Lawmakers are pushing a bill that would overhaul the state education system and give most of the control to the governor’s office. As Statehouse correspondent Andy Chow explains, this is something Gov. John Kasich has wanted for a while now.
House Republicans say their plan to wrap the Ohio departments of education and higher education and the workforce transformation office would streamline education for career-readiness. But it also hands most of the education policymaking power over to the governor, something Kasich alluded to just a few weeks ago.
“What I really want is I want to be able to run the Department of Education.”
Kasich said the state school board wields a lot of power, yet its members are generally unknown to the voters who pick most of them.
“They’re running education policy and I’m the governor and I can’t tell them what to do. It’s nuts!”
Some Democrats are blasting the plan as taking power away from an elected board. Supporters, however, say this makes the governor more accountable.
