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Early voting month is underway, with Ohio voters deciding two big issues and the battle over changes to the agency that sets policy for K through 12 education in Ohio continues in court and in the state school board's meeting room.

But what about in classrooms?

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Ohio's month of early voting started on Tuesday and voters are now deciding on issue one, a constitutional amendment on abortion and reproductive rights.

And issue two, a law legalizing recreational marijuana.

So I felt strongly about both of the main issues abortion and marijuana legalization.

So, yeah, in the middle.

I guess.

Oh, so.

Oh, I can see both ways on some things.

The big one for me and the reason I wanted to make sure I got this to is this election this year was I mean, I come every year, but I was issue one.

I was really passionate about that.

And I just I voted yes for that.

So we do a lot of things on the ballot, including my.

Election, that.

I think are.

Really important for democracy and to keep Ohio moving forward in the direction that I think the majority of Ohioans want to move.

There were no long lines reported, but the number of early voters so far is keeping up with the numbers from early voting in August, when another issue one was the sole question on the ballot.

Ohioans defeated that amendment, which would have raised the voter approval threshold required for future amendments, which Republican lawmakers put before voters to ensure the abortion issue in November would not pass.

There was action this week on a possible issue for next year's ballot a constitutional amendment to scrap how Ohio handles drawing district maps for lawmakers and hand it to a new citizens commission has cleared another hurdle in getting before voters next year.

Well, it took the group citizens, not politicians.

Three tries to get the attorney general's OC on their redistricting amendment earlier this year.

It took only 10 minutes for the Ohio ballot board to decide unanimously.

The proposal could remain as one issue.

I'm very pleased that we are going to move forward and recognize and support the citizens of the state of Ohio who have moved to create a fair opportunity for representatives at this at the federal and also the state level to be not the not the representatives, but their districts to be fairly drawn and to truly reflect all the things that Ohioans believe are important for having a representative government that is responsive to the citizens of the state of Ohio.

So that's why I was quick to second this amendment.

And I believe that we are finally recognizing the will of the people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator.

And I'll say that we're voting today to say that this contains one constitutional amendment.

We're not moving to support the petitioners, but I appreciate that you do.

If I may just respond.

I understand that.

But I think it's important to let the citizens know that not only are we following our legal and statutory duty, but also that we recognize and we honor them and the work that the thousands of Ohioans did to get this ballot initiative To this particular point.

We applaud the Ohio ballot board for seeing this as one issue because it is it has one single goal of restoring fairness into Ohio's redistricting process because Ohioans have been facing gerrymandering for decades.

And both Republicans and Democrats have done this in Ohio.

And it's her every Ohio voter.

And the quality of legislation that we get or I should say differently, Gerrymandering in Ohio has been done by Republicans and Democrats.

We see time and time again that politicians will put their own reelection first.

And that's harmed every Ohio voter because it means we have less quality representation, we have more extremes representing us in the Ohio State House and in Congress.

Citizens, not politicians, now has to gather more than 413,000 valid signatures by early July to get onto the November 2024 bout.

The battle over leadership in the Ohio House took a new turn this week as three Republican state representatives filed a lawsuit against Republican Speaker Jason Stevens, claiming that Stevens does not have the authority to control the caucuses campaign account.

Representative Derek Maron, Ron Ferguson and Phil Plummer filed their suit against Stevens and Representative Jeff Luray.

In April, an agreement was signed that put Laray and Plummer in charge of the Ohio House Republican Alliance.

But the three representatives suing claim that Stevens did not follow through on his end of the deal.

Stevens has said as speaker, he controls the fund.

And after a House session this week, he called the lawsuit frivolous.

Yeah, I think it's interesting.

You know, if you look at, you know, the fact that I'm not sure any of the folks who filed the lawsuit contributed anything to the caucus, I find it pretty interesting if you go in and you can look at the finance reports, you guys can do some reporting there, you'll see that over half of our caucus is given to the given to the caucus.

There's a lot of participation.

People are ready to to move on.

And I think it will you know, it's going to bear out the facts will bear out that you look at the expenses and it's you know, we're we're taking care of all the caucus.

We're trying to be helpful.

We want to elect Republicans and we're raising the money.

And you see those who are contributing to the caucus.

You will see that we are moving forward.

Even though the Republican caucus had initially agreed to elect Marin as speaker last year, Stevens won the speakership in January.

