the Akron school board paid $200,000 to make embattled Superintendent Michael Robinson go away quietly and then quickly appointed a longtime administrator as the new superintendent.

The state budget director criticized the state's plan to put $600 million in bonds into a Browns Brook Park Stadium complex, calling it a risky investment.

And Ohio lawmakers passed a new energy bill that ends coal plant subsidies.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

The Akron School board accepted the resignation of its superintendent, paying $200,000 in severance.

Then, with no national search, this time they appointed his replacement, who started with the district as a teacher more than three decades ago.

The state budget director and the Legislative Service Commission raised questions about using hundreds of millions of dollars in state money to help the Browns build a Brook Park Dome Stadium complex.

The Browns issued a lengthy defense.

And Cuyahoga County executive Chris Ronayne asked the state for money for a different project, a renovation of the existing stadium.

The East Palestine School District says Norfolk Southern ghosted students, while the railroad contends it's paid for every claim that had proper documentation.

They'll hash it out in court.

And the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, citing budget concerns, is eliminating the extended school year model used in a number of high performing schools.

Joining me to discuss these stories and more from Ideastream, public media education reporter Connor Morris and local government reporter Abby Marshall and the chief of the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse news bureau, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

The Akron Board of Education paid to make embattled Superintendent Michael Robinson go away without a fight, though some board members said he didn't deserve a dime.

And unexpectedly late in its meeting, the board voted to appoint a new superintendent without any search process.

Robinson leaves after less than two years leading the district and investigation, found that allegations against him were credible, allegations that he bullied and intimidated staff and demean students, calling them ghetto.

The new superintendent, Mary LB Lee, has twice served as interim superintendent, including during Robinson's recent suspension and has been with the district more than three decades.

Conner, you were at this board meeting, which I think lasted 77 hours.

It's a long meeting.

It was, yeah, just about 77 hours.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Not quite that that is hyperbole, but it was expected the board would take action.

There had been this investigation board and they did.

One of the things that they were going on was the law firm.

And we mentioned this last week that was the intermediary between the investigative law firm and the board basically said to the board, he can't stay here.

There's got to be there are three options, all of which are him leaving.

They took one of those options.

Yes.

There was a memo that was kind of leaked to the press, which out the board actually said ended up making the negotiations more complicated with Robinson and actually spiked the amount of money that they ended up paying out to him in exchange for him to release any legal claims to the against the district.

But, yeah, it was a really, really kind of stunning meeting because it was already 1130 at night.

They'd already taken action on the superintendent.

And then one board member raises her hand and she says, I'd like to, you know, appoint interim superintendent Mary Ali as the permanent superintendent.

Permanent like no search.

You were expecting there'd be a search.

And as there always is, national and you'd get all these candidates in.

But literally moments after that decision, they said, hey, let's let's put her in permanently.

I mean, they'd already like motion for like adjourning the meeting as well when when she raised her hand.

And it is I've never seen for any large school this or even a medium sized school district, a superintendent hired without a search process of some kind.

Normally you hire a search firm and granted it it is expensive sometimes.

I mean, it could be $50,000 or more typically for conducting a national search, you know, So, you know, on one side, the board members who voted and it was a 4 to 3 vote.

It was a very narrow vote to appoint out Lee as the permanent superintendent on the one side, they're saying, hey, we can save money.

We know outlays.

She's been here for a long time.

On the other side, the board members are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's the what's the rush here?

We can have her as the interim superintendent as she's been before.

And then they say you've done a good job at.

Right.

And then we can still conduct this national search, which could end up making her the superintendent.

Regardless.

He was a finalist for the the job before when Robinson got it.

Yes.

And it's unclear why they chose him over her if they, you know, are making the argument now that she is the best choice for the job.

And this is all pending contract negotiations with her.

Of course, I wonder if they're thinking we did a national search last time we came to this conclusion.

What good did it do us?

Yeah.

So we kind of already have vetted her because she was a finalist before.

Of course.

Let's go ahead and just make that decision and move on.

And the board, a couple of the board members who voted in favor of her said, you know, we've got this grow our own talent kind of thing going on.

And so, you know, she's a known quantity.

From what I understand, parents and staff appear to like her.

Haven't heard a whiff of any sort of controversy around her.

Nowhere near what we've heard about with regard to Robinson, which, of course, as you mentioned, the top of the show, a very serious allegations of bullying staff.

