- Republican leaders in the Ohio house shelve a bill that would have allowed for COVID-19 vaccine mandates while making it easy to Dodge them with exemptions.

The Cleveland clinic and university hospitals say transplant patients and living organ donors must be vaccinated against COVID-19 or no surgery.

And Ohio releases its latest batch of state report cards for local school districts.

The pandemic has been tough on education, especially for students in poor urban districts.

Ideas is next.

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(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks for joining us Republican leaders in the Ohio house, shelved, a bill that would have allowed for COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but with exemptions that made it easy to avoid vaccination.

The house speaker says it's time to move on from that.

And other bills relating to vaccine mandates.

The Cleveland clinic and university hospitals say transplant patients and living organ donors must be vaccinated against COVID-19 where the procedures are off.

It's a move.

The hospital system say is needed to protect patients.

New state report cards for local school districts show the negative impact on learning for students all over.

Though.

Those in poorer urban districts are hardest hit secretary of state Franklin rose literally held up a help, wanted sign because the state is short big time on election day poll workers.

Why we'll talk about those stories and many more on the reporters round table.

Joining me this week from idea stream public media health reporter, Lisa Ryan, Ken Schneck editor of the Buckeye flame and in Columbus statehouse news bureau, chief Karen Kasler let's get ready to round table.

Karen, how, how speaker Bob cup gives the impression these bills have seen their last days?

- Well, this is really interesting and, and it's first worth noting that we are dealing with several bills that talk about vaccine mandates or dealing with those.

And so that's the moment that we are in time that we have several bills that are dealing with vaccine mandates and any sort of mandatory vaccines, which is interesting.

But there are two in particular that we're talking about here, like you just mentioned, there's the one that would ban according to the researchers who do the work for state lawmakers.

There's the bill that would ban all mandatory vaccines from childhood shots all the way up to the COVID vaccine that bill has had the long hearings.

You talked about the national attention that Ohio got when the Northeast Ohio doctor talked about the false testimony that she gave on the COVID vaccine, interfacing with 5G cell towers and magnetizing people.

Yet somebody show up and try to put a key on their body and it fell off, you know, all that.

There was that bill.

And then there was another bill that was considered kind of a compromise that would just deal with the likely COVID vaccine mandate.

That's coming from the federal government.

The one that would require either a COVID vaccine or testing for companies that have over a hundred workers.

So that bill was kind of seen as just a way to narrow in on the COVID-19 shots.

And this bill has had quite a saga.

It went to a committee hearing.

It got out of committee, it was supposed to go to the floor, got pulled then this week, same kind of a thing where it went to a different committee and it was supposed to go out and it got pulled right before a house floor vote.

And at that point that's when speaker cup said, okay, we're done.

We're moving on from all of these vaccine mandate bills because there is no consensus among Republicans.

There's consensus among Democrats.

They oppose all these bills, but there is no consensus among Republicans on whether these vaccine mandate bills are too tough on businesses or they don't go far enough.

Well then the chair of the health committee that was hearing the original bill, the earlier bill, the ban on mandatory vaccines, he decided to hold a hearing next week, written testimony, possible amendments and possible vote that got the letter last night from speaker cup saying you are hereby directed to immediately cancel the health committee currently scheduled for next week.

Upon receipt of this letter, please notify the members of the committee of the cancellation.

So basically.

Knock it off, - wait what do you mean?

That's so ambigious - It's, it's, it's the most direct thing I've seen from the speaker in quite a ride quite a while.

So this whole thing is just, it's really, it's been a back and forth saga here and, and this is all centered in the Republican caucus, because like I said, Democrats are United against these bills.

Republicans have been trying to decide where they fall on whether they support these or whether they want them to go further, whether they don't go far enough.

And of course, both of these bills have huge opposition from business groups, from health systems, all of this.

So it's been, it's been quite a saga, but I guess it looks like the speaker is saying we are moving on.

We're not going to hear any more of these bills.

[Upbeat Music] - The Cleveland clinic and university hospitals this week announced that organ transplant patients and living donors must be vaccinated against COVID-19 or the surgery is not happening.

