Lawmakers closed the legislative session by passing a flurry of bills, including what proponents termed a parent's bill of Rights.

Akron School Board says it'll hire an outside firm to investigate complaints against the superintendent.

And movie fan get a first glimpse of Cleveland as Metropolis is in the trailer for the new Superman movie.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us and happy holidays.

The Ohio legislature wrapped up what's known as the lame duck session this week.

The period between Election Day and the end of the legislative session.

At the last minute, lawmakers passed what Republican proponent dubbed a parents Bill of Rights that compels notification of parents if their children express anything at school regarding psychological matters, including gender identity.

Parents also will be informed about any sexual material covered in class, and students must be released from school to pursue off campus religious education.

After a separate bill was folded in, the Akron School Board has hired an independent firm to investigate allegations against Superintendent Michael Robinson.

Amazon has big expansio plans for Ohio, as does Intel.

But utilitie worry about the growing demand for power to feed more data centers and look up on your screen.

It's Cleveland, man.

The new Superman movie trailer is out.

We'll discuss all of these storie and more on today's roundtable with Deputy editor of News Andrew Meyer and health reporter Steven Lengel.

In Columbus, Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Ohio lawmakers put the cap on the current legislative term with a marathon session that started Wednesday afternoon and wrapped up after 2 a.m. Thursday.

The session yielded a number of bills that will now go to Governor Mike DeWine, including the so-called Parents Bill of Rights.

Catherine, I mentioned the Parents Bill of Rights.

That gives parents a say in what their children learn, especially sexual oriented content.

It's also, as we mentioned, when people express anything about gender identity or those types of things, it has to be reported to parents.

What must schools do to comply, first of all, with the idea of the the content of classes that might deal with any kind of sexuality?

Well, when it comes to the three elements of this bill, the idea of parent parental notification is the big part here.

And so school employees, for instance, would have to notify parents of any changes in a child's physical or mental health, such as if they've asked fo counseling or if they are going by a different name, one to use different pronouns, that sort of thing.

And when it comes to the classroom work, parents would have to be notified of sexuality content, which is what the bill terms it as, would come up in classrooms so that parents could opt their kids out of that.

And then, of course, there's the other element that I think you also want to ask me about, which is the the religious the release for religious instruction period, which is part of these two bills were combined together into one, which is quite often what we se at the end of a two year session when they're just trying to get legislation through.

Let's let's dig into that first one.

First, though, the idea of there being a counselor at school for example, and a student saying, you know, I'd like to use different pronouns or I think I'd like to or I've got to talk through some things.

The idea is they would need to tell parents, parent want to know that their children are going through these experiences.

But we see that opponents of this bill, including the Democrats who voted against it, call it a don't say gay law or a don't say trans law, that essentially this could make things unsafe for students if they don't have parents who are accepting of the situation that they're in.

And now you're basically outing them.

Yeah, and that's been the real concern here and why the opposition to that particular part of the bill, though, the other part, the sexuality content, there are some who suggest that maybe even talking about same sex relationships which compose families all around the state, that that could be seen as sexuality content and something that parents need to be notified about.

But yeah, there's a real concern on the part of activists for LGBTQ community as wel as for the teachers unions that there could b this outing of kids who aren't telling their parents about this for a reason, perhaps.

And there's also a concern about how these kids would not want to seek those resources that would be available at school, and maybe those available resources would be less available.

So there's a real concern about the impact on especially LGBTQ kids, kids who are questioning and really any kid who's kind of troubled.

When you talk about the idea of going off campus for religious education, I'll hear people often say, when we have this discussion, separation of church and state, an they'll say that over and over.

It seems here that the separation is a physical one.

Essentially if you leave the school campus, go ahead and study religion in a public school.

Yeah.

The backers of this sa this is actually an opportunity for school teacher and students to leave school and go have this experience off campus.

So there is that separation.

There is that physical separation.

But, you know there's been the questions about what does that d to the school day when you start taking kids out of school to go pursue religious education, when maybe they could do it before school or after school or on the weekends?

