Sometimes our elected state officials use the time before major holidays, when our attention is devoted to family and religious matters, to introduce and pass legislation that flies under the average citizen’s radar. Such a bill had a hearing last week in Columbus with Senate Bill 178. You should be concerned and act quickly if you care about our children’s education in Ohio. Our legislators have assured that this bill is on the “fast track” and will be approved before citizens realize it.
This bill seeks to authorize the governor’s office to take over the oversight of K-12 curriculum standards and textbooks and give it to the governor’s executive workforce. Our elected state board of education would be left with perfunctory duties, such as the licensing of superintendents and teachers. The state board under this “restructuring” would be stripped of most of its educational responsibilities, which would be put under a new cabinet position as overseen the governor.
Public education has been in disarray for over two decades; The case of DeRolph vs. State, as decided and revisited many times by our Ohio Supreme Court, determined that Ohio’s public-school funding is fundamentally unconstitutional and needs to be totally revised by our legislature. Since our legislature has refused to do this, despite multiple rulings by the court, considerably less money has come to our school districts, schools are still funded mostly by property taxes, and school boards have had to perform the impossible task of running schools with not enough funds.
This ill-advised bill may be a reaction to the fact that Ohio’s culture is rapidly changing, with issues such as transgender children wanting to play sports and People of Color wanting their histories to be honestly portrayed in textbooks. It may be because of a recently defeated board member who led a controversial movement to rescind an anti-racism resolution. It may be due to most of our legislators yearning for a return to the glory of the 1950’s. Whatever the reason is, you do not want your children’s textbooks chosen by a nameless and faceless unelected bureaucrat in Columbus.
In 2021, the Texas Senate passed a bill removing Martin Luther King, Jr., suffrage, and Native American history from required curriculum. Virginia’s governor is working on textbooks where there are no references to the legacy of slavery and how it affects our country. Rest assured that Ohio is not far behind if this legislation is passed. It is historical sacrilege when overzealous government leaders believe that if the Holocaust, suffrage, slavery, or Stonewall are redacted from books, well, then they did not happen.
Senate Bill 178 is clearly governmental overreach and is being run through the system without proper scrutiny and analysis by the citizenry. Please contact your state senator and state representative and demand that they not support this legislation. Most readers are represented by State Senator Theresa Gavarone or State Representative Haraz Ghanbari. If you are uncertain of your representatives, go to www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislators/find-my-legislator and enter your zip code.
Thank you for taking the time to read about this issue. Time is of the essence; please contact your representative today. Our children deserve better.
Karen Wood
Bowling Green
