Prepared Notes for Board Meeting
Marc A. Schare
HB1 authorizes the Ohio
Department of Education to create a center for creativity and innovation in
education. A week ago Saturday, I attended an event designed to elicit ideas
for what that center should look like
or even if it was worth doing. Other
I thought I’d share some
general impressions of the meeting. First, even amongst that supportive group,
the event organizers felt that they needed to spend additional time on why
innovation in public education was required. In marketing circles, they were
trying to drive the need for change. Across the state, the need for educational
reform will be a tough sell and spending money for it will be even harder. The
organizers were clear that no money was available for this effort. Second, the
most often expressed sentiment among the attendees had to do with a recognition
that the education community is very risk averse and that the culture amongst
employees and stakeholders must shift towards a more entrepreneurial model
where (trust me on this) for every big success, you might have many failures
but ultimately, it is worth it. I hope the state makes progress in this effort
but with or without them, it’s my hope that
My second update comes to
us from the Ohio Society of CPA’s. Recently, they formed the Ohio Budget
Advisory Task Force in response to the Governor’s challenge for ideas regarding
the state budget deficit. As they are non-partisan (they supported both the
previous tax cut and the current tax increase), I thought their take on the
budget was interesting. Their first finding is that the state faces a budget
shortfall of between 4 billion and 8 billion dollars in the next biennium. The
use of one-time money prevented that shortfall in the current budget. They say
that current state and local government spending is unsustainable and that