- Notre Dame College in South Yu Could will close at the end of this semester.

Airlines have agreed to pay for the first phase on a Cleveland Hopkins International Airport Makeover, and a state panel granted fracking rights to out-of-state companies to drill under Salt Fork State Park, and two state wildlife areas.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Notre Dame College in South Euclid will close at the end of this school year.

Succumbing to budget woes transfer agreements with other institutions will allow undergrads to stay on track for graduation.

The plan to cut $130 million from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District's budget has been approved by the school board.

The district is facing a massive budget shortfall, driven by the end of pandemic assistance money.

Airlines have agreed to fund the first phase of what's expected to be a 10 year project to modernize Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

And despite emotional opposition, a state panel granted rights to drillers, to frack under Salt Fork State Park, and two state wildlife areas.

Joining me to talk about this week's news in studio Idea Stream education reporter Connor Morris and local government reporter Abby Marshall, and in Columbus State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kassler.

Let's get ready to round table Notre Dame College in South Euclid, which has wrestled with financial problems for some time.

Announced late Thursday that it will close at the end of this semester.

Connor, you've been reporting on these woes for a while.

Still.

Yesterday's announcement seemed to come as a surprise.

- Yeah, for, for us, we'd really been hearing rumors that the college was, was potentially gonna close for, for a couple months now.

It's been difficult to confirm it and it's a difficult situation in general.

You know, folks were, were hopeful that maybe, you know, a solution could be reached and the college said they really tried.

I mean, I think the biggest issue from what I could glean from the information we've got so far was the debt, outstanding debt.

Really trying to figure out a way to kind of, they said they tried to refinance their debt, you know, using their pandemic relief money wisely to try to do a fundraising campaign.

They tried to pursue those mergers, as you mentioned.

So, yeah, I mean, but yeah, it's unfortunately not necessarily a huge surprise to us here.

- And what they're facing and what all these higher institutions are facing higher, higher education institutions are facing is a demographic shift in which there aren't as many college age kids.

So the pool that you would draw from is smaller, which means you're gonna have more trouble filling your classrooms.

- Yeah.

And these smaller private colleges, it's just the, the margins are much thinner for them.

You know, you're talking about 1,400 students at Notre Dame here, a little less than that versus, you know, a much larger institution.

You know, Kent State, you know, 30,000 plus, you know, enrollment.

So it's there, there it is.

Just, you know, if you do have budget problems and you can't really get your hands around them as enrollment declines, then that's your main source of revenue.

State funding support is really been relatively flat is what a lot of colleges are telling me.

You know, not necessarily even keeping up with inflation.

So it's just been a tough world out there for higher ed institutions.

Also, where was I going with this?

Oh, so the, it's kind of also a little bit of a race to the bottom too, I think, as I was mentioning yesterday, with some of these colleges, because they're trying to offer, trying to incentivize more and more students to come, offering better benefits, you know, like more scholarships.

And so that's also hitting their bottom line as well too.

- We talked about the students and what will happen to them.

There's 900 undergraduate students of that number that you talked about.

Yeah.

Anyone that has 60 hours completed and is in good standing, we'll be able to go through something called this Teach Out program.

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about that and how that's different from just deciding to transfer to any school.

- Yeah, so they'll get guaranteed admission to nine different institutions throughout northeast Ohio.

It's Cleveland State, Baldwin Wallace Hiram, John Carroll, Kent State, lake Erie College, Ursuline Walsh, and Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania.

I didn't, it's close surprise one there.

Yeah.

And there might be more agreements worked out as time goes on here, because they're ending at the end of this spring semester.

So there's a little bit more time here.

But yeah, so it's current students in good standing, quote unquote, and those with less than 60 completed credit hours may have the opportunity to transfer to a partner institution and receive those benefits as well.

They say may.

So not clear exactly what that means, - But Right.

So for students that's what we see is the possibility of transfer for the staff and it's extensive.

Yeah.

What do we, what happened then?

You had the numbers on staff.

- Yeah, it was full in part-time.

It was, it's almost 400 or so part-time and full-time staff.

It's, it's - Staff and, and and faculty.

- And faculty.

It's a lot of people.

And the, the college says they're offering, you know, HR support as they're trying to do, you know, transitioning them out to other jobs.

But, you know, I'm not really clear on, on what that'll look like.

Exactly.

I'm sure that they're trying to help them as best they can.

You know, maybe some of these other partner institutions might have openings as well.