We've been seeing some media coverage this week though, of some patients who are saying, I have gone through all of these protocols for months to be ready for this transplant.

I don't want to be vaccinated, but I want a transplant and they're denying it to me.

So we're where is this playing out now?

- Well It's not unusual for an organ transplant patient to get, be updated on their vaccines, to have to take certain medications, to stop smoking and drinking before their transplant.

So there are a lot of hoops to jump through in order to receive an organ transplant.

This is one more hoop, I suppose, that people have to jump through.

But like I said, it's not unusual for these vaccinations to be required because transplant patients have to take immunosuppressant drugs after their transplant so that their body doesn't reject their organs.

So, you know, with those immunosuppressant drugs, there's the potential for more infections afterwards.

So that's why we're seeing this vaccine be required.

But yeah, I, I did read an article about someone who was a living donor, who wasn't vaccinated, they're claiming, and that person, they, they canceled this transplant.

So that's wild to me to think that somebody could have potentially gotten that organ and, and that person who was donating the organ wasn't trans or wasn't vaccinated because both parties have to be in a live donation in this vaccine mandate.

So that part is interesting because in Oregon there, I read that apparently it opens up the patient to COVID-19 infection.

If the person isn't vaccinated, who's giving the organ.

So yeah, very, very interesting .

- This is not something exclusive to these two hospital systems.

This is something that we've seen play out nation.

- Yeah.

We are seeing this in other states as well, and we will likely see other organ transplant systems also do that as well.

- I always like taking this opportunity because even though the LGBTQ community cannot donate blood, I could not immediately go out right now and donate blood because of archaic laws out there on the books.

No such restrictions applied to the LGBTQ community for organ donation.

Cause it's yeah, yeah.

- I did not know that Ah, yeah.

About the blood piece, - right?

Oh yeah.

I hope listeners know that is an archaic law.

Even though I have that blood that can save everyone in this room because of laws from the early eighties, from the aids scare, the FDA says that there's a one year deferral, so I could not donate.

And, and it's only if I've been abstinent for one year, I could not go out and donate blood, but it's a different agency government agency that oversees organ transplants, an organ donation to the LGBTQ community is not barred from organ donation.

[Upbeat Music] - For a second straight year.

The state school report cards do not contain a grade or an overall rating.

Lawmakers decided not to include grades because of the impact the pandemic has had on education.

But the data shows the impact is profound and negative, especially for poor urban districts.

Karen we've known the pandemic impacted student performance, but the report cards show that just about every district and a few rare exceptions have lost ground.

- Yeah.

And I previewed this in a story I did about a month ago where the Ohio department of education to put out a report, really showing what the impact of the pandemic was on.

Especially low income economically disadvantaged kids.

And that there is a stark, there's always been a stark gap between kids at the lower end and kids at the higher end.

And it didn't get any better.

In fact, it got worse during the pandemic.

And so the report cards kind of back that up.

So what's, what's interesting about the report cards here is we've argued about how to express what school districts and school buildings have been doing on report cards for as long as I've been down here at state house in the 2004.

And for a while, there were these vague labels like continuous improvement and academic excellence.

And then former governor John Kay said, that's too confusing.

Let's replace that with letter grades.

Well then some lawmakers said that's too confusing.

And a lot of parents who pay property taxes got really upset when they started seeing letter grades for their districts.

That didn't look so good.

And so it was a law passed earlier this year that would change the letter grades, make them into a one to five star system.

And so that's where we're headed here.

But the, the last two report cards, this one that was just released yesterday and the one released last year did not have the grades on it, but just had some basic information because things were so influx in education.

I mean, graduation rate is still there.

You can see student performance data there, but to really get those, those letter grades, those overall things, they decided that it wasn't worth it to put those on there.

But these report cards do have a lot of important information.

Like I said, graduation rates, student performance index, which actually fell.

And there's a, a real drop, not only for public schools, but also for charter schools.

In fact, charter schools arguably dropped more than twice the level that public schools dropped.

