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Ohio's public schools serve 1.6 million children - 90 percent of students in the state! What happens in the classroom has impacts far beyond the walls of the K-12 school building or higher ed lecture hall. So, on behalf of the 120,000 members of the Ohio Education Association, we're taking a deeper dive into some of the many education issues facing our students, educators, and communities. Originally launched in 2021 as Education Matters, Public Education Matters is your source for insightful conversations with the people who shape the education landscape in Ohio. Have a topic you'd like to hear about on Public Education Matters? Email us at educationmatters@ohea.org
Intro - Various members and students speaking 0:08
Public Education Matters. Public Education Matters. Public Education Matters because every student matters. Public Education Matters. Public Education Matters because it is the foundation of our democracy. Public Education Matters because we are stronger when we speak in one voice. Public Education Matters. Public Education Matters. Public Education Matters, Public Education Matters. This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.
Katie Olmsted 0:41
Welcome back to Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and its 120,000 members who work in public schools across the state. As we mentioned briefly on an earlier episode of his podcast, OEA's work is guided by six core values that define our mission. They are collective action, fairness, inclusion, integrity, professionalism, and democracy. And of course, as we head into the November election, that core value of democracy is top of mind. We believe the foundation of a strong democracy is high quality public education, which is essential for an educated citizenry. And on today's episode, we're talking to a Bay High School social studies teacher who is helping to lay the foundation for the future of our democracy by helping his former students get trained as poll workers so they can fully understand the process and help carry on that important work for years to come. Let's take a listen to what one of those students said about the experience. In a recent interview with news five in Cleveland.
Mallory Kaminski, Bay High School Senior - excerpted from WEWS story 1:52
There's just a lot of harsh language towards the poll workers. With what I know from my training, I feel confident that my vote will be counted and preserved.
Katie Olmsted 2:02
Okay, so that topic is going to be part one of this episode. Let's listen to a little audio now that can get us in the mindset for the second part of the podcast.
Katie Olmsted 2:31
Yep, we are talking about Money here on Public Education Matters. Specifically, money that local affiliates do not want to leave on the table, because there are a number of grants available right now from OEA that can help them solve problems and support their local members. OEA Secretary-Treasurer Mark Hill and OEA Assistant Executive Director of Member Advocacy Airica Clay are joining us to talk about OEA's affiliate grant programs. But let's start with the student poll workers in Bay Village. And with our conversation with Bay Teachers Association member Robert Grossman.
Robert Grossman 3:13
Where this came about is the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, offered opportunities to schools to be able to have students trained to work polls, and 17 and 18 year olds are eligible to participate in it. It's interesting because many of them - I'm trying to think every one of them was my student at one point; none of them are currently my students.
Katie Olmsted 3:35
Okay.
Robert Grossman 3:37
Many of them I had in either a government class or Advanced Placement government class. Some of them I've had multiple times in world history as well as government. And what was really nice about it is when the students signed up, there were 11 students that applied to become poll workers, because of the number that we had the Board of Elections came out to the high school to train them. So they did not have to go down to the Board of Elections for the training or anything like that. So that was quite nice.
Katie Olmsted 4:06
They're all your former students, but you helped facilitate the training?
Robert Grossman 4:10
Correct. I'm the coordinating teacher, for - The program's officially called the Future of Democracy program. And I'm the coordinating teacher at Bay High School for this program.
Katie Olmsted 4:21
I mean, future of democracy really does seem like the name of the game here. Why is this something that was so important for you to provide as an opportunity for your students, your former students, I should say,
Robert Grossman 4:31
it's interesting because I, as student council advisor, I also run different programs and I work with the Red Cross for blood drives that we have here. And one of the things that the Red Cross always talks about with high school programs is so few people choose to donate blood, but once you've donated blood, your likelihood to donate again, goes up to about 90%. So if you can get a young person donating blood early, you've got a donor for life. If so, in a way, I take the same mentality with this, that, obviously, as a social studies teacher, I want students engaged, I want people, I want citizens engaged in general. So if there's an opportunity to get someone early in the game, not only voting, but understanding how the system works and the value of the system, and actually being a gate, I shouldn't say gatekeeper, but part of the mechanism that allows other people to participate - because being a nonpartisan poll worker, they're understanding the background to it and the integrity behind the election. And I think getting them to do this at 17 and 18 years old, has a greater likelihood of them continuing to participate in a variety of ways for the remainder of their lives.
