Surprises are expected in State of State speech
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D-Lisbon)
COLUMBUS (AP) — A radical realignment of expectations at Ohio public schools and alternative prison time for thousands of nonviolent offenders are some of Gov. Ted Strickland’s possible surprises in his upcoming State of the State speech.
Strickland has a penchant for making the address a shocker.
In 2007, he unveiled plans for a property tax break for seniors and the disabled — paid for with tobacco settlement proceeds — and vowed to strip privately run charter schools of their public funding.
Last year, he pitched an economic stimulus package he hoped would fuel the state’s promise as an alternative energy and bioscience mecca. He also flabbergasted the state education hierarchy with plans to seize control of the State Department of Education and disempower the state school board.
Not all of Strickland’s podium pronouncements have been achieved, to be sure. The charter-school initiative was summarily blocked by the legislature, for example, and the education department coup ended in some personnel changes and a truce.
But Strickland clearly enjoys using the annual address to stir things up. Its contents are closely guarded even from the most well-connected Statehouse policy experts and lobbyists, as well as from journalists right up to the hour it is delivered.
Two things are known about Wednesday’s speech, though: It will contain Strickland’s long-awaited proposals for addressing the state’s unconstitutional school-funding system, and it must give citizens a sense of how Strickland intends to tackle a looming $7 billion budget deficit.
Inventive ideas would certainly be in order, this year if ever.
With regard to the schools solution, attentive listeners have perceived a shift in Strickland’s vocabulary as the plan has reached fruition. It is no longer “a funding plan” but “a reform plan” — a hint that the changes he will propose go beyond mere mathematical wizardry.
New House speaker Armond Budish, a fellow Democrat working closely with the governor’s office, says he favors an expansion of distance learning as a possible remedy to Ohio’s educational inequities. Digitally piping lessons taught by the best teachers into the classrooms of the underserved — in a potential redirection of e-schools now offering classes over the Internet — could raise standards statewide at relatively low cost, Budish said.