Republican faces many questions over new version of Ohio higher education overhaul bill
An anti-striking provision is out, but a new retrenchment provision was added, and tenure evaluation based on if an educator allegedly showed bias remains in the new version of the bill.
State Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, introduced another substitute bill for Senate Bill 83 last week in the Ohio House Higher Education Committee.
“Our goal was to try to accommodate as many objections as we could without sacrificing the core principles of the bill, certainly, which is to enhance higher education in Ohio,” Cirino said.
SB 83 passed the Senate in May and has had two House committee hearings. The bill has received lots of pushback from students and university staff, including more than seven hours of opponent testimony during a marathon Senate Workforce and Higher Education committee meeting back in April.
And the opposition has also been within the Statehouse. Cirino faced many questions Wednesday from House Higher Education Committee members.
“This bill is a criticism of our colleges,” said state Rep. Joe Miller, D-Lorain. “It’s not an enhancer. You can call it what you like, it’s not an enhancement.”
Toward the end of the nearly two hour committee meeting, Miller pointed out an another observation.
“I’ve noticed today that even with this sub bill, we have pointed out a series of lines in the bill that we interpret differently than you,” he said to Cirino.
The Ohio State University Association of University Professors has been outspoken against SB 83 since it was first introduced in March.
Striking
The biggest change to the bill was removing the provisions that would prohibit university employees from being able to strike.
“I will tell you that I stand firmly behind the idea of the concept that students’ instruction should not be put in jeopardy because of labor negotiations,” Cirino said. “Nothing should get in the way of getting the instruction that they paid for.”
Despite his fondness for the provision, Cirino said he removed it at the request from the House “in the interest of making an accommodation to get this legislation on the right track.”
Retrenchment
The bill has a new provision on retrenchment that would block unions from negotiating on tenure and it would allow universities to fire tenured professors for a broad list of reasons including reduction in student population. However, faculty with between 30 and 35 years of tenure would be protected.
He said he kept the circumstances broad on purpose and doesn’t think this will lead to university presidents firing tenure faculty in a collective bargaining unit.
“I don’t presume any nefarious views on the part of the college presidents,” Cirino said. “I don’t think there’s going to be unfair targeting of people and looking for loopholes in the language to be able to reduce people.”
Miller doesn’t see it that way.
“You write legislation for guardrails to make sure that we protect certain groups of people,” he said. “This current version of this legislation would take away the rights of faculty to collectively bargain.”
Cirino was asked many times if this bill would weaken tenure, but he was very adamant that it would do no such thing.
“I am a supporter of tenure,” he said. “Why would I put something in there that would be a loophole against tenure?”
Controversial beliefs
SB 83 defines controversial beliefs or policy as “any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversy, including issues such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.”
The bill would allow students to “reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs or policies and shall not seek to indoctrinate any social, political, or religious point of view.”
State Rep. Mary Lightbody, D-Westerville, asked Cirino what a faculty member would be able to do if a student was stating a false belief as if it were a fact.
“The intention of the bill is anti-indoctrination,” Cirino said. “There are some things that are not necessarily as black and white that should have discourse in the classroom.”
Post-tenure review policy
Under the bill, Ohio universities board of trustees will adopt a post-tenure review policy that contains an appeals process.
“There’s a quite extensive appeals process if a professor feels that they’ve been targeted unfairly for any reason,” Cirino said.
While the bias tenure evaluations remained in the bill, the percentage that student evaluations would go toward teaching evaluations dropped from 50% to 25%.
China
The new version of the bill says Ohio universities can only enter into a new or renewed academic partnership with a Chinese academic institution if there are certain “safeguards” in place — including complying with all federal regulations — “to protect the state institution’s intellectual property, the security of the state of Ohio, and the national security interests of the United States.”
DEI
SB 83 still prohibits mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training unless the training is required to comply with state and federal law, professional licensure requirements, or to get accreditation or grants.
Civics course
The bill kept a requirement that students must take a three credit hour class on American government or history, but a student may be exempted from this requirement if they already took a similar class, such as Advanced Placement United States Government and Politics.
The course would require students to read the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, part of the Federalist Papers and the Gettysburg Address.
Board of Trustees terms
The substitute bill once again changed the term length for board of trustees, this time bumping it to six years. A previous version of the bill cut the term length from nine years down to four.
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