In a surprise upset with the help of all 32 House Democrats, while Marin got more Republican votes than Stevens.

Marin has said all year that makes him the leader of the Republican caucus.

All House seats are on next year's ballot and control over that campaign money, especially in districts where candidates backed by Stevens might be facing primary challenges from candidates backed by Marin.

Could make a difference.

It was another week of uncertainty for K through 12 education policy in Ohio, as the court case over the overhaul of the Ohio Department of Education goes on, a court order is still in place and a lawsuit filed by seven progressively aligned state school board members who sued Republicans over the transition from the Department of Education to the Department of Education and Workforce.

That transition includes the creation of a Cabinet level post appointed by Governor Mike DeWine to lead the new agency, and that agency would assume the authority over academic standards that has rested with the State Board of Education for 70 years.

This was the week of the State School Board's Monthly two day meeting.

But late last week an emailed announcement of the postponement of the meeting came from the Ohio Department of Education.

Though the DeWine administration says that agency died on October 2nd, but most of the state school board got together anyway.

I talked with Laura Hancock of Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer about the meeting that was not supposed to happen, but sort of did.

Walk me through what happened at Monday's Board of Education meeting.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

So late last week.

The president of the Ohio State Board of Education sent out an email saying that the October monthly regularly scheduled meeting was postponed due to litigation and vice on counsel and 11 members or 19 members of the school board.

11 members of the school board looked at this and said, We don't think this is right.

We don't think the way he canceled or postponed the meeting was right.

We want to proceed with the meeting.

So and these 11 members are conservatives, liberals, and they're often people who in the past have been bitterly divided against each other on cultural issues, culture wars, issues in schools.

But the 11 came.

They were all elected members except for one person who was appointed by Governor DeWine.

And they had a meeting on Tuesday and they had an agenda.

They had a they didn't really do anything like as far as business because everything's sort of in a holding pattern because of this litigation.

The only thing that they did, they went into an executive closed session to talk about presumably the lawsuit.

And not everybody who was there was involved in the lawsuit.

But everybody whose name is on the lawsuit was there.

And they also came up, they were in open session.

They composed a list of maybe like 15 or so questions that they wanted to send to board leadership.

The president and vice president of the Board of Education and who were not there.

Right.

They did not attend because they believed it was postponed, asking them, you know, on what basis did you postpone it?

Who does?

Does Ohio have an interim superintendent of public instruction?

And if so, who does that person answer to?

Who does The chief of staff of the Department of Education answer to?

Were you told to cancel the meeting?

And if so, who told you?

Just lots of questions like that.

The lawsuit continues.

As you mentioned, there's a temporary restraining order in effect until October 20th.

But this week there was some action on that lawsuit.

Yes.

So the judge in Franklin County Commons, Common Pleas court did criticize one member of the Ohio attorney general's office.

Basically, you have attorneys general representation on both sides.

The plaintiffs, because most of them are members of the state Board of Education, are being represented by one arm of the state.

And then the defendants, Governor DeWine in the state of Ohio, need to be represented by another arm of the attorney general's office.

Well, through communication, there was a mistake that the judge ended up seeing where the side representing the people who are suing emailed something to the side that is representing the other side.

So basically they're supposed to be more adversarial, but yet they were discussing legal strategy.

The attorney who made that mistake said it was an honest mistake.

She immediately has appointed outside counsel who are going to represent the members of the board of Education.

The judge, however, said, But this issue won't become moot because of that, because the way you dismissed yourself from the case, you know, you did it in a way where you could come back in a year and be the lawyer again.

And so she she was not happy at all.

It was kind of surprising to read that that order.

So all of this continues on, even as the Department of Education is dead.

According to Governor Mike DeWine, the state school board members say they still have the authority that they had before, that it has not been transferred to this new Department of Education and Workforce because of this temporary restraining order.

How long can this go on and what's happening in education policy at this point?

A lot of things are at a standstill.

I think that this lawsuit, the overall constitutional issues that are going to have to be answered in the lawsuit could go on for well over a year.

Right now, we are waiting.

The next thing we're waiting is for some clarification from the temporary restraining order from the judge, because that was asked of her.

And we're waiting on her to decide whether to do a preliminary injunction, which would be like an indefinite hold on any more changes in education while the lawsuit in the constitutionality is litigated, which is pretty common when you see the state over actions.

Yes.

