Dozens of protesters demonstrated outside the City Club of Cleveland Thursday, where Ohio Senator Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) spoke about his controversial higher education bill recently signed into law and discussed the state budget currently making its way through the legislature.
The protesters held signs attacking Cirino for the law, referred to as Senate Bill 1, which prevents public university faculties from striking, ends diversity, equity and inclusion programs and mandates “intellectual diversity” in teaching, among other sweeping changes.
Cindy Dempsey, a Pepper Pike resident and chair of the Ohio Democratic Women's Caucus, said SB1 is the main reason she came out to protest Cirino's visit to Cleveland.
"To eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, to limit or to define what are controversial topics, and then to remove the right of faculty and staff to be able to collectively bargain, it's absolutely unacceptable," Dempsey said. "They're putting a damper on and destroying our treasured higher education and colleges."
During his talk, Cirino disagreed that the bill harms academic freedom and hampers freedom of speech on campuses.
“This bill creates more opportunities for more subjects to be talked about,” Cirino said. "It just has to be balanced, not monolithic in thought."
He argued universities are wasting “tens of millions of dollars” on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And he alleged liberal bias and a fixation on DEI programs are harming students' ability to graduate prepared for the workforce.
"If our universities and community colleges are fixated on DEI and separating students by race and hiring professors who follow a monolithic liberal agenda, we are not preparing our students to learn how to analyze, research, and come to their own conclusions," he said.
Cirino cited a Gallup poll showing confidence in higher education has dropped significantly in recent years, among conservatives especially.
Cirino, chair of the Senate finance committee, said the committee will attempt to tie higher education funding to compliance with SB1, to ensure “all the work we’ve done doesn’t go to waste.”
The finance committee is also currently considering the state’s biennial budget.
That budget includes significant reductions in funding for public K-12 schools compared to the state’s previous funding model. It also requires districts to return money to taxpayers if their carryover balances are higher than 30% of their total operating costs.
Vicki Druley, a Medina City School District parent and local levy committee member who attended Cirino's speech at the City Club, said those provisions would decimate Medina's finances and wipe out the funding gains received from a levy that passed last year.
Cirino asked residents not to go "ballistic" about the budget just yet, noting senators are still considering the House's proposal. But he noted residents are "screaming" for property tax relief after a recent historic surge in property values, which in many counties resulted in tax increases.
"We have to pay attention to what are the solutions we might be able to offer?" he said. "At the same time, we don't want to hurt the schools. We're going to strike the right balance."
Cirino also discussed a conversation he had with Jimmy Haslam, owner of the Cleveland Browns, about state funding for the Cleveland Browns’ stadium.
"I said, 'Jimmy, forget about the stadium,'" he said. "'I just want to go to the Super Bowl before I die.' He said, 'I can't make any promises.' I said, 'Well, then neither can I.'"