So the last year of the pandemic was, has really been devastating to kids in schools and especially those at the lower income level.

- Yeah.

I can, especially those at the lower income levels.

And when you look at these districts, a lot of them had the digital divide to deal with when we talked about going to a remote learning, all kinds of other issues, just even with attendance and getting people involved.

But it's not a real surprise when we see the major urban districts and now they're, by the way, comparing themselves to each other and saying, I didn't do as bad as that other big urban district did, but still they all took it on the chin.

- Oh, they, they all took it on the chin.

And I was reading this morning, the different statements that came from Eric Gordon, the CEO of the Cleveland metropolitan school district and the statements coming out of Akron and the tones could not be more different.

And Eric's was so I don't know I'm I don't know why I'm just calling him Eric Eric's Eric Gordon.

So defeatist, I'm disappointed by these results, but not surprised we couldn't stand up to the relentless battering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

And what you're seeing is that these schools that have this is resources 1 0 1, right?

The schools that have more resources, which tend to be the wider districts and the more affluent school districts were able to put into place, more intervention strategies that could address what COVID was affecting so much.

And so you're seeing this great disparity for these districts that can't afford all of these new intervention strategies.

- Eric Gordon though, did talk about some of what he saw as the, not as bad.

I can't call it positive, - right?

But that the district did not lose as much ground as its peers.

And also that the graduation rate for the class of 2020, just under 81%, is the latest in a series of high marks for the district.

So there was some progress amid all of that gloom.

- There was also acknowledgement that there was going to be media coverage of this.

And so there, there were parts of this that were written up.

I know this is going to be covered.

So let me highlight these, these pieces.

And then as you noted what I found so fascinating as someone who studies education, this comparative ideology of all right, this is not good, but Hey, there were silver.

There that's a different strategy than I would have expected in some of these, but, but it's true.

- Karen, what, what kind of faith should we, I mean, you're a parent of a student, a young student, what kind of faith should we put in these report cards, given all of that, as you mentioned, all, it was, it was grades and it was a weird phrases.

And then it was going to be numbers.

And now it's nothing.

And we look at the data and yet I'm sure that our schools are telling everyone, Hey, we're doing the best we can, your students doing great.

So what should we make of the report card?

- Well, as people in the Ohio department of education will tell you, report cards are only one part of what's happening in schools.

If you really want to know what's happening in schools, go there, talk to people in the schools, talk to the teachers, talk to the administrators, really follow what your kids are doing and follow what's been happening in the larger school community.

So the report cards, I think this idea that somehow we could get one specific data point or one thing that really indicates how a school building is doing, I think is unrealistic because schools are doing so much.

And, and there are so many factors that come into play with how schools perform.

I mean, when kids go home every night, those factors do have something to do with what happens when they get into school when they're there.

And so I think, you know, with the whole discussion that we had earlier this week on the sound of ideas about vouchers and the idea to expand the voucher system in Ohio, you know, that's one of the elements that keeps coming in is the performance index is where that, that is one of the elements on the report cards.

That's where school buildings are deemed as failing.

And that's still just one data point.

And so school leaders will tell you that you can't just judge a school based on one data 0.1 letter, grade, one star, anything like that.

You have to see the big picture.

- Can.

We know that there has been loss in every district, even affluent ones, much greater loss in these urban districts in poor districts.

One of the things Eric Gordon talked about yesterday is we're not going to fix this even in a year.

It's not like we're going to get all that learning loss back.

So give us some time and we're going to make it up.

What about that?

Can students make up lost ground in all of these districts and particularly in the ones that are struggling already?

- Well, right?

Some of this is also going to be dependent on how colleges and universities respond.

You have to keep in mind that colleges and universities are a couple of years behind this.

Now we haven't gotten these students yet.

And so we're not yet seeing the effects of COVID on our incoming classes.

[Upbeat Music] - With less than three weeks until the November general election, Ohio needs thousands of temporary poll workers, secretary of state Franklin rose says 17,000 to be exact, and he's putting out the help wanted sign.

So what's making it so hard to fill these jobs.

- 70,000 Poll workers short.