So Governor DeWine said that absolutely certain functions of the Department of Education need to continue.

You can't just have everything go to a standstill.

So, for instance, administering the funding formula to public schools, accepting applications from parents who want their kids to get private school vouchers, things like that will continue.

If there's standardized testing in the spring, they'll be doing that, you know, basic functions.

However, other parts of the Ohio Department of Education.

He believes the way he interprets the law is that on October two, the Department of Education died and not because he declared it so, but because it's in the state law.

And the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce do was born and now he to comply with the judge's order, says he's not going to appoint any officials to work for that new department that they're but that they're just in a holding pattern.

So, yes, it's I think in the coming months it's going to be revealed how much the Department of Education is working.

I have talked to members of the state Board of Education.

Like who, if you need to ask a question about something on behalf of a parent, like who do you talk to?

And I've been told that some members of the department are very responsive and then some members are not so much and they don't know how much information they can trust from them.

Do we expect a state school board meeting next month?

We expect one on the 30th of October, actually, because this particular group that did meet said that their next meeting was going to be October 30.

And so I imagine that will be continue to happen.

And again, it will be a divided board.

We're not everybody shows up.

And when you don't have like at the meeting that happened most recently, there was not staffing by the Ohio Department of Education and that usually they give updates.

I mean, there's like dozens of education staffers in there are giving updates on various programs.

There's so many of them.

And then also they have usually the Ohio Channel is in there broadcasting for the Internet and for the Ohio channel station.

And they also were not present.

As the court fight goes on, class also continues.

And Ohio's more than 600 school districts and four of the state's over 110,000 teachers, the state's largest teachers union, is not a party in the lawsuit, but the Ohio Education Association has expressed serious concerns about this overhaul.

Scott tomorrow leads the way.

So this has been seeing this whole Department of Education, Department of Education and Workforce issue has been seen by some as an administrative issue.

How is this affecting teachers or is it affecting teachers?

I think for the typical educator, this is a bit distant.

I don't I don't think there's a whole lot of this is that is directly affecting what's happening in the classroom.

But it raises a lot of questions.

One of the big initiatives that the status in the middle of implementing is moving to new reading standards.

And there's a whole program of new curriculum and professional development that is planned in that.

I think the expectation is that regardless of what the name of the department is, that they're still going to be providing support in that regard.

But given the uncertainty around the transition, there's certainly a lot of confusion.

There are things that the Ohio Department of Education wants teachers to do.

The old Ohio Department of Education, training programs and that sort of thing.

Are these things going forward?

Does anyone know what's happening with some of these things that the Ohio Department of Education did do before it ostensibly died?

Yeah, I think there was starting to be some transition and delineation of responsibilities under what is going to be the new Department of Education workforce and the department.

That is directly responsible to the state Board of Education.

And, you know, the lawsuit has some uncertainty in terms of where things stand.

But the day to day functions of the department are still supposed to be ongoing.

What I've been told through the grapevine is that we don't call it the Department of Education.

They're just going by the department, you know, And I think there are important day to day functions that that are happening.

You know, our concern with this whole process and as we were weighing in with the legislature is the decision was made to go in this direction.

As, however, the Department of Education is organized, there needs to be a place, a meaningful role for stakeholder engagement.

You know, we represent 120,000 public school educators across the state who are in the trenches working to provide students with learning opportunities every day, whether it's licensure or professional development or learning standards.

It's really important that educators have a voice in the profession.

It's really important that parents have a voice in the state Board of Education provided an avenue for that.

It's not clear yet what those avenues for stakeholder input are going to be.

Now, the name change from the Ohio Department of Education to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce was only part of that.

But what about that idea of adding workforce to the Department of Education?

I mean, isn't the goal to create an educated group of kids that goes out and is ready for college or career?

Yeah, I think that's always been the case.

It seems that, you know, there's a political decision to try to put more emphasis on workforce development.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

But I think as educators, we also know that the value of education is not just preparation for a job, it is about creating lifelong learners.

It's about creating effective citizens.

It's about giving our young people the tools that they need to be successful wherever they're going to go in life and to create worthwhile, enriching, engaging opportunities for learning while while students are still in school.

So, however, the system gets organized.

Educators need to be supported.

We need resources.

We need, you know, the respect and support to give our students what they need to succeed.

