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 this episode of Public Education Matters. I'm your host, Katie Olmsted and I have the privilege of working in the communications department for the Ohio Education Association to help lift up the voices of the nearly 120,000 public school educators OEA represents around the state. Educators have powerful voices, and when they use those voices outside the classroom in elected leadership positions, they can do incredible things for the students they serve and for the communities they care so much about. Longtime listeners to this podcast know that is not a new message from me. We have had several guests on the podcast over the last six seasons who are educators that are either running for elected office or who are already serving as elected leaders making choices that impact their students, families and communities every day, as we've discussed in those previous episodes, educators belong in these elected positions on school boards, city councils in the State House, of course, as a reminder, educators can't run for school board in the district where they work, but as the guest on this episode shows us serving on City Council can also make a big difference for everyone in their school and beyond. We actually talked to David Grimes on the podcast a couple seasons ago when he was first running for Westerville City Council. We got to sit down with him again in mid January of this year to catch up and to see how things were going in his first few weeks as Westerville's new mayor. Take a listen.

David Grimes 2:01
So my name is David Grimes. I am a seventh grade science teacher in Westerville City Schools. This is my 11th year, and I'm also the secretary of the Westerville Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 2:16
And you are the newly appointed mayor of Westerville. Is that right?

David Grimes 2:21
I am, yeah.

Katie Olmsted 2:22
How did we get here?

David Grimes 2:24
How did we get here? Well, in 2023, I ran for Westerville City Council. You had me on the podcast here to talk about running, and I. Yes, and I was, I was elected that November, and so I've since served two years, and then most recently, January of this year, after more council elections happened, we had our organizational meeting. My peers elected me to be mayor of the city of Westerville. In Westerville, it's more ceremonial, so it has all the same abilities as a council member. But then I also get to do proclamations. I'm told I can do weddings. I have to figure out how that works. And then I appoint the magistrate that sits over mayors court, but our city manager runs the city so I can still teach my seventh graders.

Katie Olmsted 3:22
So talk to me about that. Yeah, as a city council member and now as the mayor, I'd love to hear how you balance that.

David Grimes 3:32
Well, I'm always working on how to balance that. So it's a full time job, right, to teach seventh grade science and work with my seventh graders, and then I'm also the secretary of Westerville EA, and then the mayoral duties. So it's a lot of balancing my life runs on Google Calendar, as you know, from just scheduling this podcast and the flexibility, but luckily, we have a whole team. So, you know, there's business ribbon cuttings and stuff or things that happen during the school day where I can't just, like, leave third period and go cut the ribbon for that new ice cream shop. So a lot of it's delegated to my peers who have jobs that can actually go, they can leave the office and go do that and show up for the city. And the cool thing, our Vice Mayor is also an educator, Kelley Stocker, and she teaches in the same district as me. She's just one school over at Westerville South. She gets out a little earlier, so sometimes she can make those like 334 ribbon cuttings, where I'm still leaving school. So it's just a lot of a lot of teamwork and covering for each other, just like we do in the classroom all the time.

Katie Olmsted 4:50
And I want to talk more about Kelley Stocker and what you told her about running, presumably, but first I actually want to stay back in the classroom. Um, how do your seventh graders react when they before, when they found out you're on city council, and now they're like, oh, instead of Mr. Grimes, it's Mayor Grimes is teaching our class today.