And when I talked to secretary of state Frankel rose, who did literally, during our interview, hold up a help, wanted sign on the, on the zoom call.

He said, there are a lot of factors involved, the pandemic and other things, but I specifically asked him, is it possible that people are not coming out to be poll workers and engage in the election system?

Because his fellow Republicans have been continually putting out all this disinformation and lies about how the 20, 20 election wasn't legitimate and how president Trump won and all these things.

And he never pushed back hard on that.

He said in Ohio, we do things right, but he specifically said, I don't, I don't know about what other states are doing.

And, and while I, I have confidence in other states, I can't vouch for what they're doing, which I think that that's not a really clear statement on the integrity of the election system.

He's very strongly backing Ohio system, but then kind of waffles a little bit when it comes to what's being done around the country, which is exactly the argument that Republicans who support president Trump have been saying that they have questions about what's been happening in other states.

And over and over, we found that there are no questions that there are, that there's no evidence that there was anything that was happening in the 2020 election that should make it somehow not legitimate.

[Upbeat Music] - The state board of education has changed course after passing an anti-racism and equity resolution and the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in 2020, they rescinded it.

The resolution sought to condemn racism and to advance equity and opportunity for black students, indigenous students and students of color it directly.

How department of education to analyze curriculum and standardized tests for bias and provide training for all employees for implicit bias.

Now the school board has rescinded that resolution replaced it with a new measure that would condemn any quote curriculum or training programs for students, teachers, or staff that seek to divide or to ascribe circumstances or qualities such as collective guilt, moral deficiency, or racial bias to a whole race or a group of people.

So Ken, it went from a resolution about the treatment of students, of color, to a resolution about how white students are made to feel.

- How do we communicate fury over the airwaves?

Is there, cause this, this story is just unbelievable.

So we have to highlight this as an overly well overwhelmingly white board of education, state board of education.

And, and so they, they are saying there are other factors, right?

That it's not just race that contributes to disparities among students, but there are other factors as well.

And so they have rescinded, right?

The sense of urgency has decreased.

We're seeing this across society.

The sense of urgency has decreased post coverage of George Floyd though.

The, the actual urgency is still present.

And so you have some members of, of this board of education highlighting that you sure there are other factors that play in Merrill Johnson, Cleveland board member.

And one of the only black members of this board said that there, there are people who choose to believe that poverty is the problem, but it's quite clear when you separate out this data that students of color come out with lower scores than white children and in say Appalachia.

So yeah, this is a, this is a really disappointing way of, of backdooring more conversations as we've talked about, about critical race theory.

- It also shows what a difference 2020 is from 2020 as it relates to racial, the racial reckoning and the, you know, the discussion that was being had.

And now we look at 2021 and it's literally a full 180 degree turn.

- Sense of urgency, right?

This is a sense of urgency that has changed.

And so it was almost a reluctance, right?

That they, they passed this last year.

Well, here's what everybody else is passing.

So we need to do the right thing.

And suddenly it's not the right thing anymore, that the tenor of the conversation has completely changed.

This is a really, as a professor of education who mostly teaches about race.

This is a really disappointing story.

- Karen, this original resolution it's been under scrutiny awhile, Dave Yost, the attorney general had weighed in on, on some aspects of that.

Just talk about if you can, a little bit about the progress, the progression toward what just happened.

- Well, I think what you have to look at is the focus of particularly well actually exclusively Republican candidates on this idea of critical race theory.

And I kind of put that in quotes because critical race theory is a graduate level concept that is not taught in K through 12 schools in Ohio, but there are two bills in the state legislature that would ban the teaching of critical race theory.

And also what's called divisive concepts.

And I think that some of the people who testified, and this was a long meeting, I mean, board of education meetings are long.

Anyway, this one was really long because there were a lot of people who came and spoke out both for the existing, a resolution that was eventually pulled back.

And then also for the one that was put in place to replace it.

But yeah, the climate is totally different.

And a lot of that has to do with the fact that Republicans have really seized on this idea of quote, critical race theory as being a talking point and a point that they're going to campaign on.

