Buckeye RINO

It’s about males.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago at Lorain County Community College, I attended the Hispanic Leadership Conference (which I’ll detail more in a future posting). During the conference, one of the workshops I attended was titled “Closing the Achievement Gap.”  The presenter was Nelson Ramirez, formerly a director at two non-profits: Lorain County Community Action Agency (which, among other things, administers Lorain County’s Head Start program); and El Centro de Servicios Sociales, a social service agency serving Lorain’s Hispanic community.  Currently, Nelson Ramirez is a Project Manager in Governor Ted Strickland’s administration who has been assigned to work on an initiative to close the achievement gap among the various population groups in Ohio’s primary and secondary schools.  A great deal of emphasis is being placed on improving high school dropout rates and lobbying the General Assembly for including these initiatives in the biennial budgets.

More than a dozen countries lead the USA with higher high school graduation rates, which is sobering considering that the world’s superpower isn’t leading the pack.  While Ohio’s graduation rate is higher than the nation’s average, there are glaring discrepancies between population groups. One might expect, just from anecdotal evidence, that Hispanics and African-Americans lag behind Caucasians in high school graduation rates.  There’s more to it, though.  Across all racial/ethnic lines, there is a gender dimension to the dropout rate, with males dropping out at a much higher rate than females, and that’s where it becomes all about the males.

To be sure, female dropouts do have troubles of their own, while dropouts of both genders earn less than those who have higher levels of education (and thus pay less in taxes), female high school dropouts have lower per capita incomes as adults than do their male dropout counterparts.  But though female high school dropouts may need to rely on government social programs like WIC, food stamps, and Medicaid, they don’t cost Ohio nearly as much per person in government expenditures as male dropouts do.  That’s because male dropouts have a significantly disproportionate tendency to become imprisoned.

Currently, about 24% of all Ohio teens are dropping out.  High school dropouts comprise nearly 75% of the inmate population at state prisons.  **gulp**

It is estimated that the average high school dropout in the criminal system (ONE individual–am I being redundant?) will require the state to shell out $1.5 million to $1.8 million over the course of that dropout’s lifetime as a direct consequence of that dropout’s criminal activity, alone.  That’s just the cost of the criminal activity IF there is no drug abuse being factored in.  If there is a drug addiction problem, add in a few hundred thousand more, and that the overall cost over a lifetime will balloon to $2.3 million.

Along with the gender and racial/ethnic dimensions of Ohio’s dropout rate, there is a geographic dimension, too, as one might expect since African-Americans and Hispanics are not uniformly spread throughout Ohio’s population in rural, suburban, and urban settings.  As one would expect, dropout rates are usually higher in urban settings, and this leads us to a new statistic: poor performing high schools, or “dropout factories,” which are high schools that graduate 60% or less of each incoming freshman class.  80% of the nation’s dropout factories are located in 15 states, which means the other 35 states are home to only 20% of the nation’s dropout factories.  Ohio is in the group of 15 states.  In Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Columbus, and Cincinnati school districts, at least half of the high schools are dropout factories.  **gulp**  60% of Ohio’s African-Americans attend dropout factories.  **gulp**  Therefore, the target of the initiative to improve Ohio’s graduation rates is primarily the African-American male high school freshman.

It is relatively easy to predict who is most likely to drop out.  They are already lagging behind classmates in the 4th grade.  A 3rd grade reading level is the point of divergence between those that are likely to graduate and those that are likely to drop out.

Of course, dropping out is an individual decision.  Only 22% of dropouts believe that they were not personally responsible for dropping out.  The reasons given for dropping out include: they didn’t find classes interesting; they missed too many days of school and couldn’t catch up; they spent much of their time with people who weren’t interested in school; they had were given wide latitude in whatever they chose to do with very few ground rules laid down by their parents/guardians; they were failing in school; real life events got in the way of school; and parents/guardians tried to become involved way too late in the educational process.

