Mike DeWine and the legislature exploited loopholes to return education control to governor's office—exactly what Ohioans voted to stop with through a constitutional amendment 50+ years ago.
Ohio State Superintendent Paul Craft began at the Ohio State Board of Education on Jan. 1, 2024. He announced he has resigned.The systematic dismantling of Ohio’s State Board of Education has reached a critical point with the resignation of state Superintendent Paul craft, a development that Today in Ohio podcast hosts say confirms what critics have long argued: State lawmakers deliberately violated voters’ will by stripping power from a constitutionally-created board.
Podcast hosts on Monday detailed how Gov. Mike DeWine and the Republican-controlled legislature have methodically gutted an institution that voters specifically created to keep education out of the governor’s hands. “Craft, Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction, is resigning by the end of July. And he’s basically saying out loud what critics have been arguing for years, that the job and the board... has been hollowed out to the point where it barely resembles what voters thought that they were creating,” said Leila Atassi. The podcast hosts explained that Craft’s resignation comes after lawmakers stripped the elected board of most of its authority, leaving it with only administrative tasks like teacher licensing, misconduct investigations, and ceremonial awards.“People have to understand that this is one of the worst examples of bad faith government we have. Fifty plus years ago, the education department was politicized by the governors over and over again. And the voters went to the polls to say, we don’t want the governor in charge of education. A constitutional amendment to create a school board... But because that amendment didn’t say specifically what the board should do, because people trusted their lawmakers, our bad faith lawmakers have bastardized the whole thing, turned that school board into nonsense and put everything back under the governor, which the voters specifically voted against.” The podcast highlighted how lawmakers exploited a loophole in the amendment’s language to gradually strip the board of its powers without ever returning to voters for approval of the changes. Instead of respecting the intent behind the constitutional amendment, they used technical maneuvers to undermine it. “If Ohio’s leaders really believed this was a better system, they could have asked Ohioans to amend the constitution again, but they didn’t. Instead, they did this end run around it,” Atassi noted. “This is the deliberate, permanent takeover of public education governance by the governor and the legislature in violation of what the voters went to the polls to say.”120,000 Ohio families lost health insurance this month. Here’s who to blamewhere Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with Editorial Board member Lisa Garvin, Impact Editor Leila Atassi and Content Director Laura Johnston.
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