And and, you know, absolutely, the board had said they really basically the folks that voted for Robinson to resign in that big payout, they said, you know, we want to get rid of him essentially as soon as possible.

Right.

That the others who voted against it also wanted to get rid of him.

They just said, let's not give him a red cent because the way he acted shouldn't be rewarded.

And go ahead if you want to sue us.

We've got a case here that's really where the argument came and it that, as you said, it was a close vote, four, two, three.

But the people that voted against it weren't saying we want to keep him as superintendent.

They were just saying we don't want to pay him.

The board was unified in that front.

At least they wanted to get rid of him.

Yeah.

And the it was the same margin that four, two, three, four voting for Ali to be the permanent superintendent and to for the superintendent to be to be let go as well.

And it was the same folks each time the four that were voting for they are represent kind of an all the older guard of the board folks that have been on the board for longer.

Three newer folks are on the other side, including Barbara Sykes who folks might know from, you know, Akron, the Akron City Council and state state House as well.

Right.

As well as local pastor Gregory Harrison and Renee Moore, who works at Akron University of Akron.

So this is the third superintendent in five years, Christine Fowler.

Mack, who came from the Cleveland district, was there for a short time.

She didn't last.

Michael Robinson.

Now, with all of those troubles, he's out.

What is the reaction in the district or our students and teachers confident that this can move forward or are they worried that they have a board that really isn't getting it done?

It's it's a mix.

I think that there's a relative good faith in the public in terms of the new superintendent.

But there are a lot of folks that have criticized this board for a long time now for criticizing their superintend.

So with with Fowler, Mack, for example, she was criticized pretty harshly previously and ended up resigning.

She was paid out even more than is that she was paid like I think like $400,000.

That was the rest of her contract, basically.

And she, again, was only there for about a year and a half similar to Robinson.

From what I understand, there weren't any allegations of like bullying as far as Fowler Matt goes.

But the board did make bring up a couple of interesting points regarding anonymous complaints being lodged against these top educators at the district.

They said this is concerning.

This happened with Fowler, Mack, this happened with Robinson as well.

We still want Robinson gone.

But similar complaints were kind of lodged against Fowler with regard to job performance anyway.

the state's budget director blasted the House, passed plan to issue $600 million in bonds to pay for a domed Brown Stadium complex in Brook Park.

The Legislative Service Commission also shot holes in the plan, calling the financial projections overly optimistic.

The Haslam group, Owners of the Browns, went on defense immediately.

carrying the budget.

And management director Kim Murphy acts that how you pronounce verdicts monarchs.

Okay Kim Monarchs called the state bonds risky and called into question the claims the Browns made about stadiums economic benefit.

I have to say I've seen a lot of these budget memos and analyzes over the years.

This one was pretty brutal.

This was pretty direct.

I wonder.

It was written apparently in March and I and other reporters had had long standing public records requests for any documents like this.

But we just got it on Monday.

And it was hours after the Legislative Service Commission put out their report, which was a little tamer, I guess.

But they both had similar conclusions in that they have questions about the numbers that the Browns are putting out there, the estimates of the tax revenue that the new domed stadium and development will raise to pay back the state for the bonds that the state would issue in the budget.

Right.

In the legislative services Commission, one of them was, okay, you're talking about having some development or some jobs.

They're actually taking jobs from somewhere else.

It isn't like they're new.

Some of those kinds of things were the the kind of analysis that went into it.

The Browns were immediately hardcore on defense, right?

Absolutely.

And that's been their claim all along, is that this is this development is going to be transformational.

It'll be Ohio's first dome.

It'll be one of the few domes in this part of the country and that it will bring in, I think the estimate was a one and a half million new visitors which morning said she doubts and there are some questions about what events they would actually pull in and also where would the jobs that they are claiming would be created.

Would they just be jobs that would be coming from downtown Cleveland or would this be new jobs that would be created and all of this raises the questions of the these numbers came from the Browns and their consultants, the housing sports group, and they are consultants.

And whether the state should just go with those numbers or whether there needs to be more investigation into that.

And that that's been the question all along is the housing Sports group says this is going to be a great project.

You would expect them to say that because they are investing in it and they're bringing it to the state.

But is that really actually the case here?

Here's a key question you just mentioned that it was written in March.

We've had public records requests and now we finally see it.

Was it written before the House made its vote and did they see it?