I'm sure that they probably are, are sharing those as well with them.

- So as we mentioned, this is facing all kinds of colleges.

Yeah.

Locally, you know, lake Erie College is a small college.

Ursuline College is a small college.

There's a bunch of these little colleges.

But then as you get a little bit bigger too, Baldwin Wallace has a huge deficit issue.

So what you've been tracking is Yeah.

Is really a, a sort of a, a crisis in maybe a correction.

- Yeah.

And ironically, this will be a boon for Baldwin Wallace and colleges like that.

I mean, Baldwin Wallace just said they just had to cut 25 staff, or they will be soon.

So, or 2325, - I'll somewhere - Around there.

Yeah.

I'll get that corrected at some point.

But yeah, so I mean, that's the thing that we're gonna have to be seeing.

So Eastern Gateway Community College over in Steubenville and Youngstown, they announced that they're amid some financial challenges and also some allegations of financial mismanagement too, as well.

They're gonna have to enroll like 7,000 students elsewhere, Youngstown State and elsewhere.

So what we might be seeing with some of these colleges closing is it could be a boon for some of these other colleges that are also struggling.

So might be kind of a consolidation that we might be in, in, in the running for kind of down the road a bit.

- The Cleveland Board of Education has approved a plan to cut more than $130 million from the budget of the Cleveland Metropolitan Schools afterschool programs involving community partners funded with short-term pandemic relief funds will be among the cuts counter Worthy's cuts gonna come from.

- Yeah.

So there's a couple of areas.

I mean, the main thing that we should start with is this.

There's really zeroing out pandemic relief funded programs.

So one big one is after school programs that are hosted by external partners.

So like the Boys and Girls Club in northeast Ohio, for example, before the pandemic, the district wasn't really funding these external programs.

And so their argument is, Hey look, they were doing it before the pandemic.

They can do it now.

They can continue these programs.

We're gonna try to work with them and see, you know, what help we can provide, but we gotta cut our support out.

It was sizable last year.

It was about 17 million, right.

So to go from nothing to 17 million and then now back to nothing again is kind of a, a big jump.

So these providers are concerned, parents are concerned, parents really, from what I understand, parents really like these programs because there's a gap in between when the kids get off school and when they get off work.

It's about two hours, sometimes three hours.

Some people work late into the night too as well.

So, I mean, it gives them some peace of mind.

And also help with homework and snacks too, as well too, which is, everyone loves snacks, who doesn't, but, but the other big cut in terms of pandemic relief funding is summer programming.

They're cutting that down.

They're still gonna offer it.

And at a higher level than before.

Than before the pandemic actually.

But it was, it was a pretty big expense.

So they're cutting down the amount of seats.

Still gonna be boosting instruction time with it though.

So the CEO's kind of bid here is CEO Warren Morgan.

That is let's, you know, reduce the amount of seats, still boost the quality of instruction we're giving them.

So maybe a little less fun, a little more work, a little more work maybe for the students.

But it's still, those are, those together are gonna be quite a bit of savings.

And then we can chat a little bit more about this down the road a bit.

But some cuts to central administration as well.

- No, that too.

I mean, you can say that now they're gonna, they're gonna cut positions.

- Yeah.

So 25 positions, I immediately, that's about 5 million in cuts.

5 million, 6 million in cuts.

And that's gonna be, you know, could be people fired, could be positions removed.

The bigger cut that's coming down the road is there's about 40 million in cuts that have not been identified yet in the central office area.

And the CEO has really been trying to say, look, we're trying to preserve our academic core.

We don't want these to hit the classroom door.

You know, we don't want this to affect the quality of education.

- But even still, the, the union president wasn't too happy at the, at the school board meeting.

I mean, earlier had said, we're glad that these cuts are not coming into our classrooms.

But, but Sherry Osky had some words at the, at the meeting.

- Yeah.

And it was, yeah, more than the allotted time too as well.

She was gaveled, the board chair, Sarah kod said, you know, look, we gave you three times more time than than other folks are getting here to, to speak, and you've got more access to us than other people.

So that was tense moment there during the board meeting for sure.

But, but Sherry was saying the teachers, Cleveland Teachers Unions President, Sherry Broey, she was saying that the district manufactured this, this deficit.

She was saying that because this pandemic relief was going away, everyone knew it was going away.

She said the district budgeted as if the, those programs were gonna continue.

And so it made it look a lot worse than it actually was.

Hmm.

