(upbeat music) - I thought we had a deal.

So it says Governor Mike DeWine, to school districts that don't plan a return to hybrid or in-person learning by March 1st, despite being prioritized for the COVID vaccine.

Meanwhile, the legislature moves to limit the governor's power in leading the pandemic response.

And a warning from the Cuyahoga County, medical examiner.

After a string of winter weather related deaths, ideas is next (gentle music) - Brought to you by Westfield offering insurance to protect what's yours.

Grow your business and achieve your dreams.

(gentle upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Tony Ganzer in for Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

COVID vaccinations are well underway but the efforts have not been without hiccups.

Winter weather caused vaccine shipment delays and some providers had to reschedule appointments.

And it seemed like there was a bit of cold there between governor Mike DeWine and some of the state's largest school districts over vaccine doses given to school staff as part of a deal to get kids back in classrooms.

At least part-time by March 1st some schools said they wouldn't make the deadline.

We'll talk about that and much more ahead on the reporters round table.

Joining me this week, Ideastream health reporter, Anna Huntsman.

WKSU reporter Kabir Bhatia and Statehouse News Bureau Chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get started.

- It began as a chiding in a late Friday press conference, last week - We have learned that there are a handful of schools that have indicated that they will break that promise - DeWine had initially talked about redirecting vaccine doses from districts that wouldn't meet the March 1st target.

But yesterday the governor seemed to take a more positive approach.

- The fact that some schools may miss this by a few days is not good, but I think we need to keep our eye on the ball that the glass is about 95% full, and we should not fixate on the 5% or so that it's not full.

- Kabir Bahtia, What changed in one week?

- Well, in one week certainly, he's had a lot of conversations with districts both to the biggest, which are up here, Cleveland and Akron.

He spoke to them and Akron more so than Cleveland.

He was very concerned about this missing for lack of a better term, the March 1st deadline.

To get schools reopened and get people vaccinated.

And school officials at both schools seems to have taken that to heart.

They've announced in the next few days they're gonna have plans about reopening or making sure that all the staff is vaccinated or at least all the staff that wants to be vaccinated given that these are two of the biggest districts in the state.

It really seems as though that's assuring him.

I can't speak for the governor that schools in general are going to be getting at or near this March 1st day to reopen and get students back in whether it's physically in person five days a week or something very close to that.

- As you mentioned, Northeast, Ohio is in the spotlight.

He called out Akron and Cleveland public schools but Kabir Akron had already received vaccines.

Right?

So, so what is the reaction been there?

- Well, there it's that the people who want it, that's why I use that phrase the staff were able to get it.

But the issue for lack of a better term is that there are many parents who wanna keep their kids still out there.

Many parents who need their kids to be back in and maybe special needs and that's already been happening.

But the district has been saying we're doing our best to get everyone in both shots and get them back in while still offering these hybrid options for the students that need them.

And they've been saying that we're doing our best and they've already released their plan for dates but the superintendent David James, who's actually about to retire says, they're going to discuss it again and maybe come back next week with an accelerated plan.

Since they had originally said we'll do it more mid, late March.

- The governor said in that initial press conference he was in touch with Cleveland schools, CEO, Eric Gordon initially saying Gordon's pledged to try his best to meet the target was good enough for DeWine despite the very harsh language that he began that press conference with.

And it seems to have eased over the last week.

Anna Huntsman, where is the issue now in terms of Cleveland, what do we know about the vaccination plan, the return to classroom plan?

- So we know that so far Cleveland has been having clinics with staff members and staff members who want to get the vaccine have had certain timeframes when they could go in.

Obviously, I'm not up to date on it as much as some of our, education reporters and things like that.

But as far as I know things have been going pretty smoothly.

I think a big issue with all these schools and the reason it may have taken so long is because there's just not enough vaccine.

And so schools are only getting a certain amount at each time.

And so therefore if you have a lot teachers and staff members who want to come in and they don't have enough for you at that time you just can't get it right then.

And so you might have to wait another week or something like that.

