Oddly enough, while I was in Columbus to attend the Governor’s State of the State speech, it was Lakota schools that everyone was talking about, and they wanted to join the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding lawsuit.  But in many ways, that wasn’t surprising, and it was confirmed again in Mike DeWine’s speech that day.  Years and years of kicking the can down the road in all these public schools were catching up to them, and the bill was due, and nobody knew what to do about it.  Governors like DeWine have done for decades what they were now doing at Lakota schools around 91 miles to the south in Butler County, Ohio, they were writing tax payer checks for a product and service that fewer and fewer people wanted, and now with Trump in the White House, the warnings I have been giving everyone about what was going to happen are coming true.  Instead of getting out in front of these funding problems, Lakota schools dug in and became more woke.  Senator Lang tried to tell them on a call later that day after the Governor’s speech, but the school system had dug in the opposite direction.  Others and I have tried to give Lakota conservative board members a chance to deal with this issue, and their response as a school board was to run them all off, and that extends beyond Darbi Boddy, the most recent that they found some way to push out of management.  And like things are where liberal types run things, everything costs too much money, and now Trump was cutting back the Department of Education and gubernatorial candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy was talking about significant reforms in education with merit pay, leaving schools like Lakota to join lawsuits with other schools having the same problem, hoping that some sixties flowerchild protest might recover for them a silly little 9 million dollar loss that has come out of their budget due to students utilizing Ed Choice vouchers that are now expanding under the Trump administration and flowing down through the states.  For perspective, Lakota schools in Butler County, Ohio, has a quarter of a billion dollar budget, and that’s still not enough money to fund education the way they want to.

And you know what makes me the angriest about all this? I didn’t get any of Fran’s cookies this year. Fran is Mike DeWine’s long-time and very dedicated wife, who typically gives them out to attendees of her husband’s speech in the rotunda.  This year, activists were there chanting for more money as they felt the pinch from a social disconnect from the standard old traditional funding model of public education.  To avoid the activists, DeWine was ushered away underground to safety, leaving the rest of us to watch their bizarre and out-of-touch rituals with curiosity. The Lakota situation was the topic of conversation because they are one of the largest districts in Ohio, and so went them, so went everyone.  And that was kind of a proper metaphor for DeWine’s State of the State speech.  A do-gooder Governor tosses money at public education and hopes that everything will work well for the kids.  But its these crazy labor unions with woke politics that have screwed up the funding model because people don’t like the product.  And school vouchers, much less restricted these days and growing more so, are giving parents the choice away from their zip code schools where they pay enormous property taxes to fund a political movement they hate essentially.  And Lakota schools were right in the middle of the spectacle leaving DeWine to give just another empty speech about the value of education, and sending books in the mail to students to help with literacy, when the real problem was significant and ominous, and far beyond at this point just passing out cookies in the Statehouse Rotunda to ease tempers.  Legislators were in the middle of the budgeting process for public education at the time of this speech, but the government unions want to cry and protest for money that just isn’t there and aren’t willing to deal with the reality of the coming changes.  And those legislators were mad at what Lakota was thinking of doing then, which they did later that evening.  So it wasn’t a good move by the Lakota School Board.  But I tried to warn everyone, and they didn’t listen.  Much more on that to come.

The main thing in DeWine’s speech was that the Governor came to the speech like an old grandpa that went out to dinner the night before to eat barbeque ribs and still had on a bib from that experience the next day when he thought he was showing up for dinner in a nice suit and tie.  DeWine was out of step and slightly behind the rest of the world for his sixth year in office, most of which had not been very good, especially during the COVID-19 years.  But watching him speak, I thought of him as a nice guy who has been constantly suckered by the same kind of losers who protest education funding, like the people who greeted him upon leaving the State of the State peech.  The old flowerchild strategy of crying like some baby bird until mother government drops a worm in its mouth has long been exhausted, and DeWine never understood it.  He’s a good man from a political generation that caused all these problems and doesn’t know what to do about it.  We have to wait another year or so before we get Vivek Ramaswamy and tackle some of these key issues because just throwing money at problems is not what voters will do in the future. 

The best thing about DeWine’s State of the State speech was the expansion of business enterprise in Ohio, specifically the Andruil factory just south of Columbus and the Intel facility to the north.  There was a lot to talk about, and for DeWine’s credit, many people have been working in the background to make Ohio a much more business-friendly state.  At least DeWine hasn’t stood in the way of those efforts; he’s been willing to tag along.  We’ll get a lot more with Vivek Ramaswamy as Governor, but since DeWine was able to part ways with Amy Acton, the stringy haired hippie who used to be the Health Director during Covid, Ohio has grown more business friendly to make up for their position of lockdown politics that so crippled just about everyone.  Over the last couple of years, DeWine has at least not shut the door to companies like Intel, even though it has largely been members of the Senate that paved the way.  That’s how government works, and it’s very fascinating.  But once the good news was talked about regarding Ohio and DeWine’s speech, the topic went back to the tired old view of the world, and the chants outside could be heard in the chamber, and the reality of places like Lakota schools was coming to fruition.  The days of easy money stolen from taxpayers to fund woke causes were over.  And many people at the State of the State speech in the Ohio Statehouse were struggling with the ramifications of decades of trying to appease the screams of the teacher union types.  But reality has a lot more in store for them than they realize.  The result will be more anger at the people running public education and politicians like Mike DeWine ending their terms dismayed while much more innovative people replace them with reforms that will change all the rules.  The Lakota School Board, in its current form, is just not prepared to deal with it.

Rich Hoffman

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