That's a question I asked that House Speaker Matt Hoffman, who had said on March 31st that he had taken those numbers to the budget director, to the state treasurer to look at.

He didn't have any conclusions then basically saying, you know, you'll see those reports.

But then when the report came out on a monday, on Wednesday, I and other reporters asked him, Have you seen this budget director's memo?

And he said he hadn't read it yet, which I suppose he's a busy man.

Yeah, but to say, hey, I took it to the state budget director and then we voted on it.

And then to find out what the state budget director said was, this is a bad deal.

That doesn't compute.

Yes.

And there's also a little bit of an extra political element here, too, in that the budget director him is appointed by Governor Mike DeWine.

She she works for him.

She helps him as his budget director.

And she said in the memo that the amount of money that would be raised by the doubling of the tax on sports gambling operators, which DeWine had initially proposed as the way to fund stadiums, that that would be more essentially more cost effective than this.

And I can't remember exactly her language on that.

That's something that DeWine has continued to talk up.

He has never threatened to veto this bond package, but he has continued to say the way to handle this would be to double the tax on sports gambling.

Operators use that money to allow sports facilities to access it and do their repairs and construction and all that that sports facilities in general, not necessarily just as Brown's project, but we heard this week more optimistic language from the governor than ever about the move to Brook Park.

He was saying basically Ohio doesn't have a dome.

And this would be kind of cool to have a dome in Brook Park.

So it wasn't necessarily about the funding.

He still thinks it should be a tax, but we hear him saying he likes the idea.

Yeah.

And I don't think there's anybody out there who doesn't like the idea overall of a domed stadium and development.

I mean, the question is, where would it be and should it be in downtown Cleveland?

Should it be in Brook Park?

I think that that's always been on the table as, hey, it would be cool that it would be nice to have the chance to get a Super Bowl, though.

Honestly, there haven't been a whole lot of Super Bowls in cold weather states, even with domes.

And there was one in New York without a dome.

Yeah, that's true.

Possible.

That's true.

By the way, there's one person that's against the dome.

That's me.

And I've been on the record, and here's what I'm against.

I'm against the dome.

I'm against seats.

All right?

This is.

This is like gladiators, coliseum.

Just stand there and scream as your team goes out.

And an old school Browns fans will tell you we don't want to play in at all.

I've never sat down at the Browns game.

Wow.

Look at the snow game that James Winston played and talked about playing in the snow.

You wouldn't get that in a dome.

But I think Dwayne has never said he's against the whole idea.

He's against the idea of the state putting $600 million in state backed bonds into the budget, which reminder that would cost the state about $1,000,000,000 to pay back the Brown say the tax revenue would be $1.3 billion more than the state would need to pay back those bonds.

But that's the question.

Are those numbers correct?

And if they're not, what happens?

While all this is happening, Chris remains.

Got the fumble, rookie.

He's going sneaking over.

He's got the ball and he says, all right, how about this?

Why don't you pay a lot less money?

Give it to to Cuyahoga County to renovate the stadium existing on the lakefront.

What he asked for, Abby, was basically the same as Cincinnati asked for.

He said, listen, they're renovating a stadium about as old as ours.

Why don't we just go ahead and do that?

Yeah.

So also kind of regarding those projections that the Browns have made, Cuyahoga County has challenged those numbers as well.

And as we know, the city has said there will be an economic hit to the city annually.

And they've kind of criticized those those numbers.

But yeah, Chris Ronayne asked for $350 million to renovate the existing stadium.

Projections for that renovation is about $1,000,000,000.

So we're looking at less than half the cost of building a whole new Brook Park Stadium.

And we know that the Haslam's are looking for half the public support.

So so Chris Romain's argument this entire time has been it's pretty simple when you look at $1,000,000,000 price tag and the public supporting half of that versus a $2.4 billion price tag, it's pretty simple.

And in his argument when I spoke to him this week was if I'm a lawmaker and the county executives coming to me and saying, hey, give me less money, it seems like the pretty smart choice.

So it seems like these leaders are still really set on keeping them downtown.

And that renovation, by the way, that $1.2 billion does not include a dome on the lakefront.

So that's another issue that's being discussed.

And when we asked House Speaker Matt Hoffman about that, well, actually, he kind of brought up the executive director or the county executive's request in an answer to a question that I asked, he said that he is going South County, the same thing that he told the Browns two years ago in that come to the state with a proposal, all that works for the state.

So he's kind of shooting that whole idea down, saying you need to come with a better plan.