David Grimes 5:11
Yeah, yeah, it was kind of cool. So they all knew I was on city council, because, you know, the first day of school you give, like, the little intro about me. And the cool thing is, a lot of them see me out in the community. So, you know, I live, teach and work, I guess, teach and work, but do the other work, all within a couple miles of school. So most of them know that I'm out doing that stuff outside of school. But when, when I was elected to it a couple Tuesdays ago, the next Wednesday, a lot of students like their family, saw on social media that I had gotten the position. A handful of kids thought that it was my last week of school. I had some peer some colleagues, come up and ask when my last day was. I was like, no, no, it's just, I'm just a little bit busier than before. But it was pretty cool to have a handful of kids about 15. Like, as soon as they walked into school, they lined up and came and shook my hand. I'm fortunate to teach in a school building that's rather small, and I teach a semester long course. So by the time student, well, actually, by this semester, I know every seventh grader, and I know all the eighth graders because I had them last year. So it's pretty cool to know two-thirds of the building, and for some of the kids that I don't get to interact with as often, to come up and just like, congratulate me. And then I just told, you know, it's still just Mr. Grimes, Mayor. We can leave. We can leave Mayor out. They also made me a really cool banner. So there was a they covered a huge wall outside my room and just said, Congratulations. And then a lot of the kids came up and signed it throughout the day. So that was really cool.

Katie Olmsted 7:02
What does it mean to you to have your students see you in this role, maybe as a role model, or just somebody who's super involved in the community? What does that mean to you?

David Grimes 7:15
It's really important to me, because, you know, first and foremost, they just, they see me as just Mr. Grimes, their teacher, and so to to know and to hear the other things that I do outside of school, it just shows them that they can do that too. Not that, not that being an educator is not insignificant, but it's more down to earth or something they're they're used to interacting with. And so to realize, oh, an elected official, it's just another person. It's it's somebody that's approachable. They can do it too, and it seems attainable because they just, you know, like I said, when they see me out in the community, oh, there's just Mr. Grimes doing that other thing. I can do that too pretty soon.

Katie Olmsted 7:56
And it shows that they can also make a difference in their community. We talked a little bit about this when you were first running a few years ago. But why? Why do you do this?

David Grimes 8:09
Well, you know, educators know best. So no, I don't have the answers for nearly anything, but we do get a lot of training with our students and just our everyday atmosphere of work, listening, collaborating, adjusting and meeting the needs of who you're working with, right? And before I ran, my constituents were my students, the people in my classroom. And now that's just expanded. It works very similarly. Everybody comes to class with different needs. Everybody lives in the community with different needs, and figuring out how you're going to work with your team to meet those needs, it translates really well.

Katie Olmsted 8:53
What's it been like in those first couple years in office for you? And I guess, what have you been most proud of in that time.

David Grimes 9:02
Yeah, so, because I didn't have the position when I was on the podcast, my line now has been for the two years and one month. It really makes me appreciate my seventh graders. More and more people say, How do you do this? Or how do you how do you work with seventh graders? Oh my gosh. And my response is always, it's the it's the favorite part of my day. School is still by far the best thing I do, teaching and working with these kids. Not that city council isn't great, or being a union leader isn't great, but working with the kids is by far the best and the most rewarding. We got a couple major things, some of some initiatives that I really wanted to accomplish. We got done. We wrote, rewrote the whole city code to be gender inclusive. Or gender neutral, right? One of the examples was the everywhere it mentioned city manager, it referred to as he him or or his designee. And by that time, we had had a female city manager for like, three and a half years. So just even instances like that, I was like, we need to modernize. This protected some of our most vulnerable. We passed a conversion therapy ban, so protecting those the right that impacts my students outside of school. So I was really proud of that, as well, as well. I had to abstain because it impacted us, but my colleagues passed a resolution in support of our most recent Levy, and that that definitely was impactful and helping get that now we have a now we have a 0.75 income tax, and that was all hands on deck. Every entity in the community came together, and council was part of passing a resolution in support of that,

Katie Olmsted 11:02
and that was a must pass levy for Westerville. It sounded like everybody was really working hard to get that passed because it was so important.

David Grimes 11:10
Yeah, that it would have been really detrimental to the community.

Katie Olmsted 11:15
Are you able to, I know you had to abstain on the vote, but you're able to bring the voice of what that means in our schools right to the people who are making those decisions right along with you, except for on that particular issue. And now there is that second educator voice on city council you mentioned Kelley Stocker, who was also a Westerville educator, talk to me a little bit about the conversations you had with her when she was considering running?