Katie Olmsted 5:47
So you had this training in early October. What did the students think about it?
Robert Grossman 5:54
It's interesting, because we've had a couple of different interviews, you mentioned the one with cleveland.com. There's a story that's going to air on the local ABC affiliate Channel Five, sometime this week. So I've had a lot of chance to sit with the students hear what they thought about the training. And one of the things that really struck me is they believe in elections more than they did before being trained, that they actually don't understand why anyone would ever question the integrity of an election, because they see all the safeguards that exist and they they're universal response is, these are safe. And these are fair elections, which is pretty impressive to hear.
Katie Olmsted 6:42
Do you think it would change other people's minds that they went through that same training?
Robert Grossman 6:47
I would think so. You know, one of the things at the Board of Elections - my hesitancy is this: the Board of Elections mentioned over and over again, they love having young poll workers, because young poll workers are more likely to adapt to change. And they, they're more likely to take instruction follow instruction and carry out a plan. And part of it is they said, that's what they're used to doing. As a student, they're used to getting instruction, critically thinking, carrying out a plan. So they're, it's almost better to have, they said, it's better to have an 18 to 20 year old than it is to have a 50 to 60 year old sometimes. Now again, I don't know that I'm just telling you what the trainer said.
Katie Olmsted 7:30
Have you yourself ever been a poll worker?
Robert Grossman 7:32
I have not. And part of the reason is because I'm always working.
Katie Olmsted 7:35
That's a good point.
Robert Grossman 7:36
Yeah.
Katie Olmsted 7:37
Did you go through the training with your students? Were you part of that with them?
Robert Grossman 7:41
When I wasn't in class.
Katie Olmsted 7:43
Right.
Robert Grossman 7:43
So I did have - the training was three hours long. We teach on a block scheduling schedule. So about half of the training I was teaching, the other half I was in just to see what they were going through. And it was pretty fascinating when things that I knew existed, like safeguards that I knew existed just from teaching the content that I do, but then watching how they put it in place. For example, I always knew there were both Republican and Democratic observers at every polling place. What I thought was interesting is every poll worker has to declare their party affiliation. So they know if the student declared that they're Democrat or declared the Republican or an Independent, they know that as far as putting people in certain locations. So part of the integrity of the program, I think, is having multiple parties there that can check each other's work. And I found that fascinating, when they went through, okay, here's how you would scan a ballot. Here's, so this is who you have to have present when you scan a ballot. I never realized there were two separate hard drives on every single one of the ballot machines. You know, certain things like that really were fascinating for me.
Katie Olmsted 9:05
And especially against this backdrop of just a lot of doubt in the system these days. First off, as a social studies teacher, is that frustrating for you, since you do know a lot about what's behind the curtain? But also, how important is it to pull back the curtain on the entire process?
Robert Grossman 9:28
I do think that transparency, in general, will always increase people's - it has the potential to increase people's belief in a system, because if we can see what's being done, there's a greater likelihood that we can trust the outcome. I liken it to an online gradebook. You know, I'm old enough where I remember the old paper pencil gradebook, and it was just magically a grade appeared on a report card. The adjustment we've made to transparent grades and parents and students understanding what their grade is at all times, I think that's actually made our job easier as teachers. So I liken it to elections can be trusted, and the poll workers job is easier if there's transparency.
Katie Olmsted 10:21
What happens if people don't trust the process?
Robert Grossman 10:25
We see what happened in 2020.
Katie Olmsted 10:29
As a social studies teacher, are there are there actual lessons for your students from that?
Robert Grossman 10:35
I think so. In fact, one of the things in in the story that Channel 5 did last week, they - and I don't know if you know this, but in Ohio right now working through the General Assembly, there's a piece of legislation to add election poll workers to a protected privacy list. There are certain, there are certain classes of people in Ohio, where their addresses are not public record. And there's a piece of legislation that's working through the General Assembly right now, that would add poll workers to that list, that you wouldn't be able to look up poll workers addresses. That was a discussion we had, we tried to simulate a lesson for some B roll footage for the Channel Five news story. And that was the conversation that I was having with the students. And, and it was interesting, because they brought up the threats that were made in Georgia against poll workers. And they said, this actually makes them feel more comfortable, that there's the potential that their address is going to be protected, even though I don't think anything like this would ever happen in Bay Village. But it's just the general principle that they would feel safer and more protected.
Katie Olmsted 11:53
And then there's the overall lesson about we have to believe in our elections, or we don't have a democracy. I feel like that's a pretty important one for social studies, right?
Robert Grossman 12:02
It is. Yes, I would agree.
Katie Olmsted 12:04
We've talked of course about, you know, elections are a foundation of democracy. We also at OEA are very much about how public education is a foundation of democracy. Is that something that you're really I mean, you're you're on the front lines of that,
Robert Grossman 12:20
I think when you look at American history in general, obviously, there's some bias in our profession on this one, but when you think about the democratization of education, and how that has changed our access to information and our participation in public policy, there's a link. There's a link to the growth of education, public education in the early part of the 20th century and a lot of the progressive governmental programs and the expansion of rights and the expansion of civil rights activism. There just, there is a direct link in my mind, to giving equal access to education to students, regardless of background, and the preservation of democracy.
Katie Olmsted 13:12
After having 11 of your former students go through this training, hopefully becoming lifelong poll workers, do you have a little bit more hope for the future of our democracy in our country?
Robert Grossman 13:24
I've always been hopeful. I think when you get to work with young people, there tends to be a perpetual hope that happens. But I, I was impressed that 11 students made that choice. And I'm also hopeful that they have a positive experience, that maybe next time there's an opportunity, there's more than 11. And the other thing that was really encouraging is the cross section, that the students, you know, the cross section of students that chose to apply. It wasn't just students from my Advanced Placement government class. But as far as like academic background, family background, economic background, there really was a cross section of our school that chose to step up and do this.
Katie Olmsted 14:13
And it sounds like the program will be returning for elections in the future, right?
Robert Grossman 14:18
As long as the Board of Elections offers it, I would hope we'd be part of it. Yes.
Katie Olmsted 14:23
Robert Grossman, thank you so much for sitting down and sharing your thoughts about it with us.
Robert Grossman 14:27
Thank you. I appreciate it. It's great to meet you.
Katie Olmsted 14:33
Remember, Election Day is November 7, and across the state voters are deciding crucial school board races and school levy issues in this election. Across the state, there are Ohio Education Association Locals that have taken an active role in these races, endorsing candidates through their political action committees and taking other steps to help create the best future possible for their schools and the students they serve. Resources to help a Local get organized around these issues, or really any problems they're facing on the local level, are huge when it comes to making sure the locals can best serve their members interests, and making sure members are truly engaged and supported. And OEA has quite a few grant programs to help. OEA Secretary-Treasurer Mark Hill and OEA Assistant Executive Director of Member Advocacy Airica Clay have more on those programs for us now.
Katie Olmsted 15:30
Airica Clay, Mark Hill, thank you so much for sitting down with us to talk about these grant programs. I know it's a huge umbrella topic. But let's start that huge umbrella answer. What does OEA offer?
Mark Hill 15:53
Money! Really, we offer money for Locals to engage their members and they engage in activities that members will take part in, or in programs that the union offers to advance their power as Local and to make them better at what they do.
Katie Olmsted 16:14
So what kind of grants are available? I know there's a whole bunch of different ones out there right now.
Mark Hill 16:20
A lot. So from my office, there are affiliate grants. And there are three varieties of those. And they're either offered every year or every other year, because it matches with our budget cycle. So we have special project grants. And that's if a Local, thinks they want to have some sort of activity, like they want to have a get together at the beginning of the year to explain the new contract to their members and they want to have food and maybe a gift drawing or something like gift card drawing or something like that to incentivize the members to show up, just by way, of example, so they apply for that, you know, and then they do the activity, and then they get reimbursed for it. We have a two year special project grant, which is basically the same thing, but do it again. And then the third one would be Effective Locals grant which is more comprehensive, because this is for multiple programs that a local might run. So they might do like a retirement dinner, they might have get togethers like TGs, with their members four times a year, and like a few other activities that are kinda like that. And then the effective locals grant would pay for all of those activities. But that's not it, because Airica has a whole bunch of other types of grants that are available to locals.
