(soft music) - Students rally in opposition to State House Bills that would ban the teaching of so-called divisive concepts.

Governor Mike DeWine says he will skip the Republican primary debate scheduled for later this month.

And Ohio marks two years since the first case of community spread of the Coronavirus, bringing us into the pandemic era.

"Ideas" is next.

(dramatic music) Hello, and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Bills under consideration in Columbus would ban the teaching in schools of so-called divisive concepts, such as racism.

Opponents say the bills censor teachers.

Supporters say they give parents more say in what their kids are learning.

Governor DeWine says he will pass on this month's debate with his Republican primary challengers and the debate hosted by the Ohio Debate Commission at Central State University will go on without him.

Ohio marks two years since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic when the first case of community spread was an announced and the WHO declared a worldwide pandemic.

It feels like 10 years ago and 10 minutes ago.

And out-of-towners are buying up homes on the east side of Cleveland, something neighborhood advocates say is not a good thing.

We'll talk about those stories and other top news this week on the "Reporters Roundtable."

Joining me, Buckeye Flame Editor, Ken Schneck, WKSU Senior Reporter, Kabir Bhatia, and Statehouse News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

The Ohio House is considering legislation that would prohibit teaching, advocating, or promoting divisive concepts like institutional racism or gender fluidity.

It mirrors similar legislation.

And other Republican-controlled states sprung from the complaints about critical race theory last year, something schools say they don't teach.

So, Karen, now we have these two bills.

It's really part of the culture wars and the curricula wars that we saw really spring up last year and they continue.

- Yeah, and in fact, this goes back even a little bit further than that.

I mean, Republican candidates have been talking about this as being a big talking point, really going back to the end, right at the end of the election in 2020.

This was considered to be this whole idea of what schools are teaching and what kids are learning in schools.

That is a thing that could really go over well with particularly suburban white voters.

And those are the people that you've seen really engage on this issue, I think, more than any other group.

And so, while we saw a lot of school board candidates talking about this in the election in 2021, a lot of those candidates didn't necessarily find success among voters.

But I think that this is some something that has become a huge talking point on the Republican side.

And the real question is, of course, how do you teach racism, public policy, history, and make it a full, complete education.

I mean, I think all of us can look back on what we learned in school and say, hey, there were things that we were not taught about.

I mean, the massacre in Tulsa is one example that I can think of that I never learned anything about until I was an adult.

And so, how do you teach those things without getting into divisive concepts?

And so, while the Republicans who are sponsoring these bills, and these bills have changed a little since they were originally sponsored, say that they really wanna consider a variety of opinions and they really don't want what they call critical race theory to be taught, the real question is, okay, what are you going to teach?

And how are you going to do it?

And how do you make sure that people really learn as much as they possibly can about history, which includes a legacy of racism and policies that really discriminated against minorities.

- Ken, in addition to being a journalist, you are a professor of education.

That's your specialty.

When I say to you that the way to teach is to say, "Pay no attention to that history over there.

Let's look at the history over here."

Is that teaching?

- No, that's not teaching.

I'm a tenured full professor of education.

When I'm in the classroom, I'm generally not thinking anything about, hey, if I say this, this could jeopardize my university's funding.

I'm actually not usually thinking that far in advance.

And largely what I teach about is race.

I teach about the intersection of race and education.

And so, not being able to have those full conversations is quite frankly a joke.

It's not teaching.

It's not the whole point of having discourse in a college classroom of people's experiences.

So, it just makes no sense.

- What does it mean to be divisive?

If as a teacher, either as a college professor, as you are now, or the many secondary school teachers that you know or high school teachers, if they get into a topic, do you start to second-guess yourself and say could this be divisive and to whom?

- Right.

And so, it's so that students don't go home.

If you look at some of the language of the bills, it's that students don't go home and tell their parents, "I felt bad about what was being talked about today."

That's how divisive is being defined.

I felt guilty about the conversation that happened.

I felt responsible by being a part of a race that perpetuated atrocities in the past.

Yeah.

- But this sounds very white to me because if you then said, I went home and told my parents I didn't feel comfortable, what about a black student who went home and said, "I didn't feel comfortable about the fact that they glossed over slavery," or whatever at my might be or any other situation like that.

If we're talking about all people in all discomfort, then it sounds like you can't teach anything.

- We're not.

We're not talking about all people in all discomfort.

And again, quite frankly, the Republican legislators who are proposing this are almost exclusively white.