But that's been the sellin point of this life wise academy, this Christian based program that provides transportation to these off campus locations for kids to lear about Christianity in the Bible.

They say that it is during the day.

That's the important part here, because parents don't have time to do it before school or after school or on the weekends.

It's I just think it's really interesting to hear the arguments for and against this.

For instance, some of the arguments for it suggested that if this weren't enacted, if public schools stop allowing kids to leave for religious instruction, then the parents of those kids will pull those kids out of school and send them to private school because they really want that religious religious instruction during the day.

It's interesting, though, we mentioned there's a physical separation, but what about that notion of separation of church and state?

You're going to public school and learning, I guess, a specific relate religion life wise academy is Christian.

Is there an argument against that?

Do we hear from the ACLU?

Oh, yeah the ACLU has been very concerned about this for a while.

And that physical separation, think, is part of the argument.

And it's also permissive.

It's also something that parents can opt their kids into.

They don't have to do this, but the school distric has to provide the opportunity for parents to allow their kid to go to religious instruction.

So there's still, though, the issue of when your entire class or most of your class is going to one of these of campus programs like life wise and you're the only kid who isn't.

What effect does that have on you?

And also, what effect does that have on the learning environment?

These trips out of schoo are supposed to be during times when there isn't any core curriculum going on.

But it's hard to get back into the swing of things once you leave campus and come back sometimes.

Now, school districts get the option of providing whatever kind of policy they want.

Representative Josh Williams who's a Republican from Toledo, said school districts could have required one or allow for one day of religious instruction release or like one day a mont or one hour a day or whatever.

They can write the policy however they want, and so that'll be interesting to see school districts that have maybe backed away from lif wise what they'll actually do.

You bring up a interesting point, though.

You wonder about the Jewish kid in class and a muslim kid in a majority Christian class, the atheist kid, whatever the religion might be if if 28 of your fellow students, because that's what it's geared toward, because that's the the program that's coming in, that's having students go to from the school.

How that might feel for a young person to not be participating in that.

So interesting to hear what those arguments are.

Yeah, Parents against life Wise, which is this group that's been operating online and in Facebook, it's been saying that Weiss Weiss tries to bring in kids.

That's what they want to do.

They want to bring in more kids.

And so they'll have candy and it'll be fun.

And so the kids that aren't included, they say they're worried about those kids.

Karen, I was talking to a friend of mine who's from Ireland and had some interest in one of the bills that was going through the legislature, and he got a firsthand look at Christmas tree bill this year.

And he said, Man, you peopl do things crazy in this country.

You know, how is it that this is our legislation get done?

So let's talk about it.

In this lame duck, duck, duck session, we had a Christmas tree bill.

It's they call it that because it's festooned with all kinds of ornaments.

Basically, every other bill gets shoved into this bill that has no idea why these people are at the party.

And what did we get this year, the 400 page Christmas tree bill?

Well, this started as a bill on township zoning laws, and it got a lot more interesting over time.

And in fact as we got to the end of session late Wednesday, early Thursday morning, there were a lot of thing that had been thrown into this.

There is a bill that was considered a must pass bill that would allow universities to directly pay student athletes for their name, image and likeness instead of having to involve a third party.

It really gives the universities a little bit more power.

And here it added in just a whole bunch of other things that really don't seem to be related, but somehow are related in some way enough that they can all come together in this one bill.

And we see this every time with lame duck because the clock is ticking.

You got to get these bills passed or else they die at the end of the session.

So bills are supposed to be related to each other in order to be mixed like this.

In these cases, you're right.

They're disparate.

I mean, what is the relation?

They each have the word the in them.

I mean, lawmakers wanted to pass all of them.

I mean I think, you know, some of these connections seem a little bit tentative and maybe even tenuous, but tenuous.

Yeah, but they they somehow make this work.

And like I said, every session we see one of these bills, and that's why there's a proposal out there that would actually ban lame duck sessions.

Democratic Representative John Brennan from Parma is one of the sponsors.

