Not even the complete freedom from state control that Lorain Schools would gain under the Ohio Senate’s version of the state’s two-year budget is enough to make its approach to education policy worth recommending.
State Sen. Nathan Manning, R-North Ridgeville, deserves credit for adding the provision regarding Lorain Schools to the Senate budget, which passed on a party-line vote Thursday. A different version of the budget already passed the House, which means the two chambers still need to hammer out their differences.
With luck, Manning’s plan will survive those discussions and perhaps even be expanded to include the East Cleveland and Youngstown public school districts, which also were subjected to a disastrous experiment in state control. All three districts are already in the process of extricating themselves from state control.
While the House version of the budget has its problems, it’s not nearly as bad as the Senate version.
Given the power that Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, wields in Columbus, it’s reasonable to fear he could get his way more often than not during upcoming negotiations between the two chambers. His clout stands in contrast to the weakness of Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill, who must cope with ongoing infighting among House Republicans.
Consider, for example, the state’s private school voucher program, known as EdChoice, which would get a massive expansion under both the House and Senate budgets.
Under the existing program, a family of four earning up to 250 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $75,000, is eligible for vouchers. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, had proposed raising that threshold to 400 percent of the poverty line, or $111,000, while the House took it up for 450 percent, or $135,000.
The Senate bill goes beyond even the House’s generosity. It would expand voucher eligibility to all Ohio students, although those coming from families earning more than 450 percent of the federal poverty line would receive reduced assistance on a sliding scale based on their income.
The EdChoice program, as currently constituted, is expected to cost Ohio taxpayers roughly $350 million this year.
A universal voucher program could cause the costs to soar to $1 billion per year. Those taxpayer dollars would flow to private schools, which don’t have to adhere to the same education standards as public schools do.
Meanwhile, the Senate would continue to build upon an improved formula for funding public schools, pushing the two-year figure to $1.3 billion, although that’s about $541 million less than the House included in its version of the budget.
The Senate also removed a House provision that would have expanded a school lunch program to make it free for qualifying students.
Then there are the ill-conceived stand-alone bills aimed at altering education in Ohio for the worse that Senate Republicans folded into the budget.
For example, the budget now includes a measure that would strip most of the power from the State Board of Education and give it to a new cabinet-level official appointed by the governor to oversee a revamped and renamed Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
This would concentrate far too much power over K-12 education policy in the hands of one elected official, the governor — as it is, 11 of the 19 state board members are elected while the rest are appointed by the governor — and could lead to drastic alterations in education standards. We’ve seen the damage a motivated ideologue can do to education policy in other red states. (We’re looking at you, Florida.)
Another former stand-alone bill that’s now part of the Senate budget would ban most mandatory training on diversity, equity and inclusion and restrict how public colleges and universities handle “controversial” subjects, such abortion, marriage and climate change.
It also would allow instructors to be punished if their classrooms weren’t “free from bias,” which these days usually means free from things conservatives don’t like. It also would ban college professors from striking during contract negotiations.
Those measures are clearly designed to own liberals (and satisfy conservatives) at the expense of the academic freedom that is so necessary in college and university settings.
Manning was one of three Republicans to vote against the bill affecting public colleges and universities before it was merged with the budget, but he told us his concerns about that provision were outweighed by what he viewed, on balance, as a “good, fiscally responsible budget.”
That’s not how we would describe it. Granted, putting policy changes that have nothing to do with the state’s finances into the budget can be both a blessing and a curse.
Unfortunately, the Senate’s version is more of the latter.