And so, it's an unbelievable double standard.

This is not education.

This is, it's truly, I'll go back to exact what you just said, that it's not teaching.

- Karen, let me ask you about the differences between these two bills.

Are they basically the same or does one go a little further than the other?

- I think one goes a lot further than the other.

I mean, Don Jones' bill, which is the House Bill 322, that's the one that specifically references critical race theory.

I talked to Don Jones about this bill last year and kinda asked him, "Hey, the ideas that you have this bill, you seem to have taken a lot of them directly from former president, Trump's executive order that banned the teaching of certain policies here with regards to the federal government and federal contractors."

And he said, "No, that's not what he intended to do, though the language is remarkably similar."

But it is really focused on schools.

And 327, the other one, which is sponsored by Representative Diane Grendell and Sarah Arthur Fowler, Sarah Arthur Fowler is a former member of the State Board of Education, by the way, their bill seems to go a little bit further and has been amended and changed a couple of times here.

But this one really seems like it could encompass other things potentially go into public policy.

For instance, an event this week, the ACLU, one of the groups that's opposing this had suggested that this is the kind of a legislation that could prevent say a police officer who wanted to do unconscious bias training with his officers would not be, a police chief rather doing that with his officers would not be able to, or that would be a problem.

And so, these things could potentially go even further than just in the classroom and really extend to other entities that have a government connection.

And so, I think there's a real concern on the part of entities that wanna get into this idea and teach diversity, inclusion, and all of that to try to figure out how do you navigate that?

How do you talk about these things when there is potentially a state law that says can't.

- I'm not an expert in the legislature.

You are.

But I would think that a bill like this would be heard by- - I am.

(laughs) - I think you are.

Wait, are you questioning that?

Now I'm questioning my whole existence.

- I hope so.

- Come on, Karen.

- I'm sorry, imposter syndrome over here.

I can't help it.

(laughs) - It would seem to me as a person who is not educated on this issue, that it's something that would go into an education committee of the House, but it's not.

Why is this before the local government committee?

The Ohio House state and local government committee.

- Well, I mean, certainly, I think when committee assignments are made, quite often, if a bill is designed to pass, it might go to a different committee than it might to go otherwise.

And we've seen this happen with all sorts of school funding bills and other things where they get moved into a different committee than the committee that you would expect.

And so, I think, though, this does speak to the possibility that this bill could extend beyond just schools.

That it could affect local governments and that sort of thing.

And so, I think that there is a concern raised by the committee that they've put this in, that this will have potentially far-reaching effects.

And of course, the question is, will this pass?

And it's been sitting around for a while.

This is 327, the one that talks about divisive concepts that seems to go beyond schools.

But as we've seen with the legislature, and here, I'll say I am an expert, the legislature can pass things really fast if they want to.

And so, I think that's the concern on the part of groups that are opposing this and coming out and speaking publicly now, they're very worried that if the legislature wants to get this going in an election year, that they could go ahead and get that done.

- We've been talking about the stuff we haven't learned.

You talked about the Tulsa massacre, Karen.

There's a lot of history that we're talking about, you wouldn't be able to teach here, but I wonder if it's being taught anyway.

Kabir, you're in Hudson.

Hudson was a huge underground railroad stop.

Is that something that you see in your are kids having learned in school already?

- I sadly do not see that.

We used to have to do lots of big projects in Hudson schools related to this being a big stop on the underground railroad.

And one of the co-sponsors is Nino Vitale from downstate, who is a Hudson High School graduate.

So, I know he learned these same things.

And now I have two kids.

Our two older kids are in eighth and 10th and they said, I mean, "We know about that from you telling us, but in school we don't really talk about it."

And one of the kids said they haven't even learned about Juneteenth yet, which is a federal holiday as of last year.

So, I'm not sure.

I think it's already seems to be happening at least K through 12, the divisive concepts are getting shipped away.

- And Ken, this isn't unique to Ohio.

- Oh gosh, no, it's in no way unique to Ohio.

And I do wanna hit on that AP piece that you mentioned earlier.

- [Mike] Yeah, we mentioned that too.

Yeah.

- Yeah, so there are states all over Alabama Senate, just this week approved to bill that would ban the teaching of divisive concepts.

And so, it's happening all over the country and it's an election year.

And so, this tracks and this wouldn't be happening if it didn't track with voters and have some weight.

But the repercussions are going to be enormous.

And if taken for colleges- - [Mike] Yeah, how does come in play?

- Holy crud.