And so it could be that some teachers can't get their first dose until after March 1st, because there just wasn't enough vaccine at the time.

And so they have to schedule it after.

But I do believe considering, DeWine did have that conversation with Eric Gordon and he said they're trying their best that hopefully there's an understanding there that there are of course logistical issues that come with this.

And of course, it's, I know teachers in many cases are uncertain about wanting to go back in the classroom.

And again, like Cleveland has not at all been back in the classroom.

They're one of the ones that have been fully remote all year.

So I imagine with these schools, it's going to be even harder to get the figured out as far as returning to in-person learning and what all has to be set up there.

If you haven't done it all year, you know it might be a little easier for some of the schools that have done a hybrid model or have been fully in person.

So again, I think there's a lot of challenges here but as far as we know, the Cleveland school district is on track and hopefully going to reach that target - Karen, it seemed like the governor even at the initial press conference, recognizer could be ethical concerns here by saying he would be redirecting doses from districts that weren't going to meet the March 1st deadline.

Again, he seems to have backed off that.

Was this a real threat or do you think the governor was just trying to get a point across?

- I'm not really sure it was definitely a tone change that's for sure.

Because when you have this press conference on Friday afternoon, which is kind of an unusual thing for him to do anyway to have a press conference late on Friday it kind of feels like an emergency situation.

And yet he did specifically say, we'll just have to cut off the vaccinations because that was the deal referring to the promise that school districts made to have their kids either in person or in hybrid learning by March 1st.

So their school employees could get those vaccines.

And so those school employees could be moved up into that one big group, which includes people over 65 and really there's 2.2 million people already in that group.

So to move those school employees up was a big deal.

But then he was asked again at the news conference yesterday and he said, we're going to keep our word.

We are not going to fail to give them the second dose because many school employees have already had that first dose.

I mean, we're into the third week here of school employees having that first dose.

So to pull that back would have been in DeWine's own words, irresponsible.

And so now I think he's just trying to make sure that schools really do prioritize the idea of going back as close to March 1st as possible.

He wants them to take that seriously but I think that there's an understanding that it's just not going to happen for some districts but as he said, the number of school districts that are all remote has gone from 42% down to 12%, as we said that's the thing that he wants to look at and and keep his eye on.

- In terms of political pressure.

You mentioned that tone change was there much political pressure over this last week in Columbus about the governor's wording at that initial press conference?

Because I know there were questions in the press but the governor's not necessarily going to move this quickly or pivot this quickly just based on questions.

- Well, I think DeWine had a tendency to do this.

He's said some things in one press conference then the next day or a couple of days later after further consideration things have changed.

I mean, for instance, he issued a mask mandate and then not even a couple hours later this was last spring.

He said, well, we're going to pull that back and make it something that really will be optional.

Now, of course, we're in a different kind of a mask mandate now, but still it's for a lot of people, it's not an enforceable.

You can get arrested or cited kind of a mass mandate.

But so I think that this kind of is some of DeWine's thinking as things are happening he wants to get a point across.

He wants to put it out there and then other stakeholders weigh in, for instance teachers' unions have weighed in saying this is complicated.

It's not just about vaccinations.

And in fact, the CDC doesn't even require teachers to be vaccinated for schools to be open.

And so teachers unions and school groups have said, "Hey there are a lot of things that are required here to open schools back up you need to have protective equipment you need to have material supplies you need money."

And so for school districts to be fully prepared for that that's what they were focusing on.

It wasn't just the vaccine.

It's all the other things that go into this to make sure that there's appropriate social distance.

How do you get kids to school if you can only see 20 kids per bus because you're trying to maintain social distance there.

How do you get kids back into classrooms that are already overcrowded?

DiWine keeps pointing back to the hybrid model and saying you can only go, you can have it so that you go every other week or you have different cohorts in the classroom, but his point is still, he wants to see kids back in a physical classroom at some point, starting on March 1st - Health reporter and a Huntsman maybe remind us what are the federal guidelines right now on schools returning and how inline with that is Ohio?