And this bill actually has a lot of sponsors who went through this process for the first time, this lame duck, and said this is no way to legislate.

It's crazy.

It's not just my Irish friend.

It's the actual politicians who are in the room.

I mean, it reminds m when I used to cover Congress, lawmakers seemed like these students who procrastinate until the last second then rush at the last momen to get everything done it wants because the time crunch is on and stick it all together.

And like that happens every year.

So you mean a reporter with the Thursday deadline, basically.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking.

I've seen you work at 11:59 p.m. and I've seen I've seen Karen too.

She goes, Well, they wrapped up at 2 a.m..

Okay, you had an excuse just this one time also in the Christmas tree bill medical free speech relating to COVID 19.

Yeah and this kind of directly goes at remember Sherri Tenpenny?

She's the doctor from northeas Ohio who testified during COVID falsely that the COVID vaccine does something with 5G cell towers or magnetized you or whatever it was.

It was one of those clips from the Ohio Channel that just went all around the world because people couldn't believe that this was actually a somebody who was supposed to be an expert talking about this.

And so this basically allows for medical free speech, prevents disciplining based on comments like this.

It's really kind of amazing because there's a lot of disinformation out there you're allowed to know.

Yeah, And that's just that's really unfortunate.

And it's really potentially dangerous.

Hmm.

These additions, Christmas Tree Bill came after a bill allowing for off label drug usage has died in the legislature.

So this kind of came back as, okay, we'll give you all these things in a Christmas tree bill instead.

But the off label label drug use was for we've heard about like ivermectin being used for COVID 19.

Those types of things.

Right.

And this they had wanted to hav this opportunity for hospitals and doctors to use this, bu that, again, didn't go through.

However, I would look for tha to come back in the new session, which starts in January.

All right.

Last thing, and that is fans of Dolly Parton may be happy to know a new specialty license plate to support her imagination library, which is by the way, huge in Cleveland.

The literacy cooperative does a terrific job getting books in the hands of young kids through the Dolly Parton imagination Library.

But now you can have a licens plate, too, that supports that.

Yeah, and that's one of the things that I think they wanted to get through.

One of those kind of must pass bills.

One of the things they didn't get through, though, was a pay raise.

They had talked about doing a pay raise that would have been a 5% pay raise for the next four years and then guaranteed cost of living acros the rate of inflation, rather.

And that didn't get through.

And so state lawmakers coming in next year, as well as county elected officials and judges, they won't get a pay raise either.

All right.

Let's see if we can do it.

I move that all of us get the 5% pay raise.

Do I have a second, second, second.

Invite, Andrew, all those in favor say hi.

I all the nays.

All right.

The ayes have it.

Thank you very much.

Ideastream.

Public media, The Akron School Board said in a statement late Thursday that it'll hire an outside firm to investigate allegations made against Superintendent Michael Robinson.

Over the last few weeks, the board has met in executive session to consider unspecified personnel issues.

There are a number of them.

Let's start with the first the facilities director there.

Andrew claims that Robinson retaliated against him after he raised concerns about the way Robinson treats staff.

That's right.

So Steve Keenan was unhapp with how he perceived Robinson was treating his staff, so he fired off an email to the president of the school board, and that got the hackles up on Robinson, who then came back directly to Keenan and chewed him out.

Subsequently, whil he was on family medical leave, Keenan was informed when he got back that you're no longer head of facilities.

You've got this other jo and there's a cubicle for you, and there's a cubicle in headquarters, not at the facilities office.

And also he no longer had a staff.

So it should be noted that the school's administration, through their spokesperson said, had nothing to do with any complaints or anything like that.

Just this is a reshuffling.

And they also pointed out the fact that he's now going to be in charge of two significant construction projects in the Akron public schools, two new schools.

So no paycut, no job.

Yeah.

So none of that.

So that is the debate I do want to note, since we mentioned Stephen Keenan, we have something here called the Community Advisory Board at Ideastream.

They're members of the public.

They're not paid.

They meet four times a year and they give us some advice on, Hey you ought to be covering stories about this in Akron and tha in Akron and some other things.