So, AP tests and AP courses are structured similarly across the country.

And AP courses carry quite a bit of weight for students transferring into colleges.

So, this could affect the number of credits that students are bringing into colleges, which then affects the affordability of colleges.

It could necessitate, I know for me, NYU had a four-semester form language requirement, but I got a five on the AP Spanish exam and I tested out of the four semesters of AP Spanish.

And so, that was four less classes I need to take and four less students who needed to be in those classes.

So, if students now have to take courses that they normally would've placed out, we need more professors, we need more courses offered, it has huge far-ranging effects for AP.

- Tell me why, though, that that would happen.

What would the college board say and why would it not be AP credit?

- Right.

So, because, and AP came out, the college board came out with an unbelievable statement with seven different points of how avoiding divisive concepts violates the prescripts of AP courses.

The AP courses, as a rule are going for that they have standards of clarity and transparency.

That they have standards.

And I love this phrase, unflinching encounters with evidence.

And so, they're all of these intersections, where if these bills pass, it would fundamentally change the way AP courses are offered because there are certain concepts that are currently being discussed across AP courses across the country that would no longer be able to be discussed in this way.

- Because that evidence wouldn't be available.

- [Ken] Exactly.

- We're not looking at it because it's divisive.

- Exactly.

- [Mike] And so, then it's not an AP course.

- It's not an AP course anymore, which affects students dramatically for colleges.

It really, this will, it's not a long thread that connects to the affordability of colleges.

- I mentioned earlier that there were protests at Kent State University and the University of Akron about this over the week.

There also are other protests, one planned today on a completely different topic.

And while you're here, I wanted to get to that.

Because The Buckeye Flame has done some reporting on a planned protest today by LGBTQ students that are protesting some of the policies they're seeing on education, but also those aimed at the LGBTQ community.

- Absolutely.

And the two are intertied.

So, today's action, it's a national action.

It's thought to be.

And it's between 1:00 and 1:20 PM today.

I might have gotten that wrong.

It might be 10 minutes.

But it's this afternoon.

It's today.

That's the important thing.

That is believed to be the largest queer-led student walkout in American history.

So, students will be walking out.

And we don't need to look at other states.

We can look right here at HB454 right here in Ohio, which everyone is very focused on the part of HB454 that would ban trans-affirming gender-affirming care for trans youth.

The other part of the bill would force K through 12 teachers and all school staff to out trans students, to parents if a student shares with them, "Hey, I'm thinking about my gender identity.

I'm thinking about my gender expression."

If HB454 passes, all K through 12 personnel, teachers, and staff will automatically have to report to their parents that they've had this conversation.

- And let me just ask you this question.

What's the problem with that?

- The problem with that is that first of all, so many of these youth, this is why such a disproportionate number of youth experiencing homelessness are LGBTQ youth because so many LGBTQ youth are in homes that are not affirming to them.

And so, for these youth, these teachers, and not just the teachers, I know for me, it was the school secretary, that is their lifeline.

And I don't say that lightly.

That is the individual to whom they can speak authentically that is a pressure release valve for them coming from a home that is not supporting their gender identity.

It's a big deal.

That's a big deal.

So, we don't need to look at what's going on in Florida and what's going on in Texas.

The horrible things are happening there.

We can look right here at Ohio at HB454, which would be a disaster for LGBTQ youth here in Ohio.

(dramatic music) - Governor Mike DeWine will skip the debate with his primary challengers scheduled for later this month at Central State University in Wilberforce, just a few miles from his house.

The Ohio Debate Commission, a collaboration of civic institutions, universities, and media outlets, including Ideastream Public Media will host candidate debates on March 28th and March 29th for governor and United States Senate in both the Democratic and Republican primaries.

Karen Kasler, you're moderating the Republican primary debate for the US Senate.

Is that right?

- That is it.

And all seven candidates appear to be board.

- But we have the governor of Ohio not handing before voters to answer the criticism that'll be brought to him.

Whether it's warranted or not, that's what debates are all about.

Why is the governor saying no to this?

Karen?

- Well, I think first of all, he is very accessible to reporters and he has done public events.

I suppose that those will be really ramping up now that he's announced that he's running for reelection.

And I am a huge supporter of debates, obviously, since I'm gonna be doing one of them there, but debates are really an opportunity for the candidates to be seen by voters in potentially a high-stress situation where they have to answer questions, they have to answer criticism from their opponents.

And the people that are running against DeWine in the primary, we haven't heard from Ron Hood, he's kind of running a stealth campaign, apparently.

He doesn't seem to be doing any events and ads and talking to media or anything.

But Blystone and Renacci have really been running their campaigns, not just about their criticism of DeWine's policies, but about him personally, calling him a tyrant and a dictator and also spreading an awful lot of misinformation.

And so, I'm not surprised that DeWine decided not to participate in that.

I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised, because that's an environment that really kinda sets him up to be beaten up for an hour by two opponents.

Now, that's part of what debates kind of are, is the opportunity for all candidates to kinda mix it up there, but I suppose he's decided that he'd rather send his message in other ways.

I will be surprised if he does not accept the invitation to debate later, once he has a Democratic opponent, either Nan Whaley or John Cranley, I think that DeWine will likely accept those debates, but we'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

- I know that DeWine's people, Ken, have said the reason he's not doing this is because he's the most accessible governor you've ever seen.

He's always on media.

He does come on our show that you certainly can ask him questions.

"Wine with DeWine" went on for a year.

And he answered questions until closing time.

But there still is a sense that if you're a Republican voter, you wanna see how he catches that mud and whether he balls it up and throws it back.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Even though he is so unbelievably accessible, there's still this feeling of like, well, I don't need to do this, right?

And unfortunately, in this example, what the this is, is something that's a very accepted format for people, for voters getting to know their candidates.

I had a really interesting conversation last week with Morgan Harper, who's one of the Senate candidates against Tim Ryan on the Democratic side.

And she said the less that we participate in debates, the more other people fill up the void with noise.

So, it's in some ways exactly what Karen said and in some ways the exact opposite, right?

That if DeWine doesn't participate in these debates, then there's just more noise that gets filled up with this.

(dramatic music) - Out-of-town companies are buying up Cleveland.

A new report says that in 2020, nearly half of all the homes sold on the east side of Cleveland in predominantly black neighborhoods were not purchased by an individual and outside investors are almost never good for a neighborhood.

Ken, housing advocates watch a trend like this with concern because absentee owners, they don't have ties here and that can be bad for tenants and the properties in terms of upkeep.

I mean, in general, you wanna have local ownership.

- In general, you wanna have local ownerships.

It's not like that we always trumpet that it's the best relationship between renters and landlords.

And here you just added at least one layer between those and probably a passport.

So, we're seeing people from outside the area, outside the country.

And if you are taking it on the real micro level, if you're someone who needs to get in touch with your landlord, if you need to get in touch with the owner of the property, you might not be able to do that because they're nowhere near here.

- What we're seeing now, though, is crazy.

I saw some of the reporting on this, where people are literally getting hounded by people who wanna buy their house.

- Oh my gosh, yeah.

I get text messages.

I guess my property is very much in demand.

- And can you imagine that you live in a great house, but it's a neighborhood that maybe 10, 15 years ago, people would maybe look at you and say, "Why would you move there?"

- Absolutely.

And so, the oligarchs of Cleveland apparently are buying things up.

And again, they're nowhere near here.

And so, renters who are having issues, they just can't even get in touch with their landlords.

- Well, we'll keep an eye on that story as well.

Another one, a commercial real estate firm has reached an agreement to buy the iconic Nela Park property in East Cleveland.

Phoenix Investors will buy the home of GE Lighting.

General Electric says it'll remain a tenant.

Kabir, so, GE stays, but it'll occupy far less space than it has in the past.

- Oh, yeah.

It's a beautiful campus.

It's 92 acres.

But over the years, they've gone from 2,500 workers down to about a 10th of that, 250.

And so, they're all spread out in different buildings.

It's very odd when you visit there, which I have done in the last few years.

So, they're gonna consolidate all of them into a smaller portion of the campus.

And then the rest of it'll be available for who knows what in East Cleveland.

But it's just, it's a nice thing that they're at least maintaining it and preserving it because there's some beautiful architecture there.

It's on the National Register of Historic Places.

So, GE Lighting will be there.

It's not even a part of General Electric anymore, but it's taking up a smaller footprint.

(dramatic music) - Governor DeWine says a move to repeal the state's gas tax increase favored by some fellow Republicans is a mistake.

Karen, it's led by one of the Republicans who never supported the gas tax increase in the first place.

- Right.

And it's being joined by some Republicans who actually did support the gas tax increase, but are now apparently rethinking that.

And this is a concept that's been talked about even at the federal level, a repeal of the federal gas tax during this time of huge record gas prices.

But when you start taking away, just for instance, the gas tax increase, if you took a way that 10 and a half cents per gallon, how much would that actually save you per gallon as you're driving around?

It's potentially not that much, but it potentially takes away a huge fund that the state has been using to repair and construct roads.

Now, the argument for that from Senator Steve Huffman, who is not the Senate president, he is a cousin of the Senate president, he has said that, hey, the state's gonna get 11 billion from the federal infrastructure bill.

And so, that will cover that covers 10 times what we would get from the gas tax increase.

And so, why not repeal the gas tax increase?

But that money is supposed to be going to a lot of different things and a lot of different construction projects, including the Brent Spence Bridge in Cincinnati, which is the second most congested corridor in the United States.

It's been mostly shut down at different points over the last year or so.

And so, you've got a lot of infrastructure to fix and just taking away that gas tax for five years, which this bill would do, that gas tax increase would potentially be according to DeWine and ODOT, really problematic for maintaining those roads that we have now.

(dramatic music) - Today mark's two years since the World Health Organization declared the novel Coronavirus a pandemic and a global health threat and two years since the first case of community spread in Ohio.

It feels like yesterday, and at the same time, a decade ago.

I thought we'd just take a few moments right now to reflect.

Two years, it feels in some ways like time has stood still and it's still 2020.

And it also feels like Amy Acton and her white coat and visual aids were like 10 years ago.

Ken.

- I was just gonna say that remember Amy Acton?

(laughs) - [Mike] I do remember.

- Yeah, the "Wine with DeWine."

And it's an interesting parallel for me because it was my first time on "Reporter's Roundtable" was right during that time two years ago.

And I remember we kept saying the word nimble over and over, that educators were going to have to be nimble.

- [Mike] That's right.

- And we had no idea what we were talking about.

And I remember my biggest concern.

Facebook tells you what you were doing on any given day.

So, Facebook told me that two years ago today, I was saying, "My gosh, I hope I don't have to learn how to teach online."

Well, that ship sailed.

(laughs) - Right.

When you think about that, think about the skill that you gained and that all of us have.

So, there are some benefits, some things that have come, some skills we've developed, some relationships we've formed that are the result of the pandemic.

- We don't even know the effect.

We won't know the effects of this for so long.

You think about all of the doctoral students in psychology and sociology and education, who are currently going to be writing dissertations and will be writing dissertations for the next 10 years about how this period of time affects students, affected teachers, affected all of us.

So, yeah.

- Kabir, does it feel like 10 minutes ago or 10 years ago?

- It does feel like 10 minutes ago somehow actually, because I just remember, well, I was at the kids' school and they announced we're gonna be going remote.

And so, we were just high-fiving each other and saying, "Okay, kids I'll see you soon."

And we never went back into that building because they changed buildings here, in fact.

So, but I can remember it like it was yesterday.

And now those same kids are driving and looking at college applications and things like that.

These kids I was making popcorn for.

So, it feels like it just happened.

I can remember standing outside that W. O. Walker Building over near Cleveland Clinic and people were coming up for testing and everyone was in those full suits like at the end of "E.T.," the hazmat suits.

And it feels like time stopped.

I mean I still, and I remember going to the store and rushing around the store to grab the few things that I knew we would need.

So, it feels in some ways like 10 minutes ago, in some ways like a thousand years ago, because so much has changed, as Ken said.

And now who knows when we're going to be coming out of this?

And I don't wanna be flip about this, but it almost feels like World War II, where everyone had to make sacrifices, come together fight this thing, except I don't know that some people have not made the sacrifices maybe that they should have.

And that's all I'll say about that, but- - Yep, let me get Karen in, because Karen, you held our hands through this by broadcasting the "Wine with DeWine" for, I don't know, you probably have the number how many consecutive days that you did it.

- Yeah, 57 press conferences.

57 press conferences over about a three-month period.

I was anchoring those.

And I remember it was a very scary time.

I was the only person in my family who was leaving the house after my son's school was locked down.

And it was, a lot of things changed in a very short period of time.

And now that we're finally coming out of some of this, we're getting some of them back, but we'll never get some of these things back.

And it's really, it's a sad anniversary for me.

- True, changed forever.

Monday on "She Sound of Ideas" on 90.3 WCPN, we'll discuss this year's Humanities Festival at Case Western Reserve University.

It focuses on how discourse and the way we communicate has changed and continues to evolve.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for watching, and stay safe.

(upbeat music)