And so she was really upset by that and was saying, you're really scaring people.

When in reality we were gonna have to zero out these pandemic relief funded programs.

Anyway, - Interesting.

Council's not happy about it.

Abby, and we've talked a little bit about this last week too, but Richard Starr particularly wearing a shirt that says, who's getting fired?

- Yeah.

I wanna know who his t-shirt guy is.

'cause he got that turned around quickly.

- Yeah, he, he said that on Thursday and then it turned - Around on, no, it was, it was Tuesday of last week.

Oh, Tuesday.

Okay.

A mayor, Justin Bibb comes to the first day of the city budget hearings.

And Richard Starr took the opportunity to basically say, who are we holding accountable for this?

Who's getting fired?

And so I showed up to the Monday City Council caucus meeting where CEO Warren Morgan came in to speak and kind of hash out the, and lay out what Connor was talking about.

And over his, you know, tie and dress shirt.

He's wearing the T-shirt that says who's getting fired.

So it was a pretty strong message and he wore it throughout the day.

And of course, in the council evening meeting too, he says he wants to go to Columbus and lobby for more council oversight when it comes to the school district, which we'll get into a little bit, I'm sure as it relates to the school board.

But yeah, ca council wasn't happy.

And it wasn't even necessarily that they were targeting anger at the CEO who has only been at the helm of the district for about seven months.

They said, we need to look at other leadership.

How did we get here in the first place?

You know, our kids are going to suffer because of this.

- We also heard from council the idea of possibly returning to an elected school board.

It's an appointed one now.

Right.

Mayor has control of schools.

But that's, that's a big departure.

- It is.

And I, and maybe Connor can speak in to more what of what goes into this.

However, Mike Linzi did say, you know, we need more accountability.

He asked, there were many people in that room from the school, and he said, who here is from the school board?

And no one raised their hands.

And he said, that's the problem.

I don't know who's on the school board.

There's no accountability.

No oversight.

So he was really advocating for a mayoral, a departure from the mayoral appointed school board to an elected - System.

And it's, - And we've had an elected system, by the way, I've, I've been around here for a while.

And the, that was often a lot of demagoguery and, and showboating.

Yeah.

Depending on who the person was.

I'm sure there were some that were doing great stuff.

But there was a lot of, there were a lot of issues with the elected school board as well.

- Yeah.

And that was in, in 1997, I think, when that was changed.

And the district was having budget problems at the time as well.

And actually Richard Star mentioned that, have some, remember Richard Star mentioned that as well too, that there were budget problems then.

The budget problems now.

And this is necessitating a change.

She's arguing the board members.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday night, they were saying, look, this pains us to do this.

We don't wanna make cuts.

We think that people deserve to get paid what they're gonna, that that, that they, you know, desire to be paid.

You know, and they, they were really trying, and this board, they've really been trying to be more actively involved.

I mean, we've been seeing this and the, the mayor appointed some new members last year as well.

So there's been some, some, some leadership changes as well too.

Yeah.

And that's part of this too as well.

- We have Akron facing budget problems as well.

And you've talked about those.

But now they're saying, we want to have all day kindergarten, which is gonna cost millions of dollars.

How is that - Jiving?

That was a very interesting, yeah.

Kind of a surprise.

It just came in the middle of a discussion about the district's redistricting plan, district's re districting plan during the meeting this week, board meeting this week.

And the CE or the superintendent there, Michael Robinson, said, yeah, we gotta actually consider the fact that we're moving to full a full day of preschool next year as we're looking at these changes to buildings.

And one of the board members is like, wait, what?

And so the some background, the superintendent has called for moving from a half day of preschool to a full day of preschool.

It costs about $6 million or so each year.

$6.5 million each year for the, the half day likely gonna cost quite a bit more.

The district says, look, we want to send out some surveys this week.

We wanna see who's interested actually even start enrollment this week, which is, which was a surprise to us education reporters.

And so they're gonna try to see how many people are interested, then see how many classrooms they need to open, how much staff they need to to increase.

But the, the superintendent said, Hey, he's all gung ho about it.

He says, we need to do this.

There's research that shows that it really helps students get kind of ready for school and to not come in so far behind, which is a big problem in Akron.

- The city of Cleveland says it's reached a deal with airlines to fund the $175 million first phase of a project to modernize Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, which can use a lot of work.

The total project, which could take more than 10 years, is projected to cost $3 billion.

Abby.

Interesting.