- Well, the federal guidelines actually only recently came out for schools reopening.

And so that's coming from the CDC and actually the CDC recommended things that Ohio schools have already been doing and has been part of Ohio's guidance.

So it's making sure that desks are spread apart six feet apart that you can maintain proper social distancing in common areas, correct and constant wearing of masks, disinfecting surfaces all of those things that we've been doing throughout the pandemic to ensure that, places can be clean and that proper social distancing can be maintained.

Those are all recommendations from the CDC.

And as Karen mentioned, it's not a requirement.

They are not saying that teachers should be required to get the vaccine.

Because again, these measures have been proven to significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19 in areas, including the classroom but something that's really interesting about the CDC guidance is that it recommends that schools returned to the classroom based on the amount of community spread in the area that the school is in.

And this is something we've heard from the Cuyahoga County board of health officials throughout the pandemic is if you see a higher rate of community spread, meaning that the rates of the virus in the area in Cuyahoga County if they're high, we're going to see cases in schools.

They kind of go hand in hand the cases in schools mirror what's going on in the surrounding community.

And so the CDC said if there's a high incidence of spread in the community to maybe not consider reopening quite yet but I seen some analysis that say that would mean 90% of the counties in the country would would not qualify to go back to school.

And so obviously we're not seeing that many school districts in here, here in Ohio have returned already.

And you look at the Ohio map and you see all those red counties.

That means that all of those places are still experiencing a high incidence of spread but we have reopened schools and Ohio has guidance for them.

And we have seen through contact tracing that the virus isn't really spreading in schools.

And so we've had a successful mostly successful run with it so far.

But I do think it's interesting that the CDC guidance is a little stricter than we are seeing here.

- And the governor has said that his March 1st deadline is not magical.

That's one of his quotes, but he also said that he had set that date and school districts agreed to it whether or not they had been fully vaccinated by that time.

And just because the the governor wants this could be, Bhatia.

That doesn't mean parents are on board.

- No, not at all.

There are parents, I think in Cleveland alone they surveyed and there was something like 37,000 families or at least 37,000 parents who said they would prefer to keep their students, Oh, I'm sorry it was 6half of that.

I don't want to jump the gun.

Half of the 37,000 surveyed said we would just prefer to keep our students home.

But there are a lot of parents who have been saying this is a mental health issue having them home this long, having them on screens.

And it's a big struggle as we've seen in a a lot of districts where they don't know whether they should go hybrid all in completely remote that's throughout the state, whether it's Northeast, Ohio or not rural urban districts, all of them, there has been a real struggle for parents whether they should actually send the parent the kids back in or not.

And a lot of times it has to do with who else is in the home.

The children may be asymptomatic, but if they're carrying things back, that can also be an issue.

So governor DeWine mandate of March 1st as we've seen, schools are probably gonna have a tough time meeting that many of them but parents as well are really struggling with whether they want to go back after March 1st.

- Yeah.

Going to Karen, we were mentioning that a lot of this leg work was sent down to the local level health departments local vaccine providers but it appears we might be moving toward a more centralized system for arranging vaccine appointments.

Can you talk about why this wasn't something we did from day one?

- Well, I think DeWine wanted it to be moved down to the local level because that's the way that people have been connecting.

I mean, the idea of having a local health departments and we have more than a hundred of the state, 113 I believe having them coordinate with providers and kind of taking the state out of it because the state is kind of overseeing this whole effort.

I think that was the whole goal.

And for some people it's worked, I mean for people who were in the early groups to get vaccinated this has been a system that is, has been okay.

I mean, for instance, my parents have gotten have been able to access vaccines but now that the group is getting larger 2.2 million people in that group, one B and that doesn't even include the school workers.

Then you start doing the math between 2.2 million people who are now eligible for the vaccine.

The state gets about 140,000 vaccines a week.

There's a big difference in the supply and demand here.

