- Ohio's expanded private school tuition vouchers are very popular and expensive.

A judge has cleared the way for the state to strip the state school board of its power, putting it in the hands of the governor's office.

And Cleveland is making progress on the latest master plan for the lakefront ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Using public school money to send kids to private schools will be an expensive proposition after the recent expansion of the EdChoice voucher program.

Meanwhile, control of education in Ohio is transitioning to a new cabinet department in the governor's office.

After a judge lifted a temporary restraining order blocking that move in a lawsuit brought by elected members of the State Board of Education, which is losing its powers with two weeks to go.

Fewer voters have cast early ballots for the November election than they did in August, but more have requested mail-in ballots.

Will there be a rush to the mailbox before it's time to open the ballot box?

And can planners finally connect Cleveland's lakefront to downtown?

The latest master plan is taking shape.

Joining me for the Roundtable from Idea Stream, public Media director of Engaged journalism, Marlene Harris Taylor and Criminal justice reporter Matt Richmond in Columbus State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kassler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Lots of families are applying for Ohio's newly expanded voucher program and the price tag won't be cheap.

Lawmakers expanded the EdChoice vouchers in the state budget.

Karen, the price tag so far for those applying for the vouchers is at $240 million.

It's expected to climb a lot more than that.

- Yeah.

And the EdChoice program has gone through an awful lot of expansion and, and changes of the last couple years.

It used to be a program that was just for, it was income based just for people who were in school buildings that were considered failing by the state report card standards.

Well, in the last budget that was all blown out and expanded to people making up to 450% of the federal poverty level, which is $135,000 a year for a family of four.

They'll get a full voucher.

Anybody over that income level gets a partial voucher.

And it can be anybody who wants a voucher.

You don't have to be sending your kids to public schools to apply for these EdChoice expansion vouchers.

And so, ended up, a lot of people took the state up on that offer.

And so there are the, the, the deadline for getting full funding for this year was October 14th.

Kids had to be enrolled in private school by that point, but these applications are still being looked at and so they could go for the rest of the school year.

One of - The things that really set me back when I looked at this was the 240 million for the number of students that have already been approved.

But when you look at the number of applications that remain, it's more than double the number that were approved in total last year.

So last year there were 24,320 approved.

There are more than that waiting to be approved now.

- Right.

And part of that is related to the expansion that came from the state budget, but also people are getting the word out that indeed the state is offering vouchers for people who are sending their kids to private schools.

You don't have to have attended a public school to get a voucher to go to private school.

So that's partly the explanation of why you're seeing those big numbers.

In the expansion program, there were so far as of October 14th, almost 87,000 applications for kids trying to get those EdChoice expansion vouchers.

And the state has five voucher programs in general, and the total number of applications for all those programs is almost 152,000.

- Wow.

The vouchers that we were talking about too have increased from, for kindergarten through eighth grade was 5,500.

Now it's 61, 65 for high school students that went from 7,500 to $8,407.

So a little more money too that's going with them.

Here's the question, and it's being brought up by Nancy from Silver Lake who sends us an email.

She says, please address the impact these vouchers have on our public schools.

Are we robbing Peter to pay Paul?

That's certainly an argument that we've heard from public school advocates.

- Absolutely.

And that's been a concern about the investment in vouchers all along.

Now, Senate President Matt Huffman, who's a huge supporter of expanding vouchers and really wanted to see this essentially universal voucher program go forward.

I caught him in the hall a couple weeks ago and I asked him, how is this sustainable over time?

And he said, well, the state has plenty of money in the short term, so it's sustainable in the short term.

And he claims in the long term it will actually cost the state less to send kids these vouchers so they can go to private schools than it costs to send kids to public schools.

Now, that may be true in some districts, but it's not true in others.

And there is a real question about how the state can continue to fund a voucher program that right now all those vouchers, all five of those programs cost the state about $2 billion a year.

How is the state going to continue to fund that over time and and where could potentially cots be made?

And certainly you could see a scenario where there are fewer kids in the public schools and, and money goes to public schools based on enrollment.

You can, you can see where I'm going here.

- Hey, Mike, one of the interesting questions is how is this going to impact local school levies?

Because the people who are opposed to this say that, you know, this is going to make local districts go back to voters even more.

And we've seen in elections, Mike, this trend that it's really difficult for right now for school districts to get levies passed.