Katie Olmsted 17:44
But wait, there's more!
Airica Clay 17:46
There is so much more. So we also offer Wellness Grants, which is an amazing new grant program that we started a couple years ago that came out of the COVID pandemic. And what we found with the COVID pandemic is that, coming back, a lot of members had an increased amount of mental stress and things that they were dealing with in the classroom. So we came up with the the Wellness Grant program, which members can get up to $5 per member for our members in their Local. And we encourage members to use their activity, their creativity, excuse me and come up with different types of wellness activities to engage members around their wellness and their mental health. So members have done all sorts of amazing things around it. We've had members do movie nights and offer a movie night and they provide snacks and great movie time with their members. We've also had members do drop in spa days where they have chair massages and small manicures and pedicures during members um, break time and they're lunchtimes in the teacher lounge areas. We've had members just promote and give little mental wellness giveaways and what that looks like if it's like some type of little spa sets for members that they can use. We've just had members do really a lot of creative things with the Wellness Grant dollars, and it's been and then what we do is we encourage members to take pictures of their wellness activities and we promote those wellness activities on on our social media channels. So I encourage members to go out there to our social media channels and our website and look at those for additional great ideas and activities. The other thing that we offer are our Local Engagement grants. And Local Engagement grants are when members want to organize their members around a particular issue or something that's going on and they're local. And they can apply through those to their LRC and their regional director. And those can be organizing over all sorts of things. Maybe they want do some organizing around potential membership, because they have a significant potential member count. And maybe they want to do a game night somewhere or they want to do an informational social. And so then they can fill out a local engagement grant and we can provide the the funds to do that. Whatever thing that they want to do to organize around engaging their members and becoming a more effective local and increasing - maybe they want to do something with their local school board elections. You know, so maybe there are some, you know, something that we can do in terms of a local engagement grant around that. And we can offer funds - within political laws, obviously - around around that. So Local Engagement Grants are also an amazing way to increase engagement activity and your locals.
Katie Olmsted 20:47
Now forgive me that I'm going to ask a question that I think we've already answered. But yeah, listen, there seems to be a lot of overlap between these things. When you're talking about effective locals, and Mark, you're talking about effective locals, how do you know which one you should be applying for?
Mark Hill 21:03
All of them! Money rains! No, actually, there is quite a bit of crossover from the two grants, I guess the primary difference between the two, I think the awards for the Affiliate Grants are a larger level. So they can ask for more money. The the Wellness Grants are limited to a certain number of dollars per member and a maximum amount. So it's a smaller, although I would say you get a better return on investment, you know, for for the buzz that these grants get. But yeah, for the Affiliate Grants, they're much bigger programs and more expensive.
Airica Clay 21:41
And I would say for the Local Engagement Grants, Local Engagement Grants are really focused on one particular activity or organizing issue that you want to organize around. So if something just happens to come up during the year, and you're like, we really want to organize our members around this one particular issue, that's probably best for a Local Engagement Grant. And obviously the Wellness Grants, you can get one year and everyone should apply for those! ESP locals, you know a lot of times there's this fallacy out there that ESP locals aren't somehow eligible for these grants. But these grants are available to ESP locals, higher ed locals, small rural locals, our larger locals, urban locals; money for everyone.
Airica Clay 21:42
I would add also that another difference between the two is for the Affiliate Grants that requires a bit more planning, because there's a deadline at a given point in a year. With the kinds of grants that are a little bit smaller that Airica is talking about. That's more spur the moment where, hey, we have this idea, we want to implement it immediately. I think that's also a big difference between the two.
Katie Olmsted 22:51
And one of the reasons we're talking about these grants right now is because the Affiliate Grant application window recently opened. The deadline for that one is end of January. Is that correct?