David Grimes 11:44
Yeah, so, well, I can't even think of when I first met Kelley, but years ago she and I don't know if she still does it, but she had her own podcast where it was, it was like teaching politics or teaching government or something. She's a, she's a government teacher at South so it's really, it's really in her mindset or zone of focus. But we had, we had an opening for our PAC chair in our local association. We're really fortunate to have a pack. I would encourage all locals to to set that up, especially with the climate that we have for public education in the state. But she was willing to step up into that role, and successfully went through screening candidates for school board, and really got involved in that process. And then by that point I was running or had been elected, I'm always trying to build the bench early, so the timeline is kind of wonky, but you know, through OEA and through the training and the organizing, we always learn about building that bench, and who are you going to bring up with you? And so Kelley was one of those people that identified as, all right, you've got what it takes. You've been here, you have the skill set. And she's also going to bring a lot to the table that I don't bring. And so we just had those discussions and cup of repeated asks. You always got to ask everybody a couple times. And she said yes, and we built a we built a solid ticket with her on it.

Katie Olmsted 13:21
And again, you mentioned that teamwork aspect of it, when she's bringing something that compliments what you're bringing, everyone wins. Yeah, I, I don't want to have you speak for Kelley, but I'm going to make you speak for Kelley on this one. Did she express any concerns? I'm I'm I'm asking because, you know, a lot of times we have these conversations that educators really should be running for these leadership positions and making that difference in their community outside their school buildings, but there's some hesitancy. They say, I That's why me or I can't. Did we have to overcome any hurdles like that when Kelley was considering running, or in any conversations you've had with other educators?

David Grimes 14:05
Yeah, it's, it's time is always first, right? We do. We do have a full time job, but it's not just a full time job. Most educators take the job home or outside of school with them. They're, putting in way more time than what the general public thinks. And so time for that. And Kelley's got a family and a little one. He's the cutest, but you know, your kids take time as well. And so balancing that, so figuring out how to, how to provide or alleviate some of those concerns about time. And certainly we can't give each other more time, but we can. We can help provide. You know, this is how it's this is how other council members with kids do it. Or this is how you know, this is how I've experienced it as an educator trying to balance work and this work, but it's usually time. And then the other thing is, it seems like a daunting task. You have to fundraise, you have to knock doors, you have to have conversations, you have to get out of your comfort zone at school. And she was ready for those tasks. And if I could say, you know, here's how I fundraised, here's here's the network that I built, and if you utilize that too, like you got it. So it was just connecting all those dots and knowing that we're the people here to do it. Nobody's going to represent you better than you.

Katie Olmsted 15:42
You're not just representing you. You are representing hundreds of seventh graders and eighth graders and and every child who has ever come through your classroom, and everyone who is coming after that. The making this the community that can support those families, that makes it a place where they can stay and thrive, just like they're staying and thriving in your schools.

David Grimes 16:06
Right, right. We've actually implemented a, I should have said that as one of the positive things. So I'm really excited. We, we have our own municipal water, we have our own municipal Electric which is very unique for Central Ohio, and through that, in partnership with the school district, we have a career in college readiness coordinator Matt Meisner. That might not be his title anymore, but that's a good title if it's not anymore. He partnered with staff from the electric division, and we now have an internship program dedicated just for Westerville city school students. So a lot of times what happens is people come in to do like line worker training, and they're from way outside the city, and they come in, and we pay for the training, we pay for the internship and all the skills, and then they stay for a couple years, and then sometimes they go off and they work for like a big for profit entity, right? And make more than you might make for a municipality. We started this internship where students from Westerville schools apply. They do, it's like pre apprenticeship, because they're still students, so they're not interns yet, or apprentices yet, but they go through this program, they learn everything about it, and then they can come on as a team and become that apprentice to then get all the trainings and then become an employee. And then they're more likely to stay right, and then they can come out no college debt, and make more than a starting teacher salary, which should be raised to what OEA would like. What was it 50,000?