So if you have fewer and fewer kids in the public schools and fewer parents connected to the public schools, what's the chances that these local districts are gonna be able to get these school levees passed?

- Excellent point.

Got a question from Scott for you.

Karen says, can you comment on whether anyone is monitoring the income requirements for the voucher applications?

How does that work?

And also, where does the money go once approved?

How does it flow?

- Well, the vouchers go to the parents, and that's another thing that voucher supporters are claiming this money is not going to the school districts, it's going to the parents.

And so there's a distinction there, but the application process is supposed to look at the income levels.

And again, 450% of the federal poverty level, $135,000 a year for a family of four, that gets you the maximum vouchers.

And you just went over those numbers there in terms of how much you potentially get for each child.

But then above that, you get less voucher money.

And so presumably the application process is where the income levels are being checked.

But yeah, there are certainly some questions about how all this is gonna work.

And this is a new expansion program.

It's, it's a big expansion program.

And certainly there are gonna be some people who are wondering, is this really working the way people want it to work?

- And you know, I I think it's also worth pointing out that there is a, a big lawsuit that is in Franklin County Court right now with like 130 some odd school districts.

And, you know, they're questioning whether this voucher program violates the, the state constitution.

And you know, it seems like in the course of that court case, they'll delve into those really tough questions about how much this really impacts the money going to schools and how how damaging it's it's been to public schools.

So that's something worth, worth watching.

- Absolutely.

That is as well as Marlene brought up about how, how tough will it be to pass a levee when fewer students are in those schools.

And then Pat has a, a note too, she just sent us from Paynesville.

She says, vouchers will increase the already racially segregated school districts.

She calls it immoral.

- That's an interesting, and that's, oh, sorry, I didn't step on you, Karen.

That's the claim that's been made and voucher supporters saying, no, it doesn't.

But of course, you know, you've, you've got those kind of dueling ideas out there.

But the question about the constitutionality, I mean, the Ohio Constitution says that there has to be a fair and e equitable system of local schools.

And so whether there'll be an impact directly related to the voucher program on that fair and equitable system of local schools.

We'll, we'll find out, I guess - Marlene.

Yeah, - I was just gonna point out that the, the public schools argue that they have to take everyone, you know, they can't make a choice, whereas private schools can say, we want only the kids with this grade point or these kind of kids, or kids with, like, for example, developmental disabilities, who it - Costs a lot - Of money to educate because they need more services.

So the private schools can say, oh no, we're not going to take those kids.

So that's, that's another argument that public schools have to take.

All private schools can be selective.

- The state's overhaul of K through 12 education is moving forward after a judge dissolved a temporary restraining order, stalling it, seven members of the state school board filed the lawsuit to prevent the transition.

So this all happened, Karen, because this was kind of snuck into or put into the budget bill that basically said the state school board won't have the kinds of powers it did before.

Instead that goes into this cabinet position.

A lawsuit was filed, there was a stay.

Now the stay is lifted.

So where do we stand?

- That's a good question.

I've been reaching out to the school board members, and these are seven elected school board members who filed this lawsuit.

They're progressively aligned.

I say that because they're not technically Democrats.

They didn't run technically as Democrats because the state school board is nonpartisan.

But again, they are aligned with democratic groups and, and candidates, and some of them are even former state lawmakers.

And the group has not responded to me on whether they are going to object to this decision.

They have 14 days from the decision which came down last Friday.

And so they could still object.

But the question of course is how is that gonna affect the continued transition?

According to Governor Mike DeWine, the Ohio Department of Education died on October 2nd and this new Ohio Department of Education and Workforce was created and he was holding back on appointing a director, a cabinet level director to that agency until after that order was dissolved.

Now there's an interim director, the search is continuing for a permanent director.

And I'm still waiting to find out when those academic policy powers from the state school board are transferred over to this new agency.

- It's interesting, the people that filed, as you mentioned, there's seven law or seven board members who are aligned, but they didn't sue as board members.

They sued as parents.

- Right.

And I talked to one of them, Michelle Newman, for our TV show, the State of Ohio a couple weeks ago.

And that's her point was that yes, she's a state school board member.

More importantly, she's a parent.

And there was a real concern about if you take that power away from these elected state school board members, the state school board is 19 members and eight of them are elected.