And we've seen there was a demonstration last month outside the board of education meeting that was happening then from people who were opposed to the teaching of critical race theory, which again is not taught in K through 12 schools, but what can mentions about how the sport is very white, the diversity is just not there, especially when you compare it to the diversity in a lot of public education, especially in the urban schools and the, the, the, the, the big eight, the largest schools, you know, you've got board members, there was one Kristin hill.

She was actually at the Capitol on January six.

She said she was praying she was not involved in anything, but she was actually part of the whole demonstration that happened, which she's free to do.

But that just kind of brings another element up to this, that there is a political thing that's happening here that goes beyond just an educational stance.

I think.

- One last thought about this.

And can you open this by saying, how do you convey rage on the radio?

I imagine this is probably going to be something that would spark that a little bit as well, and that the new resolution literally used the language of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. To argue for the removal of the original anti-racism resolution saying, quote, "a growing national divide, but a troubling focus on the color of one's skin, rather than on the content of one's character".

- My literal next door neighbor is sitting right next to me.

So the more that you anger me, the more it's going to affect her later in the day, that is not what he said.

And to use Reverend King's language in that way, that that's not what Dr. King said.

He wasn't saying that that content of character, right, that somehow we've come to this interpretation, that content of character equals colorblindness.

That's absolutely the opposite of what he said.

He was talking about color consciousness.

You know, that this is an aspiration that allows us to identify the differences in everyone not to be colorblind.

And so to see again, an overwhelmingly white group of people use Dr. King's language in a way that completely takes out of context is yes, enraging.

[Upbeat Music] - The city of Cleveland will adjust its tree planting policy to address issues of equity.

The city has in the past use restoration of the tree canopy as the main consideration.

Lisa, walk me through this a little bit.

We know we are formerly the forest city.

We have a very, a very anemic tree canopy.

Now there's a big push to increase it, but it's not plant a tree anywhere.

- Right.

And I just, I find the intersection of environmental news and health news to be so fascinating because it's interesting how much just one tree or, you know, a few trees on your block could actually impact your health.

It decreases air pollution.

We find less illnesses in neighborhoods with more trees.

And typically the neighborhoods with fewer trees are the ones that are lower income.

You know, I, I read that essentially, if you look at a city's tree canopy, you can typically tell where the neighborhoods are that are low income just by where the trees are, you know, just from an aerial view, essentially.

So that's exactly what the city is trying to remediate and get some of these trees in these areas where there are more health disparities.

- And I know I saw something, I think it was on PBS where it also talked about the heat, the idea that the asphalt just bakes and it, and those neighborhoods are hotter.

And when we talk about hot summers, lot more dangerous, and if you had trees, it would be safer.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And the heat can impact so many different things.

I mean, it impacts a person's health.

They saw more heat related illnesses in areas with fewer trees.

But I mean, it could also just impact a person economically, too.

We see lower energy bills, if you have more shade in neighborhoods.

And so as the, you know, temperature gets hot or worldwide, when we see climate change, I mean, literally every single summer, we see the average temperature go up at least a degree or two, and it'll just keep getting hotter as well.

So think issues like this are incredibly important.

- And, and affected by the pandemic as well.

I wrote a story about this for, for Cleveland magazine, right When the pandemic was starting about the tree canopy and both Cuyahoga county and the city of Cleveland had pledged colossal sums of money to increase the tree canopy.

And it came at the exact moment that the pandemic was starting.

So a lot of plans there were going to be these public plantings.

Matt zone was a Councilman at the time.

And, and so many different events just had to be completely canceled.

They coincided almost nothing to do with each other, but timing wise, it happened at almost the exact same time.

So all these plans to increase the tree canopy, which was backed by, it was almost like $2 million with the county and the city just had to be morphed into something else.

- Monday on the sound of ideas on 90.3, WCPN a language barrier can prevent people from voting and isolate non-English-speaking voters from engaging in the political process.

Guest host, Anna Huntsman will lead a conversation about what some Clevelanders are doing to remove those barriers for the upcoming election.

I'm Mike MacIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

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