this new school year?

Jeff Wensing 3:59
Well, I believe the low light that everyone needs to be aware of is that this budget under funds public education over the next two years by nearly $2.75 billion. While the state budget maintained the funding formula that was being used in the Fair School Funding Plan over the last four years, they are using really bad numbers. I'm a math teacher by trade. I know that a formula is only as good as the numbers you plug into it. And the numbers they're plugging into this formula are from 2021-2022 school year. So when you plug those numbers in, you get the costs, or the expenses, what it costs to run a school system five years ago, not right now, in 25-26.

Katie Olmsted 4:51
And I don't know if anybody remembers this, but there's been quite a bit of inflation over the last five years.

Jeff Wensing 4:56
Say what??

Katie Olmsted 4:57
I know it's crazy. But in case they didn't notice, there has been quite a bit of inflation, and the end result is that our public schools are underfunded.

Jeff Wensing 5:07
So when you look at the state share that they are contributing to public education, it's the lowest state share in decades, four decades. So the state share is around 32% for public education. There are roughly 135 to 140 school systems that are actually losing money this year that they normally have been counting on from the state, and then next year, that number just increases. It goes up to around 150 or so school systems that again, will be losing money that they were depending on to run their schools for the school year.

Katie Olmsted 6:24
And what's the end result for students when that happens?

Jeff Wensing 6:27
The end result is students suffer. Communities suffer. They suffer because class sizes go up, the number of electives go down, just opportunities for students are reduced. It's not good for parents. It's not good for students. It's not good for communities. Our students need more resources, not less.

Katie Olmsted 6:48
Well, some students are getting more resources. I noticed that voucher funding, it remains a priority for a lot of these legislators. What happened with that?

Jeff Wensing 6:59
Well, unfortunately, Katie funding for private school vouchers is around $1 billion a year. Again, I will emphasize, not only $1 billion per year approximately, but this is unaccounted for money. All public schools will account for every single penny. Not only is the state giving a billion dollars to EdChoice vouchers, there's no accountability involved either.

Katie Olmsted 7:27
And at the same time, they were also trying to put all those property tax measures in there to make it just really handcuff the school districts on ways that they could make up for those gaps that they're shoving into the EdChoice vouchers, rather than our public schools. When you heard that they were coming back, the Ohio House came back to do the veto override, because the Governor did take most of the harmful ones out, what did you think?

Jeff Wensing 7:54
Well, with this legislature, I'm never really surprised by much and how aggressive the attack on public education is or can be. I was pleased that they were only able to override one item out of the three that they were considering, which means that they didn't have the votes to override the 40% cap on school districts, on their budgets, and they weren't able to override the components that go into the 20 mil floor for communities.

Katie Olmsted 8:29
I think a large part of that is also a credit to OEA members who it's summer break, but they were not taking a break. They were reaching out to their legislators. They were making the phone calls because we know emails really aren't landing like they used to. What did you think when you saw that outpouring of educators standing up to say, "Oh no, you don't"?

Jeff Wensing 8:50
So proud of them, right? Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself. You have to say, enough is enough. And when our educators flooded their legislators with calls, with notes, with going down and tracking them in their districts. Where are you? And letting their legislator know that the continued attacks on funding for public education need to end and that they need to let the governor's vetoes stand.

Katie Olmsted 9:20
And that's really just the beginning of what is probably going to be needed ahead. We know the public education attacks are really ramping up, both at the state level and the federal level, where the Supreme Court has now sort of given the go ahead for them to begin gutting the department and going ahead with all of those mass layoffs, essentially making it so that the programs can't be carried out in that way. When you're talking to educators with all these back to school things, what's your real takeaway that you're trying to leave them with about their power in those conversations?

Jeff Wensing 9:54
I'm trying to leave the thought or the actual fact with our educators that their communities support them. Our educators have some of the highest approval ratings around. Higher than any politician, okay, Katie? Higher than any politician. Their approval ratings are in the upper 80s. Okay, 80% approaching 90% that's pretty powerful. It's pretty powerful when our educators know that their communities support them and their work, so when I leave, I let them know that they are valued by their community and their communities respect what they have to think so when I'm going around and listening to members and talking with members, I know our narrative has to focus on their message. They have so many great stories to share about student success in their classrooms or their work sites, or when they're driving students to school or when they're serving them lunch in cafeteria, in the cafeteria, our educators make connections with kids from the time they pick them up to the time they drop them off in every single role that our educators have in schools. So their stories need to be our narrative. I'm tired of legislators spinning this narrative that public schools aren't working. That is 100% wrong. Our public schools do such good work for students. Those are the stories that we're going to elevate, and we're going to craft our narrative to lift up how great public education is, and we're not going to allow certain legislators to bring us down.

Katie Olmsted 11:36
How important is it that educators feel the power of their stories, that they know that they're going to be able to make a difference when they share that?

