No to Senate Bill One
Taking away Representation in Education.
On January 11th, 2023 the Ohio Senator Bill Reineke introduced Senate Bill One, Senate Bill One was introduced during the lame duck session in the 134th General Assembly as SB178. It was put in HB151, Save Women's Sports Act, which failed to pass last session. SB1 will remove accountability to the people of Ohio by taking away the powers of their duly elected State Board Members and assigning their power to a Director of Education and Workforce appointed by the Governor.
Senate Bill One will change the Ohio Department of Education into a state level agency and become the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW). The Ohio School Boards new responsibilities would include educator discipline, teacher licensure, and make determinations regarding district territory transfers. A superintendent would be elected by the board and serve as the Board's secretary and advisor to the new DEW Director.
The DEW Director would be appointed by the governor, and approved by the Senate. The Director would appoint two Deputy Directors, one Primary & Secondary Education Director and Division of Career & Technical Services Director. The Department of Education and Workforce would be responsible for :
1.Adopting minimum education standards for elementary and secondary schools, and minimum operating standards for school districts
2.Issuing and revoking state charters to school districts, school buildings operated by districts, and nonpublic schools that elect to seek a charter
3.Developing state academic standards and model curricula
4.Establishing the statewide program for assessing student achievement through standardized assessments
5. Establishing the state report card system for school districts, community schools, STEM schools, and college-preparatory boarding schools
6.Administering state scholarship programs
7. Performing prescribed functions regarding the creation and operation joint vocational school districts
8.Providing oversight to, and performing functions regarding, community schools, community school sponsors, and STEM schools
9.Calculating and distributing all foundation funding payments.
Senator Bill Reinke states in his sponsor testimony:
"This bill has been driven by my local school districts and educational partners. Their struggles with the state’s education structure and lack of supports have informed this legislation, and these issues likely are common in your districts as well. From what I have learned in the last several years, it is apparent that the current structure of education in Ohio is failing our children".
He goes on to claim that this is shown by examining our remediation rate, which is the percentage of Highschool graduates required to enroll in a remedial Math or English class their freshman year of college.
Senator Reineke isn't providing an entirely accurate picture of the remediation rates among Ohioans according to the 2021's Ohio Remediation Report. The remediation rate for students enrolling in Math or English remediation class is 19.3%. He failed to mention that this is a 7.5% decrease from 2019; remediation rates previous years have been : 2019: 26.8%, 2018: 26.8%, 2017: 27.6%, and in 2016:28.1%, which shows a steady decrease in remediation rates.
Even amid the pandemic, those enrolling in remedial Math or English has declined since 2016 steadily. Senator Reineke goes on to make the claim that this bill is needed because the ACE program was a failure. The ACE Program was rolled out less than a year ago, so how is that a failure. It is an Afterschool Childcare Enrichment Program that gives families up to $500 to help pay for childcare services, the program was passed in the budget bill in 2021. The Ohio Department of Education had until November 2022 to adopt policy and applications for the program are currently being accepted. News Channel 5 just posted an article in January promoting the ACE Program due to Cleveland non profit "Our Youth, Our Future" offering an afterschool program for the area youth.
Senator Reineke states that SB1 is needed because 30% of children were chronically absent in 2021-2022 school year. According to the 2021-2022 Ohio State Report Card, "The Statewide Attendance Rate was 90.4%. School Districts were quarantining children in the fall and winter of 2021-2022 school year and still high attendance rates.
The last argument Senator Reineke presents is that students are not receiving the education needed to attend post-secondary education or enter the workforce. He mentions the Intel project; as well as, the Honda and Ford expansion, implying the state will not be able to meet the employment demand needed for these companies. According to JobsOhio the State of Ohio ranks 10 in competitive labor environment and Ohio ranks as the 7th largest population in the United States. The states Workforce Program has just been expanded as well, so this cannot be the reason for needing to restructure the entire education system.
The arguments made for SB1 are that the schools remediation rate is increasing, the ACE program failures are due to the State Board, the absenteeism rate is at 30%, and finally that high school graduates are not ready to meet workforce demands. All arguments have found to be false. Ohio just adopted a new education framework in 2020 "Each Child, Our Future", how would the efficacy of the program even be known yet when data from the pilot program is being aggregated this year.
Kids are behind due to the pandemic, the Governor locked down the State and even when kids returned they missed due to being quarantine by the schools or due to illness and school policies. For our legislatures to now stand up and state that the schools are failing and the solution is centralization of power? Seems more like a power grab for control of our Education system.
Our legislatures fail to talk about the indoctrination that is coming from the Framework "Each Child Our Future" that the Chair of the Senate Education Committee, Andrew Brenner, was on the steering committee and helped develop and design this strategic plan.
No to Senate Bill One, centralizing power and concentrating the decision-making powers in a few leaders at the top of the organizational structure will broadly affect the implementation of important educational decisions. There are additional concerns related to group think. When three people oversee all decisions going to the same state-level meetings, committees, coalitions, and listening to the same educational think tanks increases the risk of bad decisions due to lack of opposition, lack of creativity, and lack of feedback on decisions propelling poorer decision-making. There is no clear indication that public Sunshine Laws would apply to the Director of Education, the public would have to address grievances and concerns to the DEW Director and how is the public able to participate in our Education system without our Board of Education that we elect to represent our interests.
Limited government should be a core tenant of many among our legislators today. Please help us fight against Senate Bill One. Please go to Templates - Directory | Mean Street- Ohio (meanstreetoh.com) , we have provided a template that you can personalize and email to the Chair of the Senate Education Committee Andrew Brenner. His contact information is found at the link above as well. Please title your subject line as "Opponent Testimony to Senate Bill One". Thank you.
Stay Focused Ohio.....