So we've talked about stadium funding and how we're gonna build these things.

In this case, they're talking about a needed redo, which would be basically be like what a dome stadium plus would cost.

Right.

And the airlines would pony up.

- Right.

Well, without an airport, there are no airlines.

Good point.

So it does kind of make sense, especially when you're talking about these much needed renovations that you're talking about.

And especially as the airport has kind of shifted over the years as United has de Hubbed Hopkins in 2019, which kind of caused a shift to more local travelers, which created, you know, the need for more parking.

'cause you're not necessarily renting a car, more drop off space, things like that.

And Covid has obviously changed the way that travel has happened as well.

- You know, this study happened in 2019, it was five years after that Deh Hubing basically, as you said, describing Hopkins is a different kind of airport.

It's not, it's called an international airport, but it's really a local airport.

- Right.

And I, I do think it'll be interesting to see how that shifts because I, as I reported last year as they were adding some more routes, I believe that they said that they've not only returned to pre pandemic levels, but they have now exceeded it.

And I think part of that has to do with some of these airlines that have come in.

For example, frontier recently announced that they are going to make Cleveland a hub and bring a crew base next month in March, which means new direct routes to places like last year, I think I reported Puerto Rico, things like that.

Right.

And at least 400 jobs to the base, which they say is expected to generate nearly $80 million in local wages.

- I also don't mean to say it's not at all international.

There is that direct flight Air Lingus to Dublin, which I've taken and it's awesome.

Oh, you - Took that?

I did - Take it.

Okay, great.

Yes.

I've got a question here from one of our listeners from Dan says, I recall hearing airlines don't like to use Cleveland Hopkins International Airport because our landing and takeoff fees are among the highest.

Won't this aggravate that issue, which means less travel opportunities?

And Lee Barr did a little bit of research 2018 story in, at the plane dealer airlines that operate outta Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, pay some of the highest fees in the nation higher than Chicago, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh.

A fact that could limit the airport's ability to finance major construction projects in the future.

So yes, that is an issue.

The fees that are already being paid, I'm sure that's part of what the negotiation is when they're sitting at the table saying, we're gonna need you all to pay $3 billion for this redo right now.

We'll start with the 175 million and see where we go.

What's interesting is that 175 million doesn't build you anything or not much anyway, Abby, most of that is for non-construction stuff.

- Right.

So that will mostly include an expanded ticketing and gate area, new customs and security areas.

More parking, as I mentioned, which is needed and better roadway access.

The money will also be used to help demolish the Sheridan Cleveland Airport Hotel later this year, which will be used for more parking.

However, plans in the future kind of go toward a relocated car rental facility, which I reported last year will be funded in part by a rental car tax at the airport, as well as later phases, which will include rerouting the roadways actually in and out of the airport as - Well.

Alright.

10 years, 10 years from now, it's gonna be a jewel.

- I listen, I love the airport.

I, I am advocating for flying more flying carpets.

My favorite part of going to the airport is getting on those little things.

And like whizzing by Woo, - The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission has granted a West Virginia company, the exclusive rights to frack for natural gas under Salt Fork State Park.

Karen State lawmakers who pushed the bill to make it easier to frack Ohio State Lands Point to the revenue stream that will come in as a result of it.

Now we have contracts that are let out.

How much is the state getting?

- Well, the state will get almost $60 million in bonuses.

59 million, 59.7 million to be precise.

And also each approve lease has a statutory 12.5% royalty on production.

So we're talking about some significant money here, but this is money that state lawmakers have talked about as being a big deal.

Senate president Matt Hoffman even said when he was speaking to a group of oil and gas producers that he expects this to be a great revenue generator.

You've heard some lawmakers talk about maybe this could even help the state get rid of the state income tax.

So there is definitely an interest in looking at fracking on public lands and potentially allowing even more of it.

- It was a lot of opposition, as you can imagine it is on all of this.

It was when they passed, first of all the legislation that allowed this type of thing.

But there was a lot of noise too at this particular session.

- Yeah.

The, the activists who have opposed this have been pretty dedicated in their opposition.

There've been two lawsuits that have been filed, but they've also shown up at all these oil and gas Land Management commission meetings to demonstrate how frustrating this process has been for them.

Because there is a state law that shielded the names of the companies from public view up until this point.

And so they felt very left outta the process in that respect.

But also the, the law that was just passed in 2022 did make it a lot easier for fracking to go ahead and, and happen.

