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You know, Ohio Education Association representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

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Delta eight and other unregulated THC products can go back on the shelves in Ohio for now.

A future Ohio State football player sues to open the door for Nil deals for high school athletes.

And schools are getting no break from a bus driver shortage that's dragged on for years.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

A ban on so-called intoxicating hemp.

Ordered by governor Mike DeWine was short lived, but it could come back later this month.

DeWine was sued by three Ohio based businesses after ordering a 90 day stop to all sales of hemp products with psychoactive ingredients like delta eight, THC or THC.

A Franklin County judge sided with the retailers, saying DeWine acted outside his authority and blocked the ban till hearing on October 28th.

DeWine told reporters this week that he said for two years that something needed to be done, so he did it.

this whole thing needs to be regulated.

It's a serious it's a serious, serious problem that's going on in the state now for for some time.

There's no age limit on kids.

When they go in, they can buy this stuff.

This stuff is dangerous and particularly dangerous in regard to children.

So we need to take some action.

That same judge also ruled against DeWine and Republican state lawmakers in blocking changes the state Teachers Retirement System Board.

A provision in the state budget would have cut the number of educators seats on the 11 member board from 7 to 3, with the rest chosen by elected officials or appointees.

Judge Carl LaVine said, adding that to the budget violated the single subject rule and shut down the changes, as a lawsuit filed by three educator unions moves forward.

A lawsuit filed against the Ohio High School Athletic Association will force a vote of member schools on whether high school athletes can get paid for use of their name, image and likeness.

The suit is on behalf of Jamir Brown, a wide receiver for Wayne High School in Dayton and one of the top football players in the country.

He's verbally committed to Ohio State in 2027, and he's missing out on more than $100,000 from Nil deals, according to his Columbus attorney, Luke Fiedler.

there are 44 states across the country in the District of Columbia that allow for name, image, and likeness for high school student athletes.

Ohio, unfortunately, is not one of them.

And there's opportunities for high school student athletes here across the state to be able to earn compensation from the use of their name, image and likeness.

And this is a lawsuit that focuses specifically on that.

Why do you why are you looking at high school athletes being paid?

I think people have gotten comfortable with the idea of college athletes.

Profiting from their name, image and likeness.

But high school students, I mean, how do you make that argument?

So again, when when we think about name, image and likeness, it is the licensing or the use of an individual's name, their image and their likeness, to a third party for compensation.

And we have gotten very comfortable with it at the house, at the college level and at the high school level over the past 2 to 3 years.

There are 44 states that have authorized and allowed their high school student athletes to engage in name, image and likeness.

With Ohio being one of just a handful, very small handful of states, that doesn't allow it, it prohibits opportunities to high school student athletes.

Here, the more elite those student athletes are, the larger the risk that they may then go to another state or somewhere outside of Ohio to be able to earn compensation, based on their abilities.

And when we think about elite high school athletes, there's there's a lot that it takes to be elite from training costs, recovery costs, etc.

and that can be a significant strain on families.

And a lot of families are struggling these days.

And so the opportunities for student athletes to be able to provide back to their families is significant.

We've seen it in 44 other states, and hopefully soon we'll see it in Ohio as well.

You're representing the family of Jamir Brown, who is obviously an elite athlete here.

Is it your contention that he has these opportunities that he could be earning money even now?

These opportunities exist for Mr.

Brown and his family, currently.

And so that's where the urgency exists.

And he's not alone.

There are other athletes that if I say a word to change their rules and regulations, their prohibition on nil their other student athletes across the state, that we've had conversations with them, they would have immediate opportunities to be able to earn compensation.

Mr.

Brown is no different.

And how much compensation are we talking about if you put a dollar figure on that?

So generally speaking, there are opportunities right now, that put him well into the six figure mark.

So, the o h s I member schools rejected a proposal to allow student athletes to profit off name, image, and likeness in 2022.

Are you hoping that this lawsuit will force that issue?

The hope really is that this lawsuit does force SA into changing their regulations and changing their bylaws to allow for high school student athletes to earn compensation from their Nil.

Are you in any sort of negotiations with them if they go ahead?

They had talked about doing an emergency referendum on Nil changes.

If they do that, will that settle this lawsuit?

We've had conversations with OHSU and their lawyers and we're going to continue those conversations.

We really look forward to to coming to a resolution that works for everyone.

And you know, without getting into legal strategy, our hope is that this rule can change, and that student athletes across the state of Ohio will be able to earn that compensation through Nil.

Oh SA member schools rejected allowing high school athletes to get paid for Nil deals in 2022.

The organization had planned a vote on changing Nil rules for next May.

Its executive director said in a statement that reads in part, quote, we have been following this situation closely and have been preparing for this situation.

We were hoping this would wait for the referendum voting period in May, but as we told our schools this fall, the vote may have to come sooner than that due to a lawsuit which would trigger the emergency vote.

We are prepared to move forward with our member schools on this issue.

A spokesman clarified that a date will be set based on the time frame set by the judge in the lawsuit.

Ohio's public schools are still struggling with a bus driver shortage.

That's gone on for years.

Before the pandemic, Ohio had 25,706 active bus drivers.

By August of this year, there were only 18,817 bus drivers employed by schools.

Public schools are required by law to transport private school students.

More than 66,500 nonpublic and charter school students were bussed by public schools in the 20 2324 school year, which is the most recent data available.

Some districts are now running more routes for nonpublic students than their own students.

I talked with Doug Palmer, the former transportation consultant for the Ohio School Boards Association, about how the bus driver shortage started and where schools go from here, we have an aging population.

Female bus drivers average are 56 years old and male bus drivers are 58 years old.

That's the average.

So how long can someone start?

I mean, if that's the average you're going to have people retire, you have people.

And as I get older too, I realize that I don't heal as fast.

It takes me longer to it takes me longer to get better.

I have more things wrong with me.

And so you're just not available as much as what you used to be or want to be, and you hit on a really good topic that I don't think anybody's been talking about.

Actually, the human cost of transportation.

Transportation departments, their management, the school bus drivers, everyone involved in transportation really feels let down that they can't do a better job.

I mean, it really, there's a there's a certain amount of burnout that, well, I can't do my job the way I'm taught, the way I'm trained, the way I want to.

It's just really frustrating.

And it worries me that people don't have their bus route, their students, their their children at the top of mind.

Right?

I mean, they're worried about other things.

They're they're worried about how many drivers are showing up.

They're worried about an extra trip in the afternoon.

I mean, it's it's quite it's quite consuming for these individuals.

You mentioned the age of bus drivers.

The average age of bus drivers is is creeping up.

What are some of the other reasons why we're in this position.

And really it seemed like it started with Covid, but it didn't start with Covid.

No, it started in 2018.

It really started in 2018.

That was when, more stores, more more stores started doing home delivery.

People that could drive, want to drive for a living, have other choices now.

And so that started to take away from this the sub pool the the substitute driver pool that schools normally hired regular drivers out of that dried up in 2018 and 2019 and in 2020 with with everyone now doing home delivery, it just exacerbated this driver shortage because they're just there.

I mean, if you can make the same amount of money in 4 or 5 hours in, in one shift from 4:00 in the afternoon to 8:00.

Why would you want to drive a school bus in half, start at 6:00 in the morning and be, committed to 11 hour day and not get off til 5:00.

And so pay being equal, the time frame that people have to invest in that is, is way less and and while there are many benefits to schools with retirement and and dental and vision and insurance that are available, it just doesn't offset people's, desire to, to control their own schedule.

I mean, if they don't want to drive on Tuesday afternoon, they just tell Amazon or or Kroger or or, wherever they're driving for, I don't want to drive.

And so, you know, they just have more flexibility.

I think flexibility is really the driving factor that we can't get past this driver shortage.

We can't we can't hire our way out of the driver shortage.

Schools are just reducing services.

And and that's unfortunate for the children.

The last few years, you've told me the districts have been putting in place all sorts of things to try to fight the shortage.

Staff that have commercial driver's licenses have been driving busses.

I've spoken to some directly, some of used hiring bonuses, finding other shifts for drivers to work, restructuring shifts in the administrative offices.

Are these efforts just patches or are they turning into real solutions?

Well, they if they look like a solution.

But then you have a couple of drivers retire.

And in our retirement system with school busses and school employees retirement system, you know, you have a full credit 120 days into school.

So if you're waiting for your 20th year or your fifth year or your 10th year, and you get to that and you get to that in January, February, a lot of drivers retire at that time.

And then schools struggle through the busiest season, through spring.

And now the management is just absolutely overwhelmed with trying to cover the trips and, and recruiting and, and and hiring and all of that, promoting all of that goes by the wayside.

And then they lose the summer to get people hired.

And trained.

And so it's it's a it's a vicious cycle.

State law says public school districts have to transport their own students up to eighth grade, and private and voucher school students as well.

So what's been the impact of those nonpublic school students?

Well, the the impact of the nonpublic school student is that the school can't control when that buildings, when that when they want to go to school and most private and nonpublic and community schools, they want to start around 8:00.

Everybody wants to start around 8:00.

Nobody wants to start at 10:00 when there's busses available.

So there's that time crunch that everybody wants to go at the same time.

And also if you look at traffic, oh my gosh, every morning our busses are operating in the peak traffic flow.

So just that alone causes delays and extra time it takes to run routes.

And so there's a lot of competing factors for drivers time in getting the kids to school.

And also when you start adding new schools on to routes that makes routes longer, right.

It does.

And then how do you do that?

Do you do you bring all the kids in from the community and sort them out of building, or do you run different busses through the community and try to pick them up at, you know, sort them at their house instead of sorting them at a, at a hub or a location.

But what the problem is, is when you bring all the kids into school, the nonpublic students need to be supervised during these bus transfers.

All buildings are short staffed.

You know, we're short staffed on aides, we're short staffed in administration.

They're we're trying to do more and more with and try to make the dollars in school funding stretch.

And and so this becomes a real, situation where it's it's not just one thing.

It's many things put together.

You have heard the idea of maybe a hub and spoke system where you bring kids to one building and then you send them out to different areas.

But that potentially means longer time on busses for kids, right?

And more staff to make sure that kids are all getting where they want to go.

So they need a ride.

The right time is about the same.

But but parents and community, and some teachers really don't like the idea that kids are switching busses and not going directly.

Once the once the teacher puts the child on a bus and that bus goes to a hub, that teacher doesn't feel comfortable that that child is able to navigate getting to their bus to go home on.

And so there's a lot of anxiety around children switching busses.

I ran a district that did that, but I will tell you that children catch on very quickly within 5 or 6 days.

They're looking for their friends.

They're not looking for the bus numbers anymore.

They're looking for their friends.

They know how to get to where they're going.

And then there are the nonpublic students, parents who feel like, well, I don't want my children riding with the public students, but yet they live in the same community.

And so I, I don't understand I just don't think that's the I don't think that we have a lot of understanding from the practice side on how this all really can work and how it does work.

If you and other school transportation officials, people who have expertise in this area, have you shared information about the school bus driver shortage that you're seeing with state lawmakers?

We have, yes.

But I'm not sure that they understand.

I'm not sure that they have a full understanding of what that driver shortage is.

It's not just the number of drivers, it's the number of drivers available.

So if you have someone go off on FMLA or a long illness, you have to have a substitute to keep that route running.

And like I said, the substitute driver pool that dried up in 2018 and 2019.

And now we've got mechanics and we've got, maintenance staff, we've got custodial staff.

We have we have secretaries.

Don't they all had a job for a reason too.

So everybody, everybody gets, you know, really anxious about well, I don't have time to do my own work now because I'm driving a bus for four hours a day.

I'm filling this.

And so there's there's, there is a large human cost in school systems to to having not enough drivers.

Also, there's been a suggestion that districts are not managing their resources wisely.

Each district gets $1,500 per child for transportation, but you've got, at least one district that has been offering cash payments of between 600 and $1200 to transport for families to transport their own children.

That's less than what they're getting from the state.

Our district's managing that money wisely.

So if you look at the funding flow from the state, the funding flow from the state says, we're going to pay you on either ridership or miles for regular transportation.

And then there and then they give you a minimum of 48 or 45.83% this year.

So you get less than half of what it actually cost to transport the child.

So the children that are deemed impractical, there's no payment at all to the school district for the.

There used to be, when the minimum was $250 for payment in lieu of transportation.

The state reimbursed the district's $187 of that.

So the so there was funding from the state to the school to the parents.

Well, now, the state has eliminated that payment for payment in lieu of.

So the the whole payment is for the for the district.

There is no funding flow for that student that doesn't ride a bus that they in fact, last week was car week.

They did a count.

They counted the students in the miles and whatever the highest cost was.

That's what the state would reimburse off of either state share or the 48, 45.83%.

And I've heard superintendents say that the state has never fully made district whole in terms of paying for those transportation costs, but you've estimated to me that, going back to 2009, districts have been forced to absorb approximately $1.68 billion in capital costs.

Can you explain that?

Well, previously, the state always funded bus purchases.

In fact, at one time the state would buy a school district a bus if they were going to operate that for nonpublic use.

So if you had a route that was that, that the school was running for the nonpublic students, the state would buy that district a bus to, to operate, to operate.

Well, that all, all of the bus funding went away in 2009.

So the districts have 100% had this capital cost placed on them no matter what the busses being used for.

So and there's no funding reimbursement for that bus.

And so if you were running a business and you bought a piece of machinery, you could deduct the depreciation, you could deduct the loss of value from your profit.

And then, you know, that was looked at as a cost of business.

But there's no depreciation schedule.

There's nothing there is nothing available for districts to use to increase funding or to increase the cost of transporting a student to be reimbursed at the same percentage Kentucky does, Pennsylvania does.

They have a depreciation schedule that's factored into the cost of the transportation of the students.

And then and that is a funding flow back to the districts based on 7%, or 8% or 5%, whatever the whatever they determine, the loss of value of that bus is for each year.

So all this comes back on districts that are just trying to get all students that they are required to transport safely to where they're required to transport them to.

I want to ask you, there's been a suggestion that the state could pay private or nonpublic schools or somebody else directly to provide transportation.

Removing public schools from the transportation equation.

Is that something that school transportation officials that you know, would support?

Is there a downside to that?

So the school transportation officials absolutely would support that.

In fact, I've been working with a large school district, and they are helping two of the nonpublic schools that are doing transportation.

They're doing all they can to help them be successful with their own transportation.

There's a lot of laws, there's a lot of rules, there's a lot of regulations.

And and I'm open to helping nonpublic schools to if, if they need help, understanding all of the comp, all of the compliance issues for drivers, all of the compliance issues for school busses, that's one of the reasons why I retired early from SBA is I want to help school districts, no matter whether it's private or public or community, get children on the school bus.

And I think that's really important.

Do you think the days of expecting a full time bus driver take your student from your home to the school and back home?

Are are are those really dramatically changing, or is that a realistic expectation for a parent in the school district, whether they're sending their kid to a charter school or they're using a voucher, they're going to public school, whatever.

I think those days are really good old days.

And I think the new situation that we're in is that school districts will have to stretch, resources will have to be flexible with what they can do.

One community might be bussed differently than another community.

One.

One community might be direct rooted, another community might be hub and spoke even in the same school district, even in, you know, even if the school boundaries touch each other.

I think having one solution for every district and every section of the district, I think that's gone by the wayside.

All right.

Anything else you want to add?

So in the last eight years, the cost per child of depreciation has gone from, well, if you go back to 2009, it was $53 a student.

You go and then you, go forward and then just go back eight years from today.

So 2017, it was about $80 a student.

Right now we're at $166 a student of cost of depreciation of the school bus.

That's the riders.

And that's not every student in the building.

That's the riders trips.

So the other thing is we used to transport nearly a million students.

We're down to transporting only about 720,000 now.

So and our state hasn't lost that many as far as population.

So that tells a story that districts are eliminating riders, which means children have different ways to get to school that aren't as safe as a school bus.

But with fewer students to transport, you still have a school bus driver shortage?

Yes, because you just don't have the time and distance to cover.

You know, that's the that's the hard part.

You think that, well, if you're not transporting as many students, but you still have every square mile in the state to cover, you know, I mean, it's just it's, I like to tease my, supervisors that I deal with.

I say it's not rocket science, but it is all time and space.

Republican Senator Andrew Brenner, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, told me he's talked to superintendents who would prefer another transportation option.

And perhaps countywide systems would work better.

But he said there would have to be a major public discussion on this, and whatever might result would be phased in over a few years.

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

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News Talk or find us online by searching the State of Ohio Show.

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Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter, right, is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at Porter.

Right.

Com Porter Wright inspired every day.

You know, Ohio Education Association representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at o h e talk.