By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Education from kindergarten through doctoral programs is under attack.
The recent Education Labor Forum, said David Jackson, president of the BGSU Faculty Association, was intended “to inform people of the challenges we face, primarily from our friends in Columbus, primarily coming from the state legislature in Columbus, but also facing us on the national level.”
The far-reaching higher education legislation Senate Bill 83 was the focus of much of the discussion, but it is indicative of a larger movement. “This is happening all over,” said Sara Kilpatrick, the executive director of the Ohio Chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “This is a national attack in addition to what is facing us here in Ohio.”
Kilpatrick was one of four speakers at the forum, hosted by the BGSU Faculty Association, the local chapter of the AAUP.
Kilpatrick described SB 83 and similar legislation passed and proposed in other states as being like documents produced by ChatGPT. They are “cobbled together from a bunch of model laws by right wing think tanks.”
Alabama last week banned diversity and equity programs, the latest move to crack down on what’s taught in schools. Florida has led the way in these efforts.
The argument, Kilpatrick said, is that “universities are all woke, into brainwashing students to become liberals, are too expensive.”
SB 83 is Ohio’s version of this agenda. Kilpatrick zeroed on five elements of the expansive legislation.
The proponents, she said, argue that it is an academic freedom bill. “Basically, it proposes faculty has to have intellectual diversity in the classroom, and students can file a complaint if their ‘intellectual diversity rights’ have been violated. It just opens up a can of worms of how it would be applied.”
While the claim, she said, is that it would promote free speech “Actually what it does is clamp down on certain speech to promote other speech.” One conservative professor testified against the bill, saying it could be used against him and other like-minded faculty.
SB 83 also calls for post-tenure review. It would allow certain administrators to have a tenured faculty member reviewed at any time. That could lead to termination, Kilpatrick said.
That would prompt tenured faculty to flee the state and make it difficult to attract quality professors.
SB 83 makes closing programs easier if they show any sign of reduced enrollment. That could lead to political interference with calls to close programs with negligible declines.
(Because of demographic shifts college enrollment overall is declining, a trend that’s expected to accelerate.)
SB 83 would ban all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs unless there is an external reason such as accreditation review. Universities, she said, need these programs to attract underserved populations, and help them succeed.
The bill would also “ gut collective bargaining rights for faculty,” she said. An earlier version would have banned strikes by all higher ed employees. That was removed. But the bill still would take issues involving tenure, evaluations, and program closures off the bargaining table.
David Jackson, the president of the BGSU Faculty Association who teaches political science, said that while some university presidents have supported SB 83 because of the added power it would give them, that’s not been the case at BGSU. “There is no light” between the administration and the union’s view of SB 83. They both oppose it.
The bill passed the Senate in May on a 21-10 vote. All voting in favor, including State Senator Theresa Gavarone, of Bowling Green, were Republicans. Those opposed included three Republicans as well as all the Senate Democrats.
The legislation has passed the committee vote in the House, again with Republicans providing all the yes votes, and two Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.
Kilpatrick noted that State Rep. Gail Pavliga, one of the dissenting Republicans, lost her primary.
She was one of three so-called “Blue 22,” Republican House members who joined with Democrats to elect Republican Jason Stephens as House Speaker, over the GOP’s preferred choice Derrick Merrin. Others, including State Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, of Perrysburg, survived well-funded challenges from their right.
Three reportedly lost, and several more were not on the ballot. That leaves 15 Republicans who backed Stephens in the House, Kilpatrick said. That would be enough to re-elect him. Stephens has shown no interest in bringing SB 83 up for a vote in his chamber.
Matt Huffman, current president of the senate, however, is moving to the House in the next session and is expected to run for speaker.
Before then, though, the legislature will convene. “Lame duck sessions get dicey,” she said.
The forum was held the day after the primary election.
The panelists reactions were mixed.
Jason Perlman, political director of the Ohio AFL-CIO, said he sees signs of a weakening of Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP. According to NBC exit polling, 11 percent of those who voted in the Republican primary will vote for or President Joe Biden in the general election, and another 8 percent planned not to vote at all because of Trump.
He said he remembers when vehicles with MAGA flags would drive around Columbus to protest high gas prices. Those kind of displays are no longer evident.
Catherine Hernandez, a fourth-grade teacher in the Toledo Public School and union activist, however, said she was concerned by how many more voters came out to vote for Trump than came out to vote for Biden in the Democratic primary.
Perlman said it was important that efforts to end gerrymandering succeed. The current system, he said, favors electing legislators who will do nothing to offend the extremes of their parties.
He noted that Michigan had anti-union right to work laws in place. Then an anti-gerrymandering movement similar to the one now underway in Ohio, was successful, and the legislative districts were redrawn. The right-to-work law was voted out.
Jackson, who teaches political science, noted that though Michigan has 1.7 million fewer residents than Ohio, it has more registered voters. “Something’s rotten.”
That means the continued failure to adequately fund public education, while expanding the voucher system that sends tax dollars to private schools, including religious schools.
Hernandez said she sees the results of that. Every year, she will have students in her class who have come from charter and private schools. Sometimes they’ve been to more than one school. They are often several years behind. Teachers do their best to bring them up to grade level, but their scores still count against the schools on the state report cards. “It’s fail, fail, fail.”
Hernandez said that the state in its push for the Science of Reading is ignoring the training teachers have, and the coaching supported by the teacher’s union. Instead, they want to hire outside agencies run by people who are not educators and would plop kids in front of computers.
Hernandez said it is important to show up at meetings and write letters to legislators. “Stay active,” she said, “because when we’re not active, bad things happen to public education.”