Mark Hill 23:01
Yeah, that's right. End of January.
Katie Olmsted 23:04
Can you tell me a little bit about the application process? I mean, I think about grant applications and my head starts to spin because it feels intimidating. But it seems like something people can really do.
Mark Hill 23:16
You're not alone. A lot of the - probably the biggest impediment for our Local leaders and applying for these grants is, what do I do? You know, I want the money. But what do I do with it? Right? So that's all of us. So that's the first thing that they have to do. They have to do a little bit of introspection as a Local and take an assessment of themselves, either informally, or we have one formally that they can engage in, and try to figure out like, what kind of things do we want to accomplish as a local? And then once they go through that planning process with their leadership, with input from their members, hopefully or you know, what, what kinds of things do we need, then they can set about writing in the grant. If they need help, we'll give them help. Their Labor Relations Consultant can certainly hook them up with people here in our organizing department probably would be the best venue for that to help help them plan to come up with money. If they asked us we could probably come up with a list of exemplar activities that that other locals have done that they've gotten grant money for as well.
Airica Clay 24:21
One of the things we tried to do, make sure we did for also the Wellness Grant is to make sure it was as easy as possible because what we don't want to do is, as Mark was saying, we don't want to make the application process an impediment to Locals feeling as if they don't want to apply, because we know how busy Local leaders are servicing and providing services for members. The Wellness Grant application is a one page electronic application. LRCs can help you fill it out. It literally is very simple information to provide about what your activity is going to be, how many members you have, and it's a quick approval process. So we try to make it as easy and user friendly as possible.
Katie Olmsted 25:00
And it would be very ironic to make the grant application process for a wellness grant, stressful in itself.
Airica Clay 25:07
Indeed.
Katie Olmsted 25:07
Kind of defeats the purpose. So, bottom line on this one is there is money on the table, and there are so many opportunities. What is your message to local leaders or just local members who are hearing about this saying, hey, why don't we look into this?
Mark Hill 25:24
I would say think hard about what you think you want to change with your local, like, if you are seeing a lower level of volunteerism or engagement among your members, then then make that a focus of your activity. If it's trying to sign up members that have opted out of the Union, there's another opportunity for to do it. To make your folks have a sense of wellness, there'd be another another thing. So assess what your needs are, what what do you need as a local and then start from there and start thinking creatively about activities that you can do. And after you do that, it's not hard. Then you fill out the application and probably the skies open up with money. Actually, I'm just joking, but you will probably will probably be successful in getting something.
Airica Clay 26:09
My message would be that it is a amazing benefit for members. One of the things that members ask all the time, what is OEA doing for us? What are some of the benefits that we get for our dues dollars, and besides the, you know, traditional collective bargaining and representing members, you know, I mean, in advocacy, this is a great way in terms of almost like a rebate of your dues dollars, and it's investing in members. And so it's a great opportunity then to provide a wonderful value added benefit for OEA membership to members. It's giving back to the members.
Katie Olmsted 26:47
Thank you very, very much for that information. We will of course be linking everything we can in the show notes for this episode. And I can't wait to see what people come up with for their activities.
Mark Hill 26:57
Yeah, me neither. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you for promoting this. And I'll look for this podcast on my Spotify when it pops up.
Airica Clay 27:06
Absolutely. We look forward to all the applications and all the wonderful things we know Locals are going to do with his grant money to engage our members.
Katie Olmsted 27:13
Mark Hill, Airica clay. Thank you.
Mark Hill 27:16
Thanks, Katie.
Airica Clay 27:17
Thank you.
Katie Olmsted 27:25
Alright, as promised, there are links in the show notes for this episode with everything you need to know about applying for the affiliate grants and the wellness grants for your local. You can also find the links to help you subscribe to Public Education Matters wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're online hitting that like or subscribe button, go ahead and hit send on an email to me to just let me know what you think of this podcast and what you'd like to hear on it in the future. The email address is educationmatters@ohea.org And don't forget you can connect with OEA anytime on social media. We're @OhioEA on Facebook, X and Instagram. Until next time, stay well. And remember, in Ohio, Public Education Matters
Transcribed by https://otter.ai