Technology can help reduce school disparities, speaker says

Long-distance learning can help level the playing field, the speaker of the Ohio House said.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Inequalities that plague Ohio’s public schools can be reduced by using multimedia technology to bring high-quality courses from wealthier school districts into the poorest ones, the new speaker of the Ohio House said Thursday.

Though not the definitive solution to the state’s school-funding problem, long-distance learning programs are a cost-effective way to chip away at disparities, Armond Budish told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.

“With the long-distance learning we can even out some of that playing field by providing education opportunities across the board to everybody in the state, whether they are in an urban school district or rural school district, or anywhere in Ohio,” Budish said in his 14th-floor office overlooking the state Capitol.

Budish, 55, a Democrat from Beachwood, near Cleveland, is about to tackle possibly the worst budget climate in modern Ohio history. Declining tax revenues have helped place the state in a projected $7 billion budget deficit over the next two years.

He is less than a month into the speaker’s job, which he won by being a prolific fundraiser for the House Democratic caucus. After the November election, Democrats took control of the chamber for the first time since 1994.

“I’m still learning my leadership style,” said Budish, whose circumspect, carefully thought-out answers were often followed by a swig of Diet Coke. He’s familiar with the media, having hosted a television show about health care and aging for the elderly and written a newspaper column on the same topic.

But the hardest part about being speaker so far is fielding questions from reporters, Budish said. He’s only in his second two-year term as a state lawmaker.

Finding cost-effective ways to address the state’s largest challenges is Budish’s goal, which led him to propose his distance-learning ideas to fellow House lawmakers on the opening day of the Legislature earlier this month.

Senate President Bill Harris, a Republican from Ashland, said he supports increasing the use of technology in public schools to spread quality instruction.

“Technology is a phenomenal thing,” Harris said. “I think that’s one of those areas where we don’t have to spend huge amounts of money to say, ‘Look how much more money we’ve spent.’ Because we’ve got a lot of that equipment.”

Budish is not prepared to say which state programs should be cut or eliminated to address the budget deficit. Though a proponent of expanding gambling to boost state revenue, he is skeptical the money could begin flowing to the state early enough to make an impact for the next two-year budget that begins in July.

Still, Budish’s beliefs on gambling and the revenue it could eventually produce are clear.

“People are going to West Virginia and Pennsylvania and Michigan to gamble,” he said. “You can go to any of the surrounding state casinos, and you’ll see Ohio license plates in the parking lot. That’s money that we’re losing.

“One of the major problems that we’ve had is that the proposals for gambling have been created, drafted, prepared, promoted by specific gaming interests,” Budish said. “I believe that the people of Ohio have been smart enough to see that, and we have not yet had a plan that is presented in a way that is fair to everyone in the state.”

Raising taxes to increase revenue doesn’t seem to be on the table.

“Right now I have no plans or intentions to raise taxes,” Budish said.

He said he will expand the number of House committees, creating bodies to address pressing issues such as economic development, housing and urban revitalization, and an elections committee to look at tweaking the elections process.

He won’t say what parts of election law need to be changed but said he didn’t see any particular problems with a weeklong window in which Ohioans can register and vote on the same day.