And so you have a lot of providers that either aren't getting the vaccine they're running out when they do get the vaccine they have to make sure that there was a priority given to people who've already gotten that first dose.

So they don't miss the second dose.

And so DeWine had talked this week about a centralized hub where people can go to one place and schedule with their shots rather than going to three or four different providers.

I just, again, anecdotally my parents when they were scheduling their vaccine they were going to three or four different providers in their area that had the vaccine.

So for some people who are not technically savvy and internet savvy that's not a great system.

So DeWine wanted to set up something that was a centralized clearing house.

He said that it's now operational for the providers to put their information in there now working through their waiting lists.

And then eventually it will go online.

And ideally, I guess it will go online when that group under 65 opens up, because that's gonna be the big flood of people.

Who are gonna be trying to access the vaccine.

When it's now, right now, it's 65 and older but then when you start opening it up to the general population, that's when potentially a centralized hub could really be helpful.

As people are trying to figure out where the vaccine might be and how far will they have to go to get it 'cause that's already happening.

- Do we have any idea how long it would take to get this centralized system up and running?

Or is it just theoretical at this point?

- Well, it's up and running for the providers to enter their information, but it's not up and running for people to go to and actually access.

And DeWine didn't have a timeline on when that might happen.

And, and so of course that's, its frustrating for people who were hoping to see that happen sooner rather than later, but these things take time.

It's kind of in the beta testing.

Situation right now, where it's the first phase is done but it hasn't launched to the general public.

But again, I think the hope is, they would launch, when or close to the time that people under 65 would be allowed to get that vaccine.

'Cause that's gonna be a big deal.

And DeWine was asked specifically about that this week, when might people, when might another age group that's eligible for the vaccine be announced.

And he hasn't said when that's gonna be because obviously still working through that one B group and getting those people over 65 and school workers and also catching up with people who didn't get the vaccine before.

I mean, if you worked in healthcare or in a nursing home and you were on leave or you just recently got hired, you've got to get put into that system as well.

And so I think right now, the idea is just to try to catch all that group up and then open up the doors.

(upbeat music) - Ohio has been under a state of emergency due to the pandemic for nearly a year.

Governor DeWine signed the emergency order last March a bill on its way to the Ohio house would seek to limit the governor's ability to make such declarations and also limit the amount of time, public health orders could remain in effect.

Senate bill 22 pass the GOP led Senate along party lines.

Its sponsors says the bill is necessary to provide a check to the power of the executive branch, during this pandemic.

- Karen, the governor vetoed a similar bill.

He had initially said he was gonna veto this one too.

But again, it seems like he was taking a softer, gentler approach in his press conferences at least yesterday.

- Yeah.

I mean, when he was asked about Senate bill 22 on Tuesday, he said that he would veto it and he had harsher words for it than he did on Thursday when on Thursday he was talking about, this is a bill.

That's not as much about him.

It's about the future governor and future pandemics, future emergencies.

And so he's still putting that out there.

That he's very concerned about the legislature taking away the power of a governor to make these quick actions to try to protect public health.

And he's very concerned about that but he also really had the door wide open to having talks with the legislature about what can we do so that he doesn't have to be told this.

But once again, this conversation from, I guess about the middle of last spring maybe even has been about the role that different branches of government are playing in this kind of an emergency situation.

I mean, DeWine and the department of health, which is under his purview, they've had an extraordinary amount of power, but they've also said that they believe that they need to be able to use that power because they can move quickly.

The legislature takes more time.

It's takes time to get 133 state legislators to come and decide on anything.

And when you start adding in the hearing process and all the testimony from opposed people and supporting people, it really starts to slow down when you're trying to get something done quickly but legislators have said, they feel like they need to play a role here.

If they feel that the governor's taken too much of his authority.

And they also point to other States that they say have similar measures in place that restrict the length of States of emergency for instance, or give lawmakers some sort of a role.

And so now that it's passed the Senate, I was talking to speaker Bob cup yesterday and he says that he is on board with putting this into the legislative.

To have legislators play a role here.