The strategies outlined in Governor Strickland’s initiative to improve the graduation rate (beyond identifying the key population groups) are:

• Attendance and behavior monitors
• Focus on achievement in core courses
• Tutoring as an academic support
• Counseling/Mentoring
• Small learning communities for greater personalization (such as school within a school)
• Catch-up courses
• Homeroom, teams, or looping
• Ninth Grade Academies or transition programs
• Tiered approach to providing behavioral and/or academic support
• Focus on positive effects for diverse students
• Focus on positive effects for students with disabilities
• Career/College awareness
• Family engagement
• Community engagement
• Ensuring partnerships between high schools and feeder middle schools

The attempt to intervene with these actions is taking place at the boundaries between 8th and 9th and 10th grades.  Naturally, I pointed out that the challenges could be addressed in much earlier years in a child’s education.  There is a desire by the Governor’s administration to address these challenges in earlier years, but so far, they are working to at least get the ball rolling, and this is their starting point.  The chief argument being used in lobbying the General Assembly for appropriations for this initiative is that it is less costly to the state than taking no action to reduce the dropout rate.

Over all, Nelson Ramirez gave a very thought-provoking lecture that concluded with vigorous discussion, as you might imagine.

Prior to state Dem leadership calling upon Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann to resign or be impeached, I criticized the Democrats, and mentioned Redfern by name, for being slow to break their silence.  Kevin DeWine, deputy chair of the Ohio Republican Party had already staked out a position.

This past Monday, Chris Redfern was among Ohio’s Democrat leaders that signed a letter addressed to Marc Dann expressing their displeasure and asking for his resignation or face impeachment.  Later, it was revealed that the Ohio Democrat Party had removed all mentions of Dann from its website and Redfern caused a stir in the blogosphere indicating that the party would no longer endorse Dann.  Today, the Ohio Democrat Party is holding a convention and the news has already come out that the votes are in, and the ODP has officially stripped Dann of the endorsement they gave him in 2006.

The noose is tightening, Marc Dann.

While Redfern has carried out the ultimatum made by the ODP, there is still one thing that remains that continues to stick in my craw.  Since Marc Dann has refused to resign, the state Dem leadership promised to begin impeachment proceedings in the Ohio House.  So far, the impeachment process has not yet begun.

I’m extremely disappointed.  Perhaps I’ll complain to my state representative.  Oh, by the way, I currently live in Sandusky, so that means that my state rep is . . . CHRIS REDFERN!!!!!

Ahem . . . !

The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram and the Lorain Morning Journal have reported that former state rep Matt Barrett no longer works at the law firm of Miraldi and Barrett, his father’s firm.

The Ohio House 58th District replacement search committee of the Ohio House Democratic Caucus has extended their deadline for application submissions by a week.  There were seven original applicants, but only three actually resided in the district.  The three current applicants each come from a different county in a district that includes the eastern third of Seneca County, all of Huron County, and the parts of Lorain County that are west and south of Oberlin (which is in the 56th District).  From Attica in Seneca County is Mary Fleure, whose occupation is senior caretaker.  I have not met her, and her name is not widely recognized.  From Norwalk in Huron County is a retired judge, Thomas Heydinger.  I’ve opined that his appointment would make the most sense to me.  From Amherst in Lorain County is Frank Janik, an assistant county prosecutor.  I featured Janik in a prior blog entry, as well.

Perhaps I need to add a few paragraphs to an earlier post I’d written about how teens need adults to be protectors and not perps.  I really don’t like to drag family into a discussion about public figures, but former Democrat state rep Matthew Barrett’s son was used as a human shield, not for war mind you, but for deflecting criticism that belonged squarely on Barrett’s own, adult, shoulders for displaying at least one photo of a topless woman to a Norwalk High School class.  What shocked me was that Barrett’s wife and Barrett’s son were required to play along with the charade that was originally presented to law enforcement officers.

Nevertheless, I’ve already posted a blog entry that Barrett is no longer in jeopardy of having any punitive action taken against him.