And so they've been very frustrated.

They showed up with signs, they showed up in dressed in sackcloth, a couple of them that indicated drought and climate change and some of the other things that they say will result from this.

But they've been very outspoken in their opposition and, and tried to stop it.

But this is a kind of process that it didn't look like there was going to be any potential stopping it, at least on the activist side.

- Where do the court cases stand?

- There are two court cases.

One was dismissed right before this meeting that allowed this meeting to go forward.

There is one other one that is specifically related to that 2022 law and that one's still in process.

So we're waiting to hear what happens with that.

- We should note that when you talk about fracking, we're not talking about there being equipment on state park property, this is, or next to it drilling under.

There's still a concern.

There's traffic, there's the possibility of spills, those types of things.

Lots of, of the concerns that have been raised.

Do we know when the drilling might begin so that we can look at this and, and see what the result is?

- Well, and that's a great point that you bring up and Governor Mike DeWine has said there will be no fracking in state parks with the imagery that you just put out there.

But of course, if you are drilling under the state parks, you do have, obviously there are some potential impacts here.

And so it will be interesting to see once this process goes forward, if it does, I mean, it's not gonna happen immediately.

What actually does result, I mean, right now these are not, these are just a a, they're not a permit to drill.

They're just, they bid approvals and then they have to go through the regulatory process.

It could take a while.

Infinity resources, who, who you mentioned at the beginning said they plan to begin drilling by January 1st, 2025.

But, you know, the process, the regulatory process is what it is.

So that's gonna be the next step.

- State lawmakers wanna prevent foreign citizens and organizations from giving money to fund ballot campaigns.

In Ohio, Senate Bill two 15 passed this week along party lines Republicans in favor, Democrats against federal and state laws already prohibit non-US citizens from donating to candidates.

This would expand that then to these campaigns.

It's aimed at one group in particular, the 1630 fund.

- Yeah.

This is a progressive dark money group that interestingly enough, has donated to three recent campaigns in Ohio.

The campaign against issue one in August of last year.

That's the one that would've raised the threshold to pass constitutional amendments to 60%.

They also donated four issue one in November that was the reproductive rights and abortion access amendment, and also donating to the effort to try to get a redistricting proposal on this fall's ballot.

So those are three issues that Republicans were very concerned about.

So it's interesting that this is now the focus of a bill that they just passed.

And the, the whole idea of dark money, of course is a concern because dark money groups do not have to disclose their donors.

And so there's a lot of questions about where that money comes from.

There are dark money groups on the progressive side and on the conservative side, but this one specifically seems to be targeted toward the more progressive groups because they've been involved in these campaigns.

- Right.

But as you dark money groups comes, come in all shapes and sizes, there have been dark money contributions to other issues as well, the anti-ISIS issues.

- Right.

And now this does not affect, of course, domestic donations.

And like in the issue one campaigns last year, the pro issue one in August, the anti-ISIS issue, one in November, there was a billionaire from Illinois, Richard Uline, who was donating to that this would not affect that this specifically is targeted at foreign investors.

And the 1630 fund has a Swiss billionaire who's very involved in that.

And you know, the, the argument has been we don't want foreign interference in our elections.

The argument of course, on the other side of that is there has been foreign interference in our elections.

And, and there's already evidence that, for instance, the Russians are starting to get into our 2024 elections.

But what's also important to note here is that this is a national effort.

There are groups that are trying to do this on the national level, and it could potentially harm conservative dark money groups as well because they do have ties to, for instance, there was a, a Russian company, a Russian National who gave to President Trump's super PAC in 2018.

At least that's what a federal indictment says.

- Senate minority leader, Nikki Antonio of Lakewood, described this as a sore loser bill.

- Yeah.

She says it looks like it's the kind of thing that would have a chilling effect on future ballot initiatives.

And, and we've heard a lot of talk about from lawmakers about how we're gonna have so many more ballot issues that that was the reason for issue one in August to raise that threshold of 60% or else we're gonna have this flood of more and more ballot issues and everything's gonna come forward.

Well, we haven't had a flood anymore than we've had in previous years.

I mean, we've had years where we've had big constitutional amendments on the ballot years that we didn't.

And so this potentially could get in the middle of some of those ballot campaigns, but we're not having any more ballot campaigns now than we did before.

At certain points - Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 7 WKSU, we'll bring you our latest community tour conversation recorded at the bop stop focusing on the jazz scene in northeast Ohio.

I am Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.