So if you take that power away, aren't you disenfranchising the voters who put those elected board members into office?

And so, you know, I I'm waiting to hear what happens with this lawsuit, but it, it's certainly the fact that we haven't heard from these board members on whether they're gonna go forward with this or not, makes me wonder if they've decided, Hey, this transition is gonna happen.

We are just gonna have to learn how to deal with it.

- And I I was also wondering, Karen, because they, they also challenged the, the fact that this was done through the budget, and it seems like every, every budget cycle there are things like this that really big important policy questions that are just added into the budget.

And so I kind of always assumed that they, the courts had already cleared that in in, in most cases.

Do you think that that challenge to this might stand?

- Well, there's another lawsuit that was filed against the Science of Reading program being added to the state budget.

And the claim in both of those, I believe, is that those violate the single subject rule that legislation has to have a single subject to go forward.

Well, the budget never has one single subject, in a sense.

It's a policy document.

And a lot of times there are policy changes in the budget.

I don't think I, I, I spoke to two political science professors about that idea of lawsuits over the single subject rule, and they couldn't think of a single time when a lawsuit had prevailed claiming that the violation of the single subject rule was in place.

- A recent change in police disciplinary procedures violates the federal consent decree between Cleveland and the US Department of Justice.

The fed's claim the change came in recent negotiations with unions involving 12 hour shifts and big pay raises for police.

Matt, you found that the monitor, as you were at a, a hearing in federal court, the monitor, Carl Racine said he's worried about this chipping away at accountability and discipline.

- Yeah, you, you know, this wasn't on the agenda.

You don't, and it wasn't talked about in the, the, the semi-annual report that was kind of the subject of this hearing.

And so you don't usually at these hearings, hear these outside topics or like pressing issues come up.

But this came up right at the top of the hearing and I think everybody perked up about it.

And, you know, the, the idea basically is that what the city's tried to do is less in discipline for one category of infraction.

You know, anything that, that is not the target of the initial complaint, but was found during the investigation.

That's a group one.

And group one are generally, you know, low level offenses, but - Police call, police call 'em ticky - Tacky.

- Yes.

Right.

But there, but included in group one I'll point out is a, is a failure to turn on body cams.

And in general, the most common infraction that OPS finds is failure is not following the body camera policy.

- And you gotta wonder why they don't turn on body cameras.

The, the whole idea is transparency.

Turn it on.

- Yeah.

And very often during the investigation, they'll ask for everybody's footage who was at the scene.

And when they see that certain officers don't have footage, then that's a group one infraction in most cases, unless there was a malfunction or, you know, some, some reason for it.

So, you know, I, what the monitor said is that the city, by making this change to discipline in the union contract, is kind of going around the consent decree process to lessen discipline and to say that this type of discipline that in other cases, you know, an officer would get a one day suspension or some disciplinary letter if internal affairs found these kind of infractions.

But they're saying that in this case, that's not gonna be disciplined.

And so that makes it in inconsistent.

And that's against the consent decree.

- Judge Solomon Oliver did not rule on this at that hearing, right?

No, and, and a matter of fact, that contract, don't, we still have some votes to have to happen on that.

- Yeah.

So, you know, collective bargaining agreements have to go through council and the pay raises that were kind of at the center of that, of the amendments, those have to go through Council.

And I haven't seen it introduced yet.

The, the union rep Jeff, Jeff Fulmer, told the paper till cleveland.com that he's not interested in restarting negotiations.

The Department of Justice and the monitor said that they wanna sit down with the city and either figure out some way to make this work with the consent decree as it is, or figure out, or they might have to amend the consent decree to get this through - With less than two weeks to go until the November general election.

Fewer numbers of Ohioans have voted early compared to the special election in August.

But significantly more people have requested absentee ballots.

So maybe a late mail push November's ballot features the two statewide issues.

One places abortion reproductive health protections in the Constitution and another legalizes recreational marijuana with a statute.

Karen, we keep tabs on early voting to gauge potential turnout.

But do we see, because so many were requested that that's going to make a difference?

- Well it, it usually means that there are people who are engaged.

I mean, when you look at this being an odd year election, I don't say off year election.

'cause I say odd year election where you don't have statewide candidates, you don't have the big presidential US Senate, those kind of contests.

The turnout is expected to be lower.

But certainly the interest in issues one and two, the abortion rights amendment and the marijuana legalization law is pretty high.