But he's also, it sounded like open to having some conversations with Dewine.

About how to make this happen so that Dewine doesn't veto it.

And the lawmakers have to come back and override that veto as they're trying to deal with the state budget and all the other things that are going on.

(upbeat music) - Cuyahoga County says, it expects to financially help the Hilton Cleveland downtown hotel for a second year in a row.

The hotel like many others has seen a sharp downturn in business due to the pandemic.

The County paid nearly $8 million toward the hotel in 2020 and expects to pay about 14 million this year and amount already approved by County council.

Kabir of the payments have been described as bailouts by some, but the County is contractually on the hook for some responsibilities.

So is this a bail out or not?

- Well, since so many people have said, it's a bailout I'm not going to try and disagree with them.

I can just outline the fact that this money is going to a hotel that has not done well, as you said.

With low numbers and the city is on the hook, with Ed Fitzgerald actually put this deal together when the hotel was being built and really the hotel is being managed by Hilton.

It's owned by the port authority.

It was built with a lot of bonds and County sales tax.

So putting this money into something, that's not doing as well and there's no indication what the numbers will be for the future, even what the numbers are currently those are being kept proprietary or being claimed they're proprietary..

So to bail out this hotel with these funds to keep it afloat seems to be the perfect way to describe something like this especially since the city is really the lion's share of the responsibility for this facility is on the city.

And I'm not sure exactly how the agreement is written as far as management and contracts but it's a Hilton hotel in name and management but it really, the larger picture is that it's a city of Cleveland property for lack of a better term.

(upbeat music) - A health alert this week from the Cuyahoga County medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Gilson, issued a public health warning Wednesday after a string of winter weather related deaths.

At least seven people have died since February 1st due to harsh weather conditions.

It's the most fatal period for winter related deaths since 2009.

Anna Huntsman, it seems like these deaths are related to people not having adequate heat in their homes.

- That's correct.

That's correct.

That's what Dr. Gilson did say.

It seems like a lot of the deaths were because the people did not either have the best working heat in their homes or a similar circumstance that and like you mentioned, this is the so this the two weeks of that.

That was the most fatal period since 2009.

And so obviously we've been talking about the winter weather across the country, the unprecedented severity of it.

And we're better suited here up North with things like that but we are not immune to these problems, unfortunately.

And it is very unfortunate and sad news that we've seen this and obviously the health warning being issued shows that it's a really big problem - Dr. Gilson in his warning and then the County followed up later emphasizing that there are assistance programs available.

Can you talk a little bit about what that means?

What programs there are?

- Sure.

They outlined quite a few.

The first one is the two, one, one line.

This is through the United way.

So anyone can call that number for help with social and health and housing resources.

Another Avenue is the home energy assistance program or HEAP.

You can call the division of senior and adult services.

That's 2 1 6 4 20 6 7 0 0.

There's also the office of homeless services, winter reconnect order.

I'm trying to give these all just in case people need help.

And obviously, like I said before, the two, one one line and there's other resources through PUCO as well.

- And what other recommendations came from Dr. Gilson, there was something about just outreach, reaching out to your neighbors, right?

- Right, so I looked at the ages for the people who unfortunately perished because of this.

And they were all except one in their 60s, 70s, 80s even 90s.

So these were all older people, elderly people.

And so the County is urging, people who have elderly neighbors or who know elderly folks who may be more vulnerable to this type of thing, to really reach out to them and continue checking in on them.

Because they may be in a position where they're not reaching out for help or they may not even know that they need help.

And so just again checking on your elderly neighbors making sure that everything is okay that they have heat, food, things like that.

- That's going to wrap up our show coming up Monday on the sound of ideas.

We'll bring you the second in a series of community conversations on the consent decree put together by the United way of greater Cleveland and the Cleveland branch of the NAACP.

I'm Tony Ganser.

Thanks for watching.

(gentle upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [man] Brought to you by Westfield.

Offering insurance to protect what's yours grow your business and achieve your dreams.