Gov. Mike DeWine (R) and Ohio’s elected education board members are battling over who is in charge of the state’s education department — and whether that department exists at all.
The bill also would also make all of the board’s 19 members governor’s appointees instead of allowing voters to elect 11 of them. The GOP fought for the changes after three candidates aligned with the teacher’s union were elected to the board, displacing conservative members.
Last month, some board members sued to halt the law. They won a temporary restraining order, which was extended this week as the judge asked for more information from both sides while she decides whether to completely halt the law for the duration of the lawsuit. Additional briefs are due Oct. 16, and the restraining order has been extended to Oct. 20.
But the law was due to take effect Tuesday at midnight. DeWine said the order did not stop his administration from disbanding the old education department. Rather than leave the state without one, DeWine said it was imperative to create the new department — the Department of Education and Workforce — immediately. He launched the new agency Wednesday.
“This injunction is not helping our kids,” DeWine said. “We have things to do. We want every child to be able to read. We want every child to live up to their God-given potential.”
Now it’s unclear which body is in charge of overseeing the education department as it shapes curriculums, selects textbooks and performs a variety of other essential tasks, like facilitating school funding and approving private school voucher applications.
The move comes as GOP leaders in other states are challenging the control of locally elected leaders. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered a state takeover of the Houston Independent School District, the largest school system in the state, allowing the Texas Education Agency to appoint school board members. Oklahoma’s right-leaning state superintendent of schools, Ryan Walters, sought to take over Tulsa Public Schools, undermining the locally elected school board.
These battles have become more fraught as Republicans have sought to limit the rights of transgender students, restrict school library books, limit the discussion of race and push to integrate more religion into classrooms.
The latest moves in Ohio are part of that trend, said Skye Perryman, the head of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group leading the legal fight to maintain the current composition of the board. It will “undermine the ability of school districts or school boards to or elected leaders … to exercise their judgment over public education,” she said.
DeWine and other Republicans have defended the overhaul, pinning the failures of the state’s schools on the fact that the board does not answer to the governor. In a news conference Monday, DeWine said that putting the state education department under his authority could streamline the implementation of state policies. He also criticized the state board for failing to select a permanent state superintendent.
“It’s just a total lack of leadership,” DeWine said.
State Sen. Bill Reineke (R), who sponsored the first effort to overhaul the board, blamed the state board for low test scores in some districts and high absenteeism across the state.
“Now more than ever, the post COVID-19 recovery demands accountability, guidance and access to professional resources for our educators and school boards at the local level around the state,” Reineke wrote in a newspaper op-ed in December, when he sponsored a bill to return control of the state’s education department to the governor. “Education is in crisis mode in Ohio.”
Ohio voters have selected school board members since 1953, when they voted in a referendum to change the state’s constitution. There have been a few unsuccessful attempts to undo the change.
The most recent one began last year, after voters elected three members to the board who were endorsed by Democrats. All three — Teresa Fedor, Tom Jackson and Katie Hofmann — were recruited and backed by the state’s teachers union and defeated conservative candidates who had run on culture war issues. Democrats viewed it as a rebuke of the right-wing’s education agenda.
A month before the new members were set to take their seats, Reineke put forward his bill to overhaul the state’s education department, but it failed. The bill resurfaced again and passed the state Senate in March, but it languished in committee in the Statehouse. Finally, backers of the legislation at the last minute added its language to an unrelated bill to fund the government. The budget bill passed, along with came to be dubbed the Education Takeover Rider.
The plaintiffs in the case, which include seven members of the school board, say the way the bill was passed — as an unrelated rider to a budget bill — is unconstitutional, and that lawmakers did not follow proper procedures in implementing it. They also argue that stripping the board of its power and changing how its members are selected is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit argued that the governor wants to convert the board from an independent, democratically elected body into “an empty shell.”
“For decades, parents in Ohio have gone to the voting booth to exercise their right to elect representatives empowered to advocate for them at the state level,” the plaintiffs said in a joint statement when they filed the lawsuit last month. “We will not sit back and let stand such a brazen power-grab that flies in the face of Ohio residents who value local input and control over their children’s education.”