Lieutenant Governor John Houston was on the show last week saying that this transition would make the Department of Education and Education in general more accountable and transparent that the Department of Education itself, the one that died through the budget process, has been leadership without a leader less without a permanent superintendent, because the state school board, he says, is dysfunctional and hasn't hired one now.

Also on last week's show, state school board member Michel Newman said, well, a permanent superintendent hasn't been hired except for Steve Dakin, who was hired and left after a little over a week.

There have been two interim superintendent who she says have done great work, and the work hasn't stopped at what was the Ohio Department of Education.

But all of this speaks to there is bureaucracy in the Ohio Department of Education as it was.

Is the status quo the right, right thing for kids or does a change need to be made?

Well, I think this issue about, you know, the state board not fulfilling its responsibility in hiring a permanent superintendent needs some context.

And that is the reason that they haven't been able to move forward has been all the uncertainty created by the legislature in this reorganization, which.

Michele Newman did say.

Right.

And so I think that I think it's important to keep that in mind.

I don't care what you call it.

I don't care whether it's directly a cabinet agency or not.

There were there will always be some element of bureaucracy.

And the question is, what is the best way for the citizens of Ohio to provide oversight over our education system?

Having an elected school board who have that as their responsibility to go out and connect with leaders in schools and connect with students and parents, I think has provided a real good opportunity for that.

It remains to be seen whether someone who is appointed by the governor is going to be doing it as effective a job and doing that kind of engagement.

But when you talk about a 19 member state school board, 11 members are elected, eight members are appointed by the governor.

Is that more of a responsible in terms of responsive to the public way of doing this than having a governor, a single person who people know and vote for being the person who's held accountable and responsible?

Well, we do know that regardless of who's governor, the governor has always played a very active role in trying to guide legislation.

We also know that is the legislature that passes laws that push the direction for education.

But on the day to day, things like setting learning standards and and monitoring our accountability system and overseeing licensure and professional development, you know, that is a department.

And and I think the state board has done a pretty good job of fulfilling its responsibility.

Could it be more efficient?

Certainly.

You know, I think it was Governor Voinovich who introduced the idea of adding eight appointed members to the state school board, to the original 11 that created some of the, you know, challenges and confusion that we have can always be better.

Again, from our standpoint, we just want to make sure that educators are supported and students have their needs met.

You criticized this budget that included this transition as being anti-public education because not only for this part of it, but also because of the expansion of the ED choice taxpayer paid school voucher program for private school tuition.

Wouldn't putting the governor in charge of public schools like this make him or her potentially more responsive and concerned about what's happening in public education?

Well, we hope that the governor is going to be concerned and responsive regardless.

You know, our concerns about voucher expansion were really about diverting resources from the 90% of Ohio students who attend public schools and essentially subsidizing people who had already been making the decision to send their kids to private schools.

Our Constitution calls for a thorough and efficient system of public education and, you know, it doesn't seem that providing a voucher to even millionaires, you know, gets us to that constitutional standard.

The Ohio Education Association did endorse Nan Whaley over Mike DeWine for governor last year.

And I'm just wondering, are you concerned about this because of who the governor is or would you be concerned about this kind of transition no matter who the governor might be?

I think we would have concerns no matter who or who it is.

And I will say that, you know, Governor DeWine has reached out, has asked for input in terms of, you know, the direction of this new department.

We appreciate that during COVID.

Governor DeWine was very interested and getting feedback from educators in the field on the best way forward.

And I think he showed a lot of good leadership there.

So, yeah, we have disagreements with the governor from time to time, but this is more about coming up with a structure and a system that makes sense for kids in Ohio, rather than politics.

And I will point out as I talk to my fellow educators across the state, there is little that frustrates them more is the injection of more and more politics into the classroom.

Educators want to be supported and free to do the job that they were trained to do, that they were hired to do.

And unfortunately, you know, this whole controversy around the future of the Department of Education or whatever we're going to call it, I think, you know, has a lot of people feeling.

Here we go again.

One more way that politics are injected into education.

In full disclosure, the Ohio Education Association is an underwriter of this program but has no involvement in the content or production of it.

For more on the lawsuit, check out our archive for last week's show, which features interviews with Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted.

The DeWine administration's point person on education policy and workforce, and state school board member Michelle Newman, who is among the seven who filed the lawsuit.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at State News dot org or find us online by searching state of Ohio show.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans.

Peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community more at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.