He claims that this plan that the Browns came forward with, with the $600 million in bonds, that that's going to be a better plan because the state will make money off of it.

And it is it is worth noting, you mentioned the Bengals and the Hamilton County made that request a day after the Ohio House passed its budget that included these bonds.

They made that 350 some million dollar request to renovate their stadium.

So and you can't blame them.

It's another NFL team saying, okay, here's a ton of money going to a different NFL team.

Where's our where's our share?

So it's interesting about how those floodgates might be opened a little bit for other professional sports teams, even though Ohio lawmakers approved a wide ranging energy bill that addresses the state's growing need for more electricity.

House Bill 15 wipes out coal plant subsidies that Ohio electricity customers have been paying for for years.

Nuclear bailouts were stripped after the House speaker and former Republican Party chair were convicted.

Coal subsidies remain, Karen.

Those are going to be out.

Yes.

And actually, we've been paying them slightly longer than House Bill six, which again passed in 2019.

They originally came from an order from public Utilities Commission.

And House Bill six just codified them.

So we've been paying those for a while.

And this is the elimination of those two subsidies or those subsidies for those two coal fired power plants.

House Bill six, of course, had the initial subsidies for the nuclear power plants.

So finally, those elements of House Bill six are gone.

But House Bill six still has other elements that remain that are less costly.

But things like cracking down on renewable energy standards and energy efficiency programs and that stuff from House Bill six still remains cracking down, meaning not encouraging.

Yes, that's right.

So the repeal H.B.

six movement, that never really happened, just little parts of it have been peeled away.

Right.

And there were Democrats that started it.

But Republicans joined it, too, because House Bill six was approved by both Republicans and Democrats because there was a real threat at the time of nuclear power plant shutting down, which nobody wanted to see.

But when House Speaker Jason Stephens was in charge, he had said there would be no repeal and no repeal of these subsidies for these two coal fired plants, one of which was close to his district, I might note.

So this is the first big move to try to get rid of those.

And it passed almost unanimously, which is something we don't see that often in big bills like this.

But this is a pretty big one.

And I think the element about helping Ohio try to stave off the energy crisis that's coming because of all the data centers and everything that's happening, that's a big part of why so many people were supportive of this.

And David sends an email and he says, okay, if we need all this new energy, as you just described, the reasons that we might need it.

He notes then that why are there why are they limiting renewable energy project projects such as wind, solar and geothermal safer, less polluting?

And now more limited by the one party Ohio legislature, says David.

Well, and there are environmentalists who actually supported this bill who have that question as well.

They want to see some changes when it comes to that.

But I think there are those who supported this, who were on that side who say this is a start, because, again, Ohio is facing an energy crisis.

Coming up and there's a real need for new energy generation projects.

And that's one of the things that the bill does, is it shortens the period in which you can apply and get those projects started because we're all I mean, while I'm in central Ohio, where many of these data centers are, but this could affect people way beyond central Ohio if we do indeed start having energy issues and energy shortages.

I was watching a documentary that HBO put out the other day and I saw you.

Yeah, I had no idea that was a new one on me.

And a lot of my friends in the State House press corps make appearances in that, including Laura Bischoff from the she now writes for USA Today in Columbus Dispatch.

But she did a lot of work on House Bill six.

So it was interesting to to see that clip.

Yeah, it's called the Dark Money Game.

Ohio Confidential, and you should check it out.

And I got a call from somebody.

It says, Hey, I heard you on that on that documentary.

And it's from this show.

And there's a couple of you know, it's just the voice.

I think they're smart that they don't actually put my face on television.

But but truly, this dug into that whole issue about how it started, how these dark money groups collect money without any kind of accountability and where the money went.

Yeah.

And that that was the whole point of it's a two parter where it's Ohio being an example.

And then another part that kind of digs into it even more.

There's there's nothing in this bill that would do anything about dark money.

There's been no move in the legislature to try to do anything about dark money because, I mean, that's a that's a a Citizens United issue.

I mean, that's a that's a bigger issue than what we're talking about here.

But the energy parts of this were big enough that certainly there were lots of questions about.

Well, because that bill was so tainted by corruption, why not repeal the whole thing and then go ahead and pass the individual elements of that?

That did not happen.

But now we were seeing at least the subsidies for those two coal fired power plants being pulled back.

Susan sent us an email.

She says the electric subsidies may be gone.