They're really a valuable resource and a sounding board for us to listen to members of the public.

And by the way, if you're interested in being on our community advisory board sometime feel free to reach reach out it associate ideastream dawg.

And perhaps that can be made to happen someday.

Stephen Keenan is a member of our Community Advisory Boar and I just want to disclose that I don't think I've ever met him, but he's been at maybe some meetings I've been to.

But just so that's clear.

But he, you know, we're talking about Steve Keenan in this place, but he's not the first one to raise issues about the Robinson's conduct when it comes to others.

This first really broke out when one board member, Renee Molnar, emailed that she had been bullied and was concerned by Robinson's behavior.

Now that that's all been downplayed since then, but we've been hearing for quite some time before Mon ours accusations came out, issues concerning Robinson's conduct as leader.

Now the issue is nobody will really go on the record and talk with us about it because they're very they're very concerned.

They're very concerned.

Last thing.

And that is that there are some questions now, too about his disappearing emails.

He uses a function in Gmail where you can send an emai and then suddenly it evaporates.

We live in a stat where the communications between a public official like him and others is public record.

We should have them in perpetuity, but they're disappearing.

There's a complaint about that as well.

And it would seem if you rea Ohio's Open Public Records that having emails, this is confidential Gmail or something like that, where they're designed to disappear over a certain amount of time.

You also can't copy them or take photos of them.

This is in stark violation o the state's public records law.

So there is that concern that's been raised as well.

And then he's been butting heads or the unions been butting heads.

They've been butting head throughout much of his tenure.

They have filed for complaints against him at this point.

Akron Mayor Seamus Malik want the city to spend three quarters of $1,000,000 on an outside firm to conduct a use of force.

Policy review for Akron police.

This after the latest police fatal shooting that a 15 year old Jasmine Tucker.

Andrew, let's start with the officer involved in the shooting.

We're learning more on his background.

He's been involved with a use of force incident previously, actuall more than one involvement.

Yes.

And Huntsman has been polling requesting records, personnel records for Davon Fields.

And what we've found out so far is that he was involved in a previous polic involved fatal shooting in 2022.

In that case, they're responding to a domestic dispute and the person who came to the door had a gun in his hand, refused to put the gun down, according to police and Fields and his partner shot and kille that that that person, that man.

I remember seeing the video of that and that was deemed to have been according to following departmental policies.

So he was on he was on paid administrative leave.

He was eventually cleared on that one.

I will say also that it turns out that Fields was respondin to the Jaylin Walker shooting, but he was not one of the eight.

We need to be clear, not one of the eight officers who actually fired on.

He arrived at the scene after that, Jaylin Walker had been shot.

We've reported that Jasmine Tucker had a gun that was in a pocket that appeared to be zipped when we saw the video.

It was unzipped to pull the gun out.

But we found this week ballistics matched the shell casings on the ground near him to those near where police fired on Tucker.

And this is according to a national database that tracks ballistics.

And that information was released by its curious by Akron police, as opposed to the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, which is handling th investigation into the shooting.

What this would indicate, you would guess the reason why we're hearing about this is that it notes tha he must have fired some shots.

That's th that's what the indication is.

If you see Shell, that would be the inference in this case.

Don't know who at where t because the video doesn't show any of that.

And we've talked before abou how the video wasn't activated.

What we see is essentiall the gun of the police officer.

We don't see what's happenin with the suspect at that time.

Exactly.

Let's get into the rift about hiring an outside firm to review the department's use of force policy.

The mayor wants to spend $768,000 to deal with this.

There are council members that say, no, we ought to go a different way.

Yeah, Councilman Eric Garrett has been leading really the most the charge on this one the most vocal critic of this.

His complaint is that why spend city money on this when Justic Department of Justice can come in, will come in, could come in and do it for free.

So the city of Cleveland would give an answer.

The city of Cleveland is scraping to get out, scratching to get out from under a consent decree.

It's continuing to do its work.

It has a monitor There's a lot of cost involved.