Jeff Wensing 11:44
I plan on having as many conversations as I can with our educators, and so is our board of directors. I've committed our board of directors to having one on one conversations with the leaders that they represent across the state. This is a time for Ohio educators to stand up with their message, and their message basically is around their students and their communities about how wonderful public education is and how we support families and students in the four corners of Ohio.

Katie Olmsted 12:18
And again, all of this is coming at a time when we're not getting that support from the state. Going back to what was in that state budget, and you mentioned it briefly, STRS, State Board of Education, if people weren't paying attention over the summer, what happened with that?

Jeff Wensing 12:31
Well, again, some of our legislators, they're taking away educator voice. I n a time where the Ohio Education Association wants to amplify the voice of educators, legislators want to silence it. So at the STRS board, the current makeup of the board is 11 members. Seven out of the 11 are either active or retired educators that made up the majority of that board. Well, that's no longer going to be the case. The legislature, at one o'clock in the morning during budget reconciliation, put a piece in the in the budget that said that they are now going to reduce the number of elected members, whether it be active or retired, to three. They're going from seven to three and the number of appointed members from the governor from certain seats on the legislature is going from four to eight. So you'll still have an 11 member or a board. You will still have an 11 member board, eventually, eight appointed and three elected educators, instead of the current makeup of seven elected educators versus four appointments from politicians.

Katie Olmsted 13:49
That doesn't even touch on what happened with the state board.

Jeff Wensing 13:52
It certainly does not Katie, because at the state board level, it totally eliminates all elected members of the State Board. The state board currently has 11 seats that are elected through districts. Three senate districts make up one seat on the board of education. So all of those are going to be eliminated, and there will be five appointed members to the State Board of Education, again by politicians.

Katie Olmsted 14:22
So these are, these are people we didn't have a choice about who is there presumably a lot of non educators making decisions about educator licensure, about a lot of things that affect educators every single day. Are you frustrated? Are you angry? I am.

Jeff Wensing 14:38
Of course, I'm frustrated and angry. I'm frustrated and angry for our members, because our members are the experts in their field. Our members know what they're doing. As I said, their approval ratings off the chart, and for some of these legislators to think that a state board of education is better by appointing members who may not have any experience in education, that that's better than having elected educators? A lot of them, you know, have been retired educators for a while. They know from all their experiences that they bring they know what's best for students because they've lived it. That's our life. That's our voice. And again, I'll say certain politicians are interested in silencing the voice of educators, and these two instances with the STRS board and the State Board of Education are perfect examples of that.

Katie Olmsted 15:34
But if it's politicians who are doing these dastardly deeds, if we have politicians who actually represent the will of the people and not just their own power, presumably these are things that can be reversed and fixed and improved upon, right? So redistricting -

Jeff Wensing 15:55
Absolutely, yeah,

Katie Olmsted 15:56
I mean, we're talking right now Ohio's congressional redistricting is getting underway, but when it comes to fair maps, that is a huge public education issue.

Jeff Wensing 16:07
Absolutely, you're talking about the redrawing of the congressional maps. Congressional maps will send your representative to Washington, DC, to the House of Representatives, to represent their constituency.

Katie Olmsted 16:21
And remember, only Congress can vote whether to actually close the US Department of Education. What that looks like by the time they're having that vote based on the Supreme Court decisions, that's that's a whole another story, but Congress is making a lot of big decisions here.

Jeff Wensing 16:37
Oh, for sure. And you've seen what's going on in Texas. We've seen other states react to that, whether it's California or other states, saying, well, now we're going to have to do something. Illinois has also weighed in, like if Texas forces the hand of other states to redistrict to try to maintain balance. We certainly are concerned about what's happening in Ohio. The last round of congressional map drawing went to the Ohio Supreme Court, and it went there quite a few times until they were able to settle on a map. So we are 100% against gerrymandering, and at the same time, we are 100% for maps that are drawn fairly so the people of Ohio can pick their legislators, and not the other way around, where the legislators pick their voters.

Katie Olmsted 17:34
And again, that comes down to people actually standing up, to educators standing up and making their voices heard about what Ohio needs. And educators have a powerful voice. When you're talking to educators around the state, do they realize the power they have?

Jeff Wensing 17:53
I'm not quite sure about that, because I think at the heart of every educator, they're concerned about their students, right? They're concerned what's going on in their classroom. They're concerned about what's going on in the hallway. They're concerned about what's going on in the cafeteria, and making connections with students and doing the best job they can for their students. Conversely, they kind of forget about the politics part. And the politics part is that, unfortunately, just about everything educators do at their work sites is determined by a politician who probably knows nothing about public education. So 2026, I have been talking about that. It's a little bit down the road, but we need to start thinking about 2026, and electing pro public education candidates from both parties. It's our job. OEA's job. It's our educators job. Not only is it their job to continue to reach out to legislators, we now have to look for great candidates, great pro public education candidates from both sides of the aisle, regardless, because we need legislators down here in Columbus, in the state house, in the Ohio Senate, that represent us, that represents educators and the interest of public education. Because, you know, Katie, almost 90% of students in Ohio go to public school, 90% and nearly 95% of students with disabilities attend public schools. We welcome everyone. We open our arms, open our doors, and welcome all students and let them know that they are safe here and they will be well taken care of and educated at their great public school.

Katie Olmsted 19:52
That's why school board matters, also, right?

Jeff Wensing 19:55
For sure, and this is a big year for school board. Odd years, school board races.

Katie Olmsted 20:00
Do not sleep on those school board races.

Jeff Wensing 20:02
Absolutely not. If you think you have a couple of or even one wackadoo that doesn't support public education on your school board. This is your opportunity to place someone on your local school board that supports public education and the work your educators are doing in your community.

Katie Olmsted 20:21
We've talked a lot about the politics, because, as you said, I mean, it's inherently political, because the politicians are making these, these decisions. One thing I really want to talk about, though, is what's happening in the local association level, just just the power of educators to shape learning conditions for their students?

Jeff Wensing 20:42
Well, we are a collective bargaining state. Don't ever get caught up in the idea the only thing that educators are bargaining for our salary and benefits. That's not true. Educators' working conditions are their students learning conditions. So you've seen some of the great contract bargains that have gone on over the last several years. Right here in Columbus, the Columbus Education Association had a three day work stoppage. They had a three day strike because they were bargaining for the schools their students deserve. They deserve a well heated building in the winter. They deserve a cooler building when it's really hot out. They don't deserve a roof that is leaking. So they were advocating for great buildings for not only proper heating and cooling, but just a safe space for their students to learn.

Katie Olmsted 21:39
When it comes to what we're again, I'm coming back to these conversations you're having these back to school, new teachers, new educators, new members. Do you think they recognize their power to make those changes?

Jeff Wensing 21:55
I don't know if they recognize it. Honestly, Katie, I don't know if they recognize it yet. They're new to their profession.

Katie Olmsted 22:01
They will

Jeff Wensing 22:02
I hope they will, because I'm talking about it every chance I get about just as I've mentioned that all of the things going on in their classrooms are determined by politicians nearly. But the people that are starting especially those that are new to the profession and new to a school district, again, they're interested in the students that are coming through the doors in the next couple of days. They're interested in crafting great lessons. They're interested in making sure their students feel welcome. They're interested in getting to know their students and their families, because that's what we do. Research says you've got to make connections in order to educate. I think we do it just because we love it. Because I've been saying all across the state at these new teacher events, is like, hey, you've got to number one, you've got to like kids, and you got to like being around kids to do this job. Because sometimes, you know, kids are really fun to be around, and sometimes they're a little, you know, challenging to be around, but you've generally the bottom line is, you gotta like kids. You gotta like having fun with kids. You gotta like connecting with kids in order to be an outstanding educator.

Katie Olmsted 23:14
In your time in the classroom. High School, math teacher. How were you always feeling when it came to back to school time?

Jeff Wensing 23:21
Back to school. Time was always a little, you know,

Katie Olmsted 23:25
bittersweet?

Jeff Wensing 23:25
Oh, bittersweet. That's a great word - Back to school time is always bittersweet. You like having your time in the summer. You like hanging out with your family, your friends, relatives, but also, summer was a time to make sure you're caught up on your PD, to make sure that you're getting your credits, to make sure you get your license renewed. Educators probably have a misconception by the public that they're just at the pool for the 10 weeks that they're off, but really they're working to get better as an educator by taking those classes. But at the same time, as you mentioned, with the bitter, there is a little sweet, right? There's they're happy to be back. They're ready to get back to their jobs. They're ready to engage with students, because at the core, that's what they do. That's what they do.

Katie Olmsted 24:16
Jeff Wensing, thank you for what you do for Ohio students, for Ohio's educators for public education in the state. We have a lot of work to do ahead, but we are stronger together.

Jeff Wensing 24:27
Thank you, Katie. I look forward to coming back. You know why I look forward to coming back? Because I want to tell you about the great work that our educators are doing across Ohio, and they better be on the lookout for me, because I'm going to be out there.

Katie Olmsted 24:40
Thanks, Jeff.

Katie Olmsted 24:44
I can't wait to help tell you about the great work Ohio's public educators are doing either and that's just what we plan to do in season six of this podcast. We already have a lot of great episodes in the works that you will definitely want to hear, everything from practical tools and tips to help manage challenging classroom behavior, to a deeper dive into some of the challenges Ohio's rural schools face and everything in between. New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday this school year. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on your favorite listening platform so you don't miss a thing, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai