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The Columbus Dispatch
Coronavirus in Ohio: DeWine ‘fully intends’ to reopen schools this year
By Randy Ludlow
Jun 3, 2020
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday state officials “fully intend to
have school in the fall,” but stopped short of announcing that schools
will reopen to students late this summer as coronavirus remains a risk.
“Our goal is to have kids in the classroom,” he said, adding that if
classrooms are reopened, the starting dates are up to local school
officials.
Coronavirus precautions and guidelines for classrooms are being developed by education and health officials, he said.
DeWine was the first governor in the nation to close classrooms,
ordering them vacated effective March 16, with remote online learning
employed to continue K-12 lessons for nearly 1.7 million pupils.
The governor has expressed fears that group settings in classroom were
a potential breeding ground for virus cases among children, who might
serve as carriers to then transport COVID-19 home to their families.
“The caveat is, we don’t know exactly where this pandemic is
going,” DeWine said. “Anything I say could be washed away by new
facts.” DeWine said local districts would have a “great deal of
flexibility.”
The governor also said he would have an announcement on Thursday about
the apparent reopening parameters for closed venues such as zoos and
museums. He said it would be greeted as “good news.”
State health officials reported 366 new coronavirus cases, and an
additional 52 COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday with the pandemic a week away
from the three-month mark.
Meanwhile, DeWine is entertaining the notion of dramatically drawing
down, if not draining, the $2.7 billion rainy day fund to offset a huge
hole in the coronavirus-cratered state budget for next fiscal year.
And, with state workers’ pay and ongoing cuts to schools on the line,
the leaders of the biggest state employee union and Ohio’s largest
teachers union are calling on DeWine to spend the savings to offset
reductions.
The big money in personnel involves nearly 35,000 state employees
represented by unions. The biggest, the Ohio Civil Service Employees
Association, covers most prison employees and many office workers.
After two years of 2.75% increases, OCSEA-represented workers are
entitled in the last year of their contact to a 3% annual pay raise
beginning July 1.
The state potentially wants the unionized workers to give up their
raise, if not agree to a cut in their current pay, to help reduce the
budget as the reopening of the state economy will not begin to fill the
hole.
It will be a tough sell, with prison employees sure to point out the
risk accompanying their work. Four of their colleagues have died and
nearly 700 others contracted infections as COVID-19 also killed 78
inmates.
Chris Mabe, OCSEA president and a former corrections officer, said
talks already have begun with state officials about his members’ pay.
“We’ve talked to them about voluntary cost-savings days, reining in
expensive contractors, restructuring management teams and saving money
through long-term telework,” Mabe said.
“But in times of crisis, Ohioans need public services the most. Now is
the time for the administration to use the rainy day fund for what it
was intended: emergencies such as this,” he said.
DeWine said Tuesday the money needed for union pay raises simply won’t
be there, with a lack of any movement on giving up pay likely to be met
with employee layoffs. “It is the discussion we want to have,” he said.
State officials declined to discuss their goal for cost reductions
accompanying union pay, saying the state has filed a labor notice to
formally negotiate with the unions.
With school funding the single-biggest ticket item in the state budget
— accounting for 35% of all spending — K-12 classrooms could be in line
for significant reductions absent an infusion of rainy day cash.
Scott DiMauro, a former Worthington high school social studies teacher
and president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest
teachers union with 122,000 members, also suggests it is pouring.
“Schools got hit disproportionately in the first budget cut, and we
really don’t want to see that happen again. We would expect the
governor and state leaders to use the rainy day fund to mitigate any
potential cuts,” he said.
Di Mauro said he hopes the state savings and federal funding for
schools amid the coronavirus crisis will overcome the impact on
classrooms.
“We need more resources to deal with needs of our students in this
pandemic,” including more money for remote learning necessitated by the
closure of classrooms and their uncertain fall fate, DiMauro said.
To deal with the virus-undercut economy and its huge erosion of the
state tax take, DeWine and lawmakers face a huge 7% funding shortfall
in the coming year.
After enacting $775 million in education-heavy funding cuts to balance
this fiscal year’s budget, DeWine has signaled the rainy day fund will
be tapped for the first time in more than a decade.
State Budget Director Kimberly Murnieks started the reductions for the
coming fiscal year on Monday, announcing a state effort to reduce
spending on employee salaries in both management and union ranks.
DeWine’s cabinet directors will take a 4% cut in their salaries, generating a largely token $165,000 in savings.
About 16,250 supervisory, non-union employees will receive a 3.8% cut
in their overall pay by forfeiting 10 days of paid leave; lawmakers are
being asked to freeze those employees’ pay for the coming fiscal year.
The 366 new virus cases reported Tuesday were lower than the prior
day’s figure of 471 and well below the 21-day average of 534 new daily
cases.
The additions boosted Ohio’s coronavirus case load to 36,350 and the
number of fatalities to 2,258 as the state has reopened much of its
economy and is working to increase testing to help check a feared
increase in cases with the easing of stay-at-home orders. “Testing
remains a work in progress,” DeWine said.
The state leader in virus infections and deaths, Franklin County,
reported 134 new cases and eight more fatalities to increase its totals
to 5,862 and 279, respectively.
DeWine announced Tuesday there are no longer any restrictions on
medical procedures, including those with overnight stays, that have
been delayed amid the pandemic to ensure hospitals were not overrun
with coronavirus patients. Outpatient procedures previously were
authorized.
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