And the city of Cleveland is saying, hey, I think we're substantially done.

The monitor is saying you're not merely down.

So it Akron's wha this councilmember is saying is let's get into that situation.

Let's essentially enter int a consent decree with the DOJ.

That would be the inference is it's time for justice to come in.

But meanwhile, you have Mayo Malik saying this is well worth the investment.

The money is what we have in hand.

They're going to pull from ARPA fund because they have $145 million that they got from the federal government on this, somewhere around $68,000, some council members would argue, well worth the investment.

Councilmember Bruce Bolden say, look, let's spend the money now.

Let's, you know, can it say one more person's life if we make the investment now, the Cleveland Department of Health, along with local partners including Case Western Reserve University, has launched it first health survey in a decade to help better understan health challenges in the city.

Cleveland Public health director Dr. David Margolis said the results could impact public health policy.

Stephen, you reported on the survey.

Public health experts you spoke with said it's been a while since there's been the kind of effort here to collect solid data around the community.

Right?

It's been a decade since there's been Cleveland specific data taken on health, health habits, health outcomes and what's key abou this is by looking at community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood health impacts, you're able to tell, you know, wher there are gaps in health care, wher there are particular problems, what the trends are and what needs to change, and where there needs to be additional attention.

And so can make a huge difference in terms of how to best handle and address health problems in the city.

And so this is somethin that they've been anticipating and really looking forward to doing, following up on.

How will that survey work?

Is it online?

Do they go door to door?

What is it?

So what they're doing is they're sending out postcards to random groups throughout the city, inviting peopl to participate in this with the the idea that there are weekl raffles, $50 prizes for people to participate, participate.

Also, people can volunteer through online or phone engagement.

And what are the essential we watching out for the researchers?

There are specific thing that they think they might see.

Well, some of the things they're looking at are people getting routine care or cancer screening.

They're also assessing issues like tobacco usage, food insecurity and housing and transportation insecurity, things like that.

Just to see what trends look like in particular areas where there are problematic issues of health.

And we'll get some details about when when we hear some results.

So there should be initial results in February.

And I also want to mention something else that's happening in the city that's worth noting actually throughout several counties, which is for the first time ever, there is an extensive there has been an extensive survey of LGBTQ health assessment for Lorain County, Cuyahoga County, I think Lake County as well.

That was completed.

And they're looking through the data right now to see what that means for that community across several counties.

And Amazon Web services are looking to invest $10 billion to expand its data centers across Ohio.

The investment makes it the second largest plant in state history behind Intel, where we've heard a little bit of worry because the Intel business model and we've seen some layoffs there, although they say they're committed to what they're doing in central Ohio.

Karen, the state is bullish on the Amazon expansion as well, saying it' going to create a lot of jobs.

Apparently, Ohio is the third largest data center state in the country.

And when you drive aroun central Ohio, you could see that because there's a lot of construction.

I mean, you've got Google Amazon, Web Services, Facebook, all of these entities that have built here.

And of course, the Intel Project, the largest private investment in state history.

This would be the second largest.

And the real concer and you hinted that at before, before the break, is the demand on energy that these data centers and Intel are going to be.

And there's real questions about how there will be a response to that, because the the energy load in central Ohio is six times what it was in 2020 already right now, and it's expecte to increase sevenfold by 2030.

So there's a lot of excitement about these projects.

But then there's real concern about how are we going to make sure that they have enough electricity to keep going.

Director James Gunn has released the first trailer for his upcoming Superman movie, which filmed extensively in Cleveland and other parts of Ohio last summer.

Cleveland figures prominently in the trailer.

Fans have notice it was the talk of social media.

And you going to see the trailer?

Yes.

So exciting and so exciting.

I'm like, Hey, that's why I feel arcade in there.

I've been there.

I know.

I was watching every fram going, Oh my God, there it is.

There it is.

It's so funny to make time for our producers and host to be home for the holidays.

We'll be bringing you Encore presentations in the coming days of some of our favorite discussions from the year.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas, our conversation with local experts about what zero waste sustainability entails.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.