This passage from this Norwalk Reflector article is what really made me wide-eyed in disbelief:

“Barrett’s son spoke to Norwalk police in the presence of his parents and said he was responsible for downloading the photos, but his father refused to let him say what Web site he had used to find the pictures.”

The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram corroborates:

“During questioning, Barrett and his wife, Wendy, sat with their son as he described downloading pornography off his father’s laptop computer and putting it on a memory stick to move to another computer in the family’s home.

“In a separate interview, Barrett’s wife said she had caught her son looking at Internet pornography in the past, but when police asked the boy what kind of Web sites he had visited to get the photos found on the memory card, Barrett refused to let his son answer.

” ‘Don’t. I don’t want him to answer,” Barrett can be heard saying during the interview. “Don’t. Don’t answer, please.’ “

The women depicted in the photos were contacted by investigators who discovered their identities via the laptop computer that police confiscated from Barrett.  The women willingly co-operated with the investigation of Barrett when they learned to their own alarm that a 13-year-old son had been made a scapegoat by his parents.  It wasn’t until after police had made contact with the women and knew their stories that Barrett hired an attorney and owned up to the deception.

Wow.  Yet, frustratingly, in our society, children are often casualties of adults’ exploits.

The Lorain Morning Journal reports that an assistant prosecutor in Lorain County is interested in being appointed by the Democrats to the 58th Ohio House District seat left vacant by Matthew Barrett. Thomas Janik once ran unsuccessfully in a Democrat primary for Oberlin Municipal Court judge. Janik would be willing to run in November to retain the seat against opposition from Republican former Huron County Commissioner Terry Boose.

As an assistant prosecutor, Janik’s boss is Dennis Will, who is widely respected. I’ve met Janik in person before. When he was running for election, I happened to answer the door when he knocked at the home of my former in-laws. On that occasion, Janik clearly appeared to be uncomfortable, like a shrinking violet. His name recognition isn’t all that strong in Lorain County, let alone in Huron County (where half the voters of the district live). I wonder aloud if Janik is as conservative as the voters of the 58th District. Barrett definitely played up his conservative credentials when he ran in 2004 and 2006, yet Barrett wasn’t able to win that first time around. If Janik can’t come up with key endorsements by Ohio Right-to-Life and the NRA, forget it.

Janik would have the daunting task of trying to pull off the win while starting at zero and only having until November. On the flip side, the timetable isn’t as short as one might ordinarily think, given that today would have been primary election day in any non-Presidential election year. The fact that the primary was held in early March this year contributes to the mirage that a lot of time has elapsed. The Republican, Terry Boose, though, is much more widely known and more widely respected than Barrett’s opponent in 2006, so I think the climb really is steeper for Janik.

There are two upsides for a Janik candidacy: 1) Though a minority of 58th District voters live in Lorain County, Janik can tap into a vibrant Democrat fundraising machine that exists in Lorain County that can probably raise more money than what the Democrat Party in Huron County can raise. 2) If Janik loses in November, he’d likely still have employment he could return to with the Lorain County Prosecutor’s office.

Of the names mentioned so far, I still think retired former Huron County juvenile court judge Thomas Heydinger makes the most sense. He has Huron County name recognition; by virtue of his service in the judicial branch, he’s a blank slate on the issues so that he can define himself however he wants; he doesn’t have to vacate office to accept the state rep appointment; and if he loses in November, he can return to retirement in January without having to scurry to find employment.

Originally, it was reported that Norwalk Mayor Sue Lesch, Huron County Commissioner Mike Adelman, and Huron County Auditor Roland Tkach weren’t interested in the state rep job, but apparently, they’ve been persuaded to submit their resumes and be screened by a Democrat selection committee headed by State Rep. Ron Gerberry. Why they would be willing to vacate office for a state rep job that would be much more difficult to get elected to, I don’t know, for they wouldn’t be able to resume their former duties in January if they were to lose to Terry Boose in November, which I think is likely. I’ve already postulated that Dan Metelsky is a poor fit for the 58th District.