And so you can see that in the early voting numbers.

Now, there are some concerns by some people about how the law on early voting and voting in general has changed.

For instance, you have to have a photo ID and show it when you go to vote, you have a shorter window to request absentee ballots and a shorter window to return them.

All these things that could be part of this as well.

So I, I think this will be a really interesting test because the turnout should be pretty good of how all this is gonna be working under that new law.

But also a really good test of where Ohioans stand on these two big issues because they don't have candidates driving them to the ballot.

They're gonna drive to the ballot because they're concerned or interested in voting on those two issues.

- I was seeing Andrew Tobias's analysis of this in cleveland.com and he said early voting has increased in rural areas while dropping in urban areas.

Generally a favorable sign for opponents of those ballot issues.

Got an email from Peggy and Oberlin though, who says word from Ohio State University and Ohio University where my three kids go to school, is that everyone is requesting absentee ballots issues one and two have a lot of yes supporters on college campuses according to her quote sources.

- Well, and and I think, you know, the idea of getting someone to vote yes is harder than getting someone to vote.

No.

At least that's the conventional wisdom that when you have the no side, you are coming into the campaign with a bit of an advantage.

But I don't know that this is gonna break down completely along party lines because you do have some conservatives who are saying they're concerned about the role that politicians are playing.

In both of these issues.

You have some liberals who are concerned about some of the changes that would be happening in both abortion and marijuana laws.

So that's gonna be what's really interesting to see in the final result is how this breaks down, how these two issues break down across urban areas, rural areas, and especially in the suburbs where who knows what's gonna happen there.

- Real quickly, redistricting there was, they were on track to start collecting signatures and getting, moving on, having a commission that would do the redistricting rather than the current process where politicians do it and now they're back to the drawing board because of a little typo.

- Yeah, and it's a typo.

They found the group citizens, not politicians, said they found the typo.

And it was a situation where a date listed in the amendment was listed incorrectly in the summary, the language that you put on those petitions that you ask people to sign.

So they have to go back to the drawing board essentially and resubmit their language to the attorney General.

They have to resubmit to the Ohio ballot board.

And that really robs them of the opportunity to go out and collect signatures on election day.

'cause you have to collect signatures from registered voters.

Registered voters show up to vote on election day.

So it's an easy target, so to speak.

And they're gonna lose that.

Alright, - One last thing on elections, again, it's less than two weeks away early voting.

You can do that now.

Democrats are criticizing Secretary of State Frank LaRose for removing inactive voters from the state's voting list in some cases after early voting began for the November election.

That's his job is to remove inactive voters.

But the question is the timing that he did it and sort of the secrecy of it.

- Right?

According to a directive from 2019, he voter registrations were to be canceled in late July, but he instructed boards of elections not to cancel those voter registrations before the August special election, but to purge them before September 27th.

It should be noted here that Secretary of State, Franklin Rose was strongly in support of issue one in August.

That was the one again on the constitutional amendment voter threshold requirement.

But he is opposed to issue one and issue two presumably coming up this fall.

The abortion rights and marijuana legalization issues.

- I wanna note too, that Cuyahoga Summit and Lucas Counties were exempt.

So if you live in those counties, you weren't removed from the rolls in the other county.

They were exempt because they had had primaries within the threshold 30 days from this date that he's listed.

But if you're in one of those other counties, you really should check and make sure that you're still on the, on the rolls.

'cause the people who got put off might have been registered, but they just haven't been active for the last six years.

There also had been in the past sort of a, a warning shot that said, Hey, these people are going to be removed.

And so that allowed groups to try to get in touch with folks and say, Hey, you need to reconnect.

That didn't happen this time.

- Well, yeah, that's a card that usually comes to through the mail and a lot of people end up ignoring those cards and that's how they get thrown off the voter rolls.

I mean, the inactivity question is obviously out there, but there are people who say that they do get purged because the, the, even though they were still active voters.

So you, you always should check your voter registration before you plan to vote.

And definitely make sure you get that photo id.

- The City of Cleveland is finalizing a new North Coast lakefront master plan using feedback from the community.

The plan seeks to better connect downtown to the lakefront.

The design firm leading the project presented a draft that was 60% complete this week.

City expects to release the full finalized plan in January.

Marlene, it looks exciting.