But first, energy will have a rate increase in June.

Well, and that's that that's again, something that's not really addressed, I don't think, in this.

But part of the problem with all of this is utility regulation in the state is very complicated.

It's it's complicated anywhere, I'm pretty sure.

But it's really complicated to follow, especially for consumers to understand all these different riders and all these rate cases and all of these things that are happening, all people see is that their bills go up and it's it's very it's very disconcerting sometimes as well as scary.

The Cleveland School Board voted this week to end the extended school year model used by about a quarter of the schools in the district.

They cited budget concerns.

Parents and teachers have protested the decision, saying the extra time is needed for a good education counter.

Let's talk about the impact.

So how many schools had the extended school year?

Yeah, so it was 24 or 21 that had the the nontraditional calendar.

And it was like a mix of like three different versions, once like a year round model.

Some of them had a couple of extra days and then 24 schools will be losing that extra 30 minutes they had each day.

And studies do say generally suggests that actually it's a positive thing to have extra time in the school day.

The district conducted its own study and said the way that we're implementing it here, we're actually not really seeing much benefit.

Parents say, no, actually we really like this a lot.

Teachers appreciate it as well because they could actually earn a little bit more pay from, you know, longer days, a couple more days added on.

And how did the district say how does the district save money by this?

It's almost entirely by staff salaries.

So, you know, they're not paying those teachers and staff for those extra days at the end of the school year or at the beginning of the school year or those extra 30 minutes.

That adds up when you're talking about hundreds of teachers in these schools.

It's a mix, but quite a few of them are some of the more high performing schools and are some of the specialty schools at the district.

So there's a Boys and Girls Leadership Academy.

There is a Aero Aerospace maritime school specifically that's trying to prepare kids for careers in that field.

And there was a student that spoke really eloquently, actually.

He's been organizing protests on that front.

Xavier Avery was his name.

And he was saying that, you know, they really get a big benefit from this.

They go deeper into the summer and warmer months because of their extended calendar.

And so he's saying they're getting time out operating drones over the lake, some of them getting like like a certain kinds of pilot's licenses.

Apparently Boeing licenses.

So anyway, like a full pilot's license, of course, but like operating like a drone, for example.

And so he was saying that they were seeing a lot of benefit from it.

And so it was a really deeply unpopular move that I've seen so far from the reaction.

In addition to that, another thing that's likely to be unpopular with a number of parents and students is that the cost cutting will mean you have to close some of the buildings.

There aren't as many students on one side of town as there is on another.

Yeah, they might have to say, okay, well, everyone goes to this high school instead.

How is that playing out?

Yeah.

So separate from the plan to cut the the calendar, there is this building Brighter Futures plan, and it sounds very positive, but it's really the district's consolidation plan.

They're saying we've got way too many buildings.

We've done a lot of reporting on this.

You know, some schools, less than 15% enrollment, you know, just hundreds of empty seats in the buildings.

The district says it's really expensive to just keep operating.

So many buildings that are so.

And Columbus, you know, schools just did this recently as well where they were.

They were closing some buildings.

And so they're saying that this is really our best bet at not because they just taxpayers just approved a levy just last year and they're saying we're already running out of money.

They got to cut $150 million over the next three years, which is quite a bit.

And so they're saying this is our big bet.

You know, we got to cut back on these extended year schools.

We got to, you know, close some buildings to consolidate and maybe eventually we'll be in a better spot then.

I wonder how that plays with voters who said yes to a levy and then they get cuts anyway.

It's a hard sell.

The district did say, you know, hard decisions were coming last year, but they weren't very specific.

We even asked them, you know, on record, are you going to have to close school buildings?

And they said, we're going to have to look at the district's footprint.

They weren't very clear or direct about that, I don't think, and at least in my book as a reporter.

All right.

The East Palestine Board of Education sued Norfolk Southern Railroad, seeking $30 million and claiming the railroad ghosted them by not paying bills related to the tactic derailment in 2023.

Norfolk Southern says it paid every bill that had proper documentation more than $1,000,000 worth.

What does that mean?

I think it means whatever they sent them directly and then some of these other promises that the school district said they made, you know, they might not have followed through with it.

Maybe there wasn't an exact agreement in writing.

And then the district's attorney disputed that as well and said, you know, we've sent them plenty of things over this time period, and they just never really followed through on that.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven.

KSU What's in store for the Akron bicentennial celebration?

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe