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Ohio finally has a new lieutenant governor.

And the play call was a surprise substitution for many.

Coming up Jim Tressel talks about the new job and the antibody higher ed bill that passed this week.

And a conversation with one of the principals behind the Fair School funding plan about the proposed state budget.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Just.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

After weeks of waiting, the state has a new lieutenant governor.

And the decision announced by governor Mike DeWine on Monday morning amounted to something of a trick play for many political observers.

today I will be sending his name to the Senate and to the House.

Extending the name of Jim Tressel.

He'll be nominated him to be Ohio's next lieutenant governor.

Jim Tressel coached at several universities before leaving Youngstown State for national football championships in the 90s, and then in 2002, he took Ohio State to its first national championship in more than 30 years.

Tressel resigned in 2011 after a memorabilia for tattoos scandal involving his players resulted in the NCAA vacating Ohio State's wins for the 2010 season.

Tressel became president of Youngstown State in 2014 and retired in 2023, and has been active in Christian and conservative causes.

All Republican lawmakers voted to confirm Tressel, with one Senate Democrat and 27 Democrats in the House voting against him, in part over concerns about his ties to life wise, the Ohio based program that takes kids to Christian activities off campus during the school day.

And because of his connection to a law that took control of the Youngstown City Schools from the school board and put it with an unelected CEO, Tressel was sworn in at the state House on Friday.

I talked with Tressel just before the legislature confirmed him as lieutenant governor on Wednesday, and I asked him what he would tell people who feel he's not qualified for the job.

Well, I would tell them one thing I've learned in these two and a half short days here is he's surrounded himself with an amazing staff, and I'm not silly enough to think that the head coach is the only one that's important because I, you know, I got a lot of acclaim and adulation and all that stuff, and I knew that if it weren't for that staff, none of that would have happened.

So I can tell you that that the staff is extraordinary, that, everyone loves to talk about all the things that are important.

And so every day, every meeting you're in, you're learning something.

And, and so I guess the person that would say that I don't have the experience probably in some of the topics, that's true.

And I need to learn and, and the governor promised me he's in good health and, you know, I'm not going to have to worry about knowing everything anytime soon.

And, but I do need to continue to listen and learn and sit down with people and count on this staff and find out where specifically, the governor thinks I can be helpful because I don't want to just go to school for six months on all these issues and so forth and not do anything else, you know?

So a combination of, of, learning and, carrying out the assignments of the governor, and counting on this great staff.

You know, it's kind of where I am right now.

I've had a chance to sit with all the legislators or many of them, and I've known a lot of them.

And I know how complex their world is, and I know it's not easy.

And, sound bites sometimes drive the conversation, but it's deeper than that.

And, and so I'm looking forward to working with them and hearing them and listening to them and, and, you know, hopefully we can have great dialog and make good decisions and earn the trust of the Ohioans Tressel says his first order of business is to make sure education is lining up with the needs of the workforce, which he says the Department of Education and Workforce has been studying.

you know, I'm hoping to be available for the governor when he has a need.

He's only one person.

And so sometimes you.

Oh, I wish I could be in two places.

You know, maybe I can, you know, pinch hit for them, and so that we can make sure everyone is, is recognized and so forth.

And, and then the other one, Karen, is, we were laughing about the fact that when we grew up, there was a President's Council on Fitness, and it was President Kennedy that started, and we had all these fitness things, and we were in elementary school and, and we, you know, all these tests we had to take and you had to meet a certain fitness level.

And, you know, when you think about the health, both physically, mentally, emotionally, when you feel better, when you're healthier, when you're more fit, everything's better.

And so one of the things we laughed about is if we run out of things to do, maybe we can, create an initiative that could be the beginnings of something that could help the health and fitness of our state for years to come.

Tressel says his first order of business is to make sure education is lining up with the needs of the workforce, which he says the Department of Education and Workforce has been studying, and also, I'm hoping to be available for the governor when he has a need.

He's only one person.

And so sometimes you.

Oh, I wish I could be in two places.

You know, maybe I can, you know, pinch hit for them, and so that we can make sure everyone is, is recognized and so forth.

And, and then the other one, Karen, is, we were laughing about the fact that when we grew up, there was a President's Council on Fitness, and it was President Kennedy that started, and we had all these fitness things, and we were in elementary school and, and we, you know, all these tests we had to take and you had to meet a certain fitness level.

And, you know, when you think about the health, both physically, mentally, emotionally, when you feel better, when you're healthier, when you're more fit, everything's better.

And so one of the things we laughed about is if we run out of things to do, maybe we can, create an initiative that could be the beginnings of something that could help the health and fitness of our state for years to come.

Speaking of years to come, I also attempted to nail Tressel down on his plans beyond being lieutenant governor and whether a run for governor is in the future.

I really had had no thought of being the lieutenant governor.

Now I'm given a task, hopefully, to see how I can do there.

I've always lived in my 48 plus year, professional life that, the only way to be as good as you can be is to be clearly in the moment, to be focusing in where you are, what you're doing, not daydreaming about what you wish you were doing.

Or I wonder what I'll be doing in five years.

And, people love to have all those things pasted up and so forth.

I want to win today.

And we used to tell our teams, I remember going into spring practice, we would always say, hey, look, we can't win the national championship in spring practice, but we can lose it if we don't progress enough every day.

And so my goal is to live my life trying to progress every day.

And then if I'll do that or I'll be relatively successful at that, then whatever happens down the road, I'm sure I'll be good with not ruling it out, then not ruling out that I'm working on the day.

No.

Tressel also has some thoughts about Senate Bill one.

The bill Republicans say will stop what they feel is liberal indoctrination in universities.

On Wednesday, the Senate passed the bill, which bans most diversity, equity and inclusion programs and faculty strikes, requires post tenure performance reviews.

A civics course focused on American history and free market capitalism and intellectual diversity, and discussion of issues the bill describes as controversial.

It also shortens trustee terms and orders.

A study by the Chancellor of the possibility of three year bachelor's degrees for some majors.

The bill passed the Senate with all Republicans on board except senators Bill blessing and Tom Payton, who joined all nine Democrats in opposing it.

The vote came the day after a committee hearing on the bill that went on for more than 8.5 hours.

Hundreds of people from student and faculty organizations, Democratic aligned groups, unions and others who describe themselves as interested, shared, spoken and written testimony.

Some were in the Senate chamber for the vote and loudly protested before walking out.

higher.

No, no, no, that's Lieutenant Governor Tressel said he was part of discussions on a previous version of the higher ed overhaul.

So he needs to read this new one over.

But he had some thoughts.

I thought at the beginning there were some things that would really benefit us at universities.

Probably the one that would benefit us the most is when they were talking a lot about the the training and the efficiency and effectiveness of our board because, we can't have a great university without a great board.

And the board has to do a great job of oversight, of evaluation of, in our case, the president and the provost, of making sure that we've got sustainable strategic vision, but they've got to be engaged to do that.

And they have to be trained, and they have to understand that it's not maybe exactly like the business they came from or the hospital that they used to run.

It's a little unique.

So to me, that was a good part of it.

I don't know how that came out.

The whole conversation about, that we want everyone, at the institution to feel comfortable, sharing their thoughts and their feelings and also wanting to learn the thoughts and the feelings and opinions of others.

You know, that good, dialog.

When I was growing up, if someone asked me what the definition of a university was, I would always say, well, it's unity in diversity.

It's people coming from different towns, different backgrounds, different belief systems, different ethnicities.

And now they're coming to a common place, and they're going to create a unity in that diversity.

And that's how they're really going to grow and become good, well-rounded citizens.

And go on and be great leaders.

So the whole conversation about assuring that we can have thoughtful dialog, I think, was a good one.

I know there were some conversations, on the collective bargaining front, I'm not sure how those went.

The only thing that, I recall from a few years ago that I think is always good is to get a little bit of clarity sometimes the longer we go in the collective bargaining world, and the more things we get put in to the collective bargaining agreements, sometimes we lose sight of what's most important, which is I wanted my faculty and staff, we had four different, bargaining units at Youngstown State.

I wanted my people to get compensated as well as they could.

I wanted them to have as good a health care as they could.

I also had a, legal responsibility to have a balanced budget.

You know, I couldn't create a a university debt.

But I wanted them to have the best that they could, and I wanted them to have the freedom to talk about, in that collective bargaining, that collaborative sense.

Senate Bill one is considered a priority for Republican legislative leaders after failing to get through the House last session, and is now under consideration by that chamber.

The upcoming May ballot will officially have the $2.5 billion bond issue for local infrastructure projects, as requested by state lawmakers at the end of the last session.

It will be issue two, though it's the only statewide issue on the May ballot.

That's because of a law passed last session that sets sequential ballot issue numbers, with the first being last fall's redistricting proposal as issue one.

The numbers reset at 500, which won't happen for decades.

And looking ahead to next year.

Former lawmaker John Tani dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination for secretary of state.

As treasurer Robert Sprague jumped in.

And then this week, Anthony announced he's running for Sprague's office, saying in a statement that term, limited officeholders who are playing musical chairs will do whatever it takes to stay in power, and that Ohioans are, quote, tired of riding this merry go round within the insane asylum carnival of squishy establishment politicians and quote.

But the next day, Senator Kristina Rohner launched her campaign for treasurer.

Only two Democrats have announced statewide ambitions Doctor Amy Acton for governor and Doctor Brian Hambly for secretary of state.

The proposed two year state budget from governor Mike DeWine has officially dropped as House Bill 96.

The House has been holding hearings on it for the last two weeks, and last week heard testimony on funding for the fair school funding plan, which is set to be fully phased in with $23.4 billion in this spending plan.

But the funding is a bit short and there's a lot of work for its backers to do to convince lawmakers.

I talked with Democratic former Representative John Patterson, who spent years working with Republican former speaker Bob Cupp, to come up with the formula that formed the foundation of the Fair School funding plan, which he's still working on as a part of the task force promoting it.

Now, I have oversimplified this tremendously, but when I explain what it is, it's basically the idea of the unconstitutional school funding plan that was based on property tax values, which the Ohio Supreme Court ruled four times was unconstitutional.

This plan takes into account not only property taxes, but also income in a district, right?

A family's income, right to come up with whatever the state is going to pay as their share to fund education in that district.

I'm oversimplifying it, but that's the essence.

Well, keep in mind the four draft decisions.

There were a number of, of, issues that that came out.

One that we weren't doing enough to build schools and repair schools and we've addressed that with the School Finance Facilities Commission.

Exactly, exactly.

Secondly, the question of adequacy, equity and the overreliance on property taxes.

So let's look at adequacy first.

What does it cost.

And this was never really addressed fully in previous iterations of any kind of a funding plan.

What does it actually cost to fund a typical student in a typical town?

All right.

So we broke down based on research, full transparency, those actual costs and its, pupil teacher ratio different from for different grade levels.

It's librarians, it's school resource officers.

It's the maintenance of the building.

It's a building principal.

It's an EMAs coordinator.

It's, superintendent, the treasurer.

All of those costs are to be found in the base cost.

And your district may have the same number of students as mine.

But you may need more state aid because you may have a younger student population that would require more teachers.

That's why this plan fits each district so uniquely.

And the other thing that's so special about the school funding plan, it is not prescriptive.

We as a state would figure out together with with the formula because it is transparent what your financial needs are.

But we leave it up to the local school boards to determine how that money should be spent because they know best, not a mandate from the state.

So that's the adequacy part.

Now the equity equity is not equality.

So if let's say you and I were were tennis players and you're ranked and I'm just, weekend hacker.

All right.

For us, we would never be equal.

But for us to be equitable, maybe, you would play with your less dominant hand.

You're right handed, right?

So you could play with your left hand and maybe one shoe off.

I could play both shoes on and right handed, and we would have some sort of equity to make for a fair game.

So this is why we blended property valuations with income to determine a real close, approximation of what an individual district's.

We call this capacity is the local capacity to raise their own money.

Now there's another part of this.

It's important.

It's called the categorical or add ons.

And this would be transportation because we have to transport these kids.

It's English language learners.

It's special needs students.

It's students who are economically disadvantaged.

It's, education service centers.

Those are calculated again based on that individual district's needs and added on to the base cost.

So what should happen once we determine all of that from the categorical and the base costs?

And we know what each district's financial, burden is, then you calculate in with the local capacity and the state share blends in.

And theoretically, there you have it.

It's it's magic.

But but it's that there's a lot of variables in here.

I mean, oh my gosh.

The the categorical I mean, you've got some districts where kids are being transported by taxes for a very long period of time, right?

Some districts that have lots of English as a second language.

That's right.

Students, there are a lot of variables here.

So when you can't really say it cost X amount of money to educate a student in Ohio because there are so many different things now.

Based costs.

Yes.

But when you add on the categorical, it's widely different.

And it used to be, during the bridge formula that we had 6000 and then 6024 per student.

That's not really that doesn't really address the individual needs of a district.

So here's the beauty of it.

When each district is going to be different in terms of their needs, each district under the fair school funding plan is also unique in its ability to raise its own local share.

And keep in mind, in the Constitution, it's a partnership.

It's not the state funding education, it's not the locals.

It's a partnership together that makes this happen.

And it should be stated that this is something that is in the Ohio Constitution.

Yes.

This, this system of common schools is guaranteed in the Constitution.

Have your viewers look up article six, section two.

It's quite popular.

Read these days.

You mentioned that this is not prescriptive.

You don't tell the school district how to use the money.

I think there's been some criticism raised about, well, the state is giving money to districts for these purposes and they're not using it.

How?

Maybe some lawmakers want districts to use it.

Right, right.

And I understand that.

But I also understand now, keep in mind, I'm a retired teacher, and I knew that our district.

And let me give you just one example.

So say you had a number of students who were coming up on the third grade reading guarantee or some state test.

If I'm in a local district, I may want to add more teachers than what the reason calls for, because those kids may be behind for for whatever reason.

So I may inflate class sizes it say junior high or high school to increase or decrease.

I should say, the, the pupil student ratio in the lower levels so that those kids get more one on one instruction.

It has to be fluid in order to work.

Well.

No two districts in Ohio are the same.

And for the state to have a mandate to determine where they should spend their money, that's that's a little heavy handed when the local nuances are so important.

And who knows better what a district needs than the locally and fairly elected school board of each district.

One thing that all school districts deal with, and I think some districts probably forget or voters probably forget, this is economically disadvantaged students.

They are across the state.

Yes.

And they are potentially the most expensive to educate because they have so many challenges that they come into the education system with.

That's been a big issue, is to try to deal with those kids who you're trying to bring up to their better off counterparts.

They're financially better off counterparts.

So now you've we've morphed into a different conversation here.

And this is good because we're coming into win win Speaker Cup.

And I put this together.

We knew it was going to be expensive because we were so far behind.

So it was a six year phase.

In years one through four are phased in.

And we're looking and the governor has supported this in his initial budget, the phase in of year five and six.

Now in addition to that they also have the base cost of the inputs.

And those need to be periodically updated.

Teacher salaries, building costs and such to reflect inflation.

If those are left behind, it skews the formula.

Formula is is is fluid when it comes to to the inputs.

You have to keep updating.

But in addition to that, the categorical that you mentioned like the the the disadvantaged students economically disadvantaged, we asked for studies to be done.

Again.

This is based on research.

This is not a wish list as it's my dear friend.

Speaker Cupp would say it's really what is needed.

And those studies, the transportation English language learners, those have indeed come back.

We're waiting on the final stages.

Last I knew of the economically disadvantaged.

That package is going to be, that needs to be debated as well to see where this is.

I mean, education is something that's critically important.

There is not a person who is watching, who is not either home schooled or charter school or parochial or public school.

We need education, and we need it for three reasons one, a workforce.

We've got Intel coming to Ohio.

Other industries are coming to Ohio.

That's exciting.

But if you don't have the workforce.

And here's the other thing.

Ohio is an aging state and a lot of people or a lot older than you, Karen, are phasing out of the workforce.

We have to replace them.

The second important component of education, why it's critical is that we need an educated citizenry so that we can debate and we can have civil conversations about where we want to go.

Collective together.

And you can't do that in a vacuum.

You have to be able to, not only critique arguments, but develop one's own argument and listen to others and come up with the best sort of pathway forward.

And then finally, I feel that it's critically essential, especially a public schools, to allow a student to explore their gifts.

Because if we have certain gifts and we match the gifts with their calling, work doesn't exist, it becomes a labor of love.

Now I'm going to ask the question of my interviewer here.

What were your gifts in high school?

What did you like to do?

Right?

You don't say and you don't say, and you were given that opportunity.

Where are you?

On your school's newspaper?

Yes.

You don't say.

And then now what would have happened if we had budget cuts and that was eliminated?

You would never really have known.

And knowing how you work, this is a labor of love for you.

And when we have people who are in those positions, magic happens.

They enjoy going to their jobs.

And there's there's a contagious atmosphere of of success.

I'll have more of my conversation with former Representative John Patterson about school funding in the budget next week.

DeWine will talk about his budget in his state of the state speech on March 12th.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State news.org or find us online by searching.

State of Ohio show.

You can also hear more from the Bureau on our podcast, The Ohio State House scoop.

Look for it every Monday morning wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for watching and please join us again next time for the State of Ohio.

Just.

Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at porterwright.com.

Porter Wright inspired Every day in Ohio Education Association, representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org.