A lot of stuff on there that would cost a lot of money.

We've had lakefront plans for, I don't know, a hundred years - Long, long time.

- Yeah.

So let's talk about this.

The, the, the design firm though got surveys about what people wanted.

They have some clear ideas what they want on the lakefront.

- Yeah.

You know, I just wanted to, to go back to the point that you made about how long Oh - Yeah.

Cleveland - Has been talking about this.

Our good friend Sam Allard, who used to work for Cleveland Scene, who now works for Cleveland Axios, he wrote that since Daniel Burnham's 1903 group plan, there have been 16 separate attempts to redesign the city's waterfront.

So it's almost a rite of passage for each mayor.

Right.

- But - This one is, I mean, I agree, Mike, it's very exciting.

There's lots of details in this plan that came out from these hundreds and hundreds of surveys that they did.

They've been meeting with Cleveland residents and, and, and including some of those ideas in the plans.

Right.

So what they wanna do is take that area right around the Brown Stadium that now has a lot of asphalt and make that more welcoming, if you will, or more green space with places where people can hang out with that land bridge that you talked about, Mike, that would connect the stadium to some of the other great things downtown, like the rock hall, like the Science center and, and make it accessible for people to get across that area.

Now that has the railroad tracks that Land bridge or - The Shoreway.

- The Shoreway.

That good - Luck crossing.

- Yeah.

That Landbridge would go across.

So they're talking about maybe having a boutique hotel there, a food hall, recreation and play area stuff for kids, you know, some cozy areas.

They mentioned this porch idea where there'd be these little porches all around where you could just sit and watch the water, which I think would be really cool - Or warm up in the wintertime.

They call them warming huts.

Warming - Huts, yeah.

So they wanna make this accessible so it could be used year round.

I, I don't quite know about that part.

I mean, when you have that wind coming across the lake there, will those huts warm you up enough?

- I don't think so.

No.

What are the questions about how the city's gonna pay for it?

- That's the big question, right?

So this is all gonna be presented to the planning commission in January and, you know, if all this is approved, then they'll start the, okay, how do we pay for it?

So obviously the city of Cleveland can't afford this alone.

They'll be looking at, you know, some of the big philanthropic organizations in town and looking for grants.

They'll be looking for government funding from the state.

So it's all a big dream and a beautiful dream.

Right?

Right.

Now the question is, is their money?

Yeah.

- And, - And you just throw in that the stadium, I mean, if they're gonna stay in that stadium, they're going to put a lot of money in it.

- Right.

And - So everything they wanna build around it, - It'll be stadium, it'll be part, part and parcel.

- Part and parcel.

- They want a market, a boutique hotel, several small businesses.

They've talked about basketball courts and ice rink and amphitheater and applying for federal and state funding in addition to pursuing fundraising and grants.

So we'll see where all that lands.

But as you said, exciting news and I feel like whatever the predecessors were to the sound of ideas back in Daniel Burnham's day was, was basically the exact same thing were - Talking about.

And not to mention, even if they get the money, this is something that's gonna take years to implement.

Right.

So it's way down the road that this would actually come to fruition, even if there is money.

- The iconic house featured in the holiday classic a Christmas story has a new owner, but who bought the tourist attraction in Tremont has yet to be announced.

We have to wait until next month, which is like checking the mailbox every day for an Orphan Annie Secret society to coder pin.

It sounds like good news if somebody's bought it and it's not gonna become, hopefully not gonna become something else.

- Yeah, well, I, I have to admit, I, I've exhausted that as a destination out of town visitors stuff.

I kind of - Forgot that's what one, that's usually on your list.

Check people.

- Yeah.

But that's, yeah, it's, - It's a huge tourist attraction in Cleveland.

It really is.

- It's a great thing to see when you go across the street to the Rally Inn for a delicious burger.

And there it is.

But once you've been there, I feel like you've been there.

Yeah, right, exactly.

That's why.

And then you bring everybody in from out of town, but really, really, but can I, but - Can I say something?

This may anger people.

I'm not crazy about that movie.

- Oh, uhoh.

Alright.

There you get a lot of chances to say that when it's run day after day, hour after hour Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 7 W-K-S-U-A conversation at the Happy Dog, led by Idea Stream's.

Amanda Rabinowitz, host of the Shuffle Podcast about the state of the music industry in northeast Ohio.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.