Katie Olmsted 17:52
One thing at a time now.

David Grimes 17:54
So I think that's really awesome. And the program was so successful. We went from three students the first year. We're now at six. I think it's four line worker apprenticeships, one arborist and one traffic signal technician. And this has now become a model that we are looking at other departments doing it. So our IT department hopefully will expand, and so that's like continuing the cycle of bringing students on, sometimes first generation. So it's pretty awesome.

Katie Olmsted 18:33
So what's next? How do we build on the successes of your time in office already? What are the big things you want to accomplish as mayor and in your continued work on the city council.

David Grimes 18:43
So we talked about that community engagement piece, right? Kids seeing us out in the community. One of my goals is with our proclamations, which are usually the proclamation is like you're just declaring something, some event, or some cause, or some person's actions notable, getting out in the community and doing those proclamations there on the spot at an event at, for instance, today was our MLK legacy breakfast. So I went and gave the proclamation there, rather than it's cool for people to come into council meetings and receive a proclamation, but nine out of 10 times people come in they're kind of nervous or apprehensive to speak to receive the proclamation. It's in a stuffy room. Everybody is all sitting there, and then usually everybody leaves after the proclamations and before the rest of business. So if we can go out and engage and provide those proclamations and that notoriety right there on the spot in that moment and celebrate the wonderful things going on in our community, I think that will be impactful as well. But continuing that legislative process, we're. Are just like public education. We are really focused on and honing our our attention to what's going on the State House. The State House is not laser focused on dismantling local, cities and municipalities like they are with public education, but the actions that they're taking against public education are impacting our local municipalities too. One of the major fears is this abolition of the property taxes. Now that's not coming out of state legislature.

Katie Olmsted 20:33
But the actions of the state legislature.

David Grimes 20:33
Exactly. The reason that's even on the table is because people are frustrated with the lack of relief that's coming from the state.

Katie Olmsted 20:43
And you get that, as I would say, the double whammy, but the double perspective, you know, the property tax issues, obviously our schools, but our local governments are incredibly impacted by those decisions, and potentially by that ballot measure.

David Grimes 20:59
Yeah, no police, no fire, no schools. You can afford your house, but you can't get your kids educated, and if it catches up fire, nobody will be there to put it out.

Katie Olmsted 21:07
I don't even want to think about it.

David Grimes 21:10
So, but yeah, all three of my hats are impacted by the state legislature, my educator hat, my union hat and my city council hat.

Katie Olmsted 21:19
And again, no pressure, but it's also really a neat place to be that you have a line. You have the power to do something with those three hats.

David Grimes 21:31
Yeah.

Katie Olmsted 21:33
If you had to do it again, would you do all of this? Would you do something different? Would you take a nap?

David Grimes 21:41
I do take naps occasionally, but no, I would do it again. I don't have any regrets. It's been really rewarding. I'll probably ask to continue in a year and 11 months, so I look forward to that and continue to advocate. And it's really always with the kids in mind, because those are our next residents, and they bring the concerns up from their households. I think we talked about that in the podcast before, right? Like I hear from all of them. I had just last weekend, a former student was playing in one of our parks, and I guess the lights were out, and he emailed me on my city council email, saying, why are the lights out, and do they need fixed? So they just they they know who to call well or email.

Katie Olmsted 22:30
Well, I appreciate the fact that I can also email you and ask you to come on the podcast and share your perspective. And I thank you so much for sitting down with us today.

David Grimes 22:39
Thank you

Katie Olmsted 22:41
Our thanks again to Mayor Grimes for sharing his story on this podcast. If you'd like to share your story or talk about a public education issue that you are passionate about, please email me at educationmatters@ohea.org, new episodes continue to drop every Thursday this season, as we continue to have these conversations about the issues with the people who are shaping our public education landscape every day, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai