CLEVELAND, Ohio — A campaign group opposing a proposal to make it harder to change the Ohio Constitution has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to block the Aug. 8 election that Republican state lawmakers set last Wednesday.

We’re talking about how Ohio could hold a statewide election in August, after Republican state lawmakers in December outlawed state elections on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.

Here’s what we’re asking about today:

Is it me, or does the new lawsuit seeking to block the Ohio Legislature from holding an August election to attack majority rule in Ohio seem like it makes a strong case?

A lot of us have been working to make sure we are included in NOPEC for electric rates because of the big price hike that’s going on, but Cleveland residents don’t have that choice. Why not, and who is angry about that?

Northeast Ohio loves its libraries, but we’ve just learned that the pandemic has dramatically changed the way people engage with libraries. How so?

What percentage of women in Ohio prisons have children, and how is that complicating the raising of those children?

We’ve talked at length about how children are sleeping in a Cuyahoga County administration building because there is no where else to put them, but we have not discussed what they eat while in county care. Not exactly the food pyramid, eh Leila?

Let’s talk about another way the pandemic has changed our habits for the long term. How has consumer commerce been turned upside down in ways we had not imagined before 2020?

We’re still in prime birding time in Northeast Ohio, which is prime birding territory. How much time is left before the fun slows down?

We had one of the most charming, and most unforeseen, installments this weekend in our Cleveland’s Promise project, in which two reporters have been embedded in Cleveland classrooms for two school years. What is it?

Who are some of the lesser known arts organizations getting a chunk of pandemic relief money to keep them going?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

[00:00:00] Chris: The proposed constitutional amendment to wipe out majority rule in Ohio continues to be a newsworthy topic, but still, I think half the state is unaware of it. It’s today in Ohio, the news podcast. Discussion from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer for a Monday. I’m Chris g Quinn here with Layla Tasi.

Laura Johnson. And Lisa Garvin, and we’re going to start right there with that amendment. Is it me or does the new lawsuit seeking to block the Ohio legislature from holding an August election to attack majority rule in Ohio seem like it makes a very strong case, Lisa?

[00:00:39] Lisa: Yeah, they’ve made several strong legal arguments against.

This, uh, Senate Joint resolution. So the group is called One Person, one Vote. They filed suit on Friday with the Ohio Supreme Court. They’re asking the Supreme Court to block the August 8th special election that was just called for last week, and they wanna fast track the case. Uh, their Democratic election’s.

[00:01:00] Attorney Don Mcta, uh, says that, you know, he, he filed the suit on behalf of this group, and he says, Ohio can’t legally hold an election in August due to the December vote. To end August elections. He also said that in the suit that joint resolutions cannot be used to set election dates outside of state law.

The law only allows constitutional amendments to be on the ballot in March, may and November when turnout is highest. Lawmakers realized the fatal flaw and tried to amend the revised code to reauthorize August elections and failed. So they say there’s no legal basis for this election at all. This is a wonderful quote from the lawsuit.

It said, this court should not countenance this cynical attempt to undermine a century old pillar of Ohio’s democracy by means of an illegal election.

[00:01:50] Chris: Well, the, the. Problem is the Constitution does vest in the legislature, the right to set elections, but they did pass a law to outlaw [00:02:00] August elections and the governor signed it.

So that is the law. They bound themselves and the only way to undo that it. I, I think, is to pass another law that the governor would sign, which they didn’t do. Mm-hmm. Like you said, Lisa, they talked about doing it and they realized they didn’t have the support. I don’t see how the Supreme Court, if it’s ruling based on law, not personal preference and party politics, they have to follow this.

They’re gonna have to cancel the election if they don’t, I think they’re, they’re bastardizing the law.

[00:02:33] Lisa: Well and Senate President Man Huffman though begs to differ. He says, the Constitution says the legislature has the authority to place issues on the ballot and decide when to set votes on those issues.

And I have to talk about Senate Bill 92 because this was the bill that they abandoned last week. This bill would have authorized the August election. And set aside 20 million to pay for it. But this might be a tactical move on the part of the [00:03:00] legislature because joint resolutions apparently cannot be challenged by referendum.

[00:03:05] Chris: Yeah. I just don’t see how they can do it after they outlawed them. I, I, I, if, if they wanted to reenable ‘em, they would’ve had to pass a law to do that, so, and Hoffman knows it. That’s why they were trying to pass another law. They gave up and change course with. This really kind of a ridiculous ploy and, and maybe they’re counting on the, the Ohio Supreme Court to play politics instead of follow the rule of law.

Interesting. They have, they have asked for the Supreme Court to expedite this because the clock is ticking. You’re listening to today in Ohio. A lot of us have been working to make sure we are included in NOPEC for electric rates because of the big price hike that’s going on. But Cleveland residents don’t have that choice.

Layla, why not? And who’s angry about that?

[00:03:52] Leila: Well, city council members are pretty ticked off at Mayor Justin Bibb because they say he dropped the ball when it came to [00:04:00] shopping around for a good deal on energy aggregation services earlier in the year because the administration. Failed to issue the R F P earlier to secure the best rates for Clevelanders first energy.

Customers in Cleveland could see a 150% increase in their bills during the summer months when bills are already pretty high BIB’s. Sustainability director Sarah O’Keefe, acknowledged a council last week that two months ago. Would’ve been the ideal time to do this, and the city regrets leaving customers in Lurch.

Cleveland has been using nopec as its aggregation service, but the city pulled out of that agreement last year when prices spiked amid the war in Ukraine and disruptions to the global energy market. And at that time, first energy default rates were unusually cheaper than Noex, which meant that Cleveland’s withdrawal saved local customers money by switching them back to first energies rates.

While now, you know, few months. Later first, energy rates are about to spike from the current 5.90 cents per [00:05:00] kilowatt hour to 12.40 cents per kilowatt hour, beginning in June. And you know Councilman Brian Casey, who chairs council’s, utilities committee says, you know, he’s been calling publicly for a while upon the administration to take care of this issue, but the city didn’t put out the RFP until April.

So the city had some kind of crappy excuse for why this happened. They said that they were delayed and shopping around because they needed to set up some kind of framework that could provide Cleveland better and greener energy options the next time city hall shops for aggregation, which is like next year.

And that’s a pretty bad excuse when you’re considering the imminent threat to. You know, the, the, uh, the rates. Um, but they’re just telling customers, hang tight. They say, don’t, don’t opt into any of those third party energy suppliers that lock you into those long contracts. They say, just get through this and you’ll be back in the, uh, on the best deal come August.

[00:05:55] Chris: Yeah, but for a couple of months, they’re gonna be paying those exorbitantly high rates. What’s [00:06:00] odd is that Cleveland got out of that because nopec officials recognized what Cleveland did, and they put everybody back into first energy rates when they realized that. They’re that they were upside down on the cost.

I guess Cleveland just jumped the gun, but it’s left them in the lurch. I’m surprised we’ve been talking about this for a long time. I’m surprised Cleveland dragged its feet, so its resonances are gonna get hammered for a few months and who knows what the rate will be when they make the deal with nopec and get back in.

It probably won’t be as good as it is right now.

[00:06:32] Leila: Right, right. It is very shocking that they drag their feet. They say that if you can’t wait and if you need to go with a third party because you just can’t afford the higher rates, now the city has a list of suppliers that don’t charge early termination fees so that you could switch when the time comes.

So that’s, I guess, a tiny sliver of a silver lighting

[00:06:54] Laura: there. Sean McDonald did a lot of work on this. Our business reporter who writes the column called Saving You Money, [00:07:00] and he basically addressed this, I don’t know, a week before Cleveland did, and said you guys, and at that point didn’t realize it was gonna be both June and July, that um, customers in Cleveland were gonna get slammed.

And he talked to an expert and his advice was to chaperone. But you’re right, it’s a complicated. Task to try to figure out to shop that apples to apples comparison and to figure out and make sure that you’re not locked into something and it’s not gonna be higher. And this changes all the time. So I understand why the council people are saying, I don’t know that all of our residents are gonna be able to do this to, to take it upon themselves.

But I agree with Chris. My first question was, why did they leave nopec in the first place? Because everybody had the same issue and Nopec just, you know, dropped those customers, not the entire city.

[00:07:45] Chris: We’ll have to ask Sean cuz he’s written extensively about this and he is written extensively about dating with Rita, which is more complicated and tedious cause I’m not sure we’ll have to check.

You’re listening to Today in Ohio, [00:08:00] Northeast Ohio loves its libraries, but we’ve just learned the pandemic has dramatically changed the way people engage with our libraries. Lara Howso.

[00:08:10] Laura: Well in-person, person visits are way down for both the county system and the Cleveland City system. So the county had about 3 million visits in 2022.

Compare that to the 5 million visits in 2019, and Cleveland had about a million in 2022. That’s. Compared to the 2.5 million visits in 2019, obviously when the pandemic shut down the world, libraries were one of the, the hardest hit. Do you remember? I, I, other people were stocking up on toilet paper. I was stocking up on books that Friday that it was like, schools are gonna be closed for three weeks.

I went in and I just like checked out up to 50, uh, you know, like the limit and took them home because for a long time they couldn’t figure out. What to do. They didn’t want people in the libraries. They were, nobody knew how the germs transmitted. Remember like for then they reopened, but you’d have to, like [00:09:00] library books would sit for five days before they would touch them, and then they would like bring them out to your car.

So it was a long time effect and I think people just readjusted their expectations and their habits. So now, E-books are much bigger deal for both library systems for for the pandemic. Three outta four first time checkouts at the county library where physical books are physical media, 25% were digital.

By the end, we’re at 50 50 split at the public library. Bigger even jump 10% of circulation to start and now about 50%. And I am the poster child for that. I never read an ebook, didn’t have the Libby app. Before the pandemic, but once I figured out how to use it and the fact that I didn’t have to go to get my book or return it, I total convert.

[00:09:46] Leila: But this is causing, I think what was shocking to me was to learn that the cost of those licenses, mm-hmm. For a digital copy of an ebook is so high. You can buy the hard copy of a book for like 15 bucks, but the digital license for the same book is [00:10:00] over a hundred dollars. So if you’re going to convert the libraries, Uh, entire collection or you know, more of its collection to digital copies.

The cost is astronomical.

[00:10:12] Chris: Yeah. And we analyze that to see is there a reason for it or there multiple copies per license. And it’s not, it’s just straight, they’re gouging the libraries Right. For the electronic copy of the same thing. I, I don’t get how they get away with it except that they’re in charge.

I guess the libraries can’t, can’t really do anything about it. Right,

[00:10:32] Leila: because

[00:10:32] Laura: it’s interesting. If you buy a book on Kindle from Amazon, it’s like 10 bucks, right? Because you’re not buying all of the paper and all of the printing costs. It’s a, it’s a lot cheaper to make an ebook than a, than a regular hardback book.

[00:10:44] Leila: Right. But I guess, and also these digital copies that the libraries buy, they. They are only good for so many lens or borrows to, to a customer after you reach like 26 or something crazy like that, they claw back and you have to [00:11:00] rebuy the license. It’s insane.

[00:11:03] Laura: And I mean, I guess you could talk about where there’s no wear and tear on it.

Like I don’t know how many borrows or regular library goes, book goes through before you know you’re like, okay, we’re retiring this one, but I’m pretty sure it’s more than 26. Right.

[00:11:15] Chris: Right. Yeah. It, I, we, I, when you told me about this Leila, I was convinced there’d be some underlying reason that justified it, and all the reporting basically said, Nope.

It’s just 100% price gouging, which makes life for the libraries a lot tougher with all the people reading eBooks. Good story on cleveland.com. Check it out. You’re listening to today in Ohio. What percentage of women in Ohio presence have children, and how is that complicating the raising of those children?

Lisa?

[00:11:47] Lisa: Well, the, the best figures we have apparently are from the Department of Justice. They did a 2016 report on women who are incarcerated in the country and more than half the women in prison currently have children [00:12:00] under the age of 18, 37 year old. Rebecca Phillips, um, can concur with that. She is, uh, in the Northeast Reintegration Center in Cleveland.

She was convicted of breaking and entering, and this is her second prison stint and she says, A lot of her fellow inmates lose their kids to cps s or foster care family members, or they don’t even get to talk to them. But, uh, Molly Walsh talked to Phillips and it was a great story. She has an 18 year old daughter, Sierra.

She talks to her three times a day. Every day. She says, my daughter is my first priority, but her daughter, Sierra, will not visit her in prison. She says, mom, you know, you told me about making bad choices and here you are making bad choices. But at least she’s in contact with her, with her daughter, uh, Bev Wittington, who’s also at the Inter Reintegration Center.

She last saw her son, Noah. In October of 2021, he got off the school bus as his home was raided by federal agents, and, uh, he will be 17 when his mother is released [00:13:00] in prison after serving time for using and selling methamphetamine. He apparently never, almost never picks up the phone when his mother calls, but this was a really heartbreaking story.

He didn’t get a haircut since his mother’s arrest. But he finally went and got his haircut and then he felt really bad about it. He said that his hair was the only thing that he had left of me, says his mom, and that just killed her. But, uh, apparently Ohio has some pretty good programs compared to other states.

We actually have an Ohio prison nursery, so uh, moms can live with their kids.

[00:13:34] Chris: Yeah, it, it was a tough story to read because the people made bad choices. They’re being penalized for it, but the ramifications that has for the children, whether they’re in foster care or just missing their moms, it really came across.

Molly did a wonderful job with this story you’re listening to today in Ohio. We talked at length about how children are sleeping in a Cuyahoga County administration building because there is nowhere else to put them, but we [00:14:00] have not discussed what they eat while they are in county care. Leila, it’s not exactly the food pyramid.

[00:14:07] Leila: Yeah. County officials have have basically conceded that there are always going to be kids staying at the Jane Edna Hunter Social Services Center, which is an office building. It’s poorly equipped for anyone to be living there. We’ve reported, as you said, a great deal in this issue in the past year.

These are the kids who the county has a really difficult time placing in foster homes for a number of reasons, and they don’t necessarily qualify for the specialized space that they’ve set up at the centers for. For kids with exceptional behavioral and mental health needs. So given the acknowledgement that some kids will be living at the office building for very periods of periods of time, ranging from a day to months, you would think that they would be following some kind of nutritional guidelines when it comes to feeding these children.

After all, I mean, schools and childcare centers and residential facilities, foster families, they’re all bound to guidelines that ensure balanced meals. But the Jane Edna Hunter Center somehow falls into this gray area [00:15:00] and. They basically follow no policies at all. The county claims that they feed them a balance of fruits and vegetables and comfort foods to make their stay at the building more tolerable.

And they have a lot of lines about how they feed these children as they would their feed their own. But Caitlin Durbin did a really deep dive on the county’s grocery bill for these kids, and she found that the kids are eating. Almost exclusively sugary processed foods that can either be found in a vending machine or cooked in the microwave with, with almost no access to fruits or vegetables.

In 2022, the county spent $8,300 on groceries to feed. Young people staying in the childcare room at the building. $2,300 of that were in meal foods, like frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, french fries, ramen noodles, and hotdogs. A thousand dollars were in Lunchables. Another thousand was in chips.

500 bucks for for different kinds of little Debbie snacks. [00:16:00] $374 in cereal and Pop tarts. Hundred $87 in cookies or rice crispy treats, and then just $21 on applesauce or fruit cups within the year, and 10 bucks on a single bag, each of apples and oranges. That is literally the only fresh. Fruit. There was no evidence of any kind of frozen vegetables or anything of that nature.

All the hot food is being prepared out of a microwave though, the county put out a statement about how they’re looking for someone to kindly donate an electric skillet so they can cook some breakfast fruits. I mean, I looked this up on Amazon. You can get one for like $38, so that is just a terrible. Ugh, there.

There are some anecdotal reports that the food offerings have gotten a little better recently, but the county said that they couldn’t provide any receipts for this year for some reason. And there’s a cafe in the building where staffers eat and, and staffers are permitted to buy meals for kids and expense it, but it’s unclear what foods are being purchased for the children there.

[00:16:59] Chris: [00:17:00] Does the cafe have a full kitchen?

[00:17:03] Leila: Uh, that’s a good question. I wanna say yes because Caitlin said that they’re, that staffers are, are getting full meals like, you know, breakfast sandwiches and stuff like that. I mean, I guess you, those could be microwaved or whatever, but it sounds like they are freshly prepared, but it

[00:17:17] Chris: sounds like they do have then refrigeration and that’s some of the elements you need if you’re going to provide fresh food.

Most of the foods you mentioned are so loaded with. Preservatives, they’d still be in existence a hundred years from now. Right. And, and if, and if you’re not really prepared to be a full service kitchen, that’s what I guess you’d have to get. But if they have the full kitchen with refrigeration, this doesn’t make any sense.

But maybe they, they, I guess they don’t have people to cook it. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s, it’s a quandary.

[00:17:51] Laura: It is, you know, this list doesn’t sound all that different from the story that Caitlin wrote about the jail commissary and the food that went missing from there. No. Like little [00:18:00] versus point, the honey bun, it’s

[00:18:02] Chris: like awful.

I wonder, can I had another

[00:18:05] Lisa: perspective here? Yeah. I mean, these kids, they’re, they’re, they’re, you know, out of their homes. They’re in a. Weird situation. They want comfort food. If you ask a kid what comfort food they want, it ain’t gonna be an apple in an orange. I mean, it’s gonna be mac and cheese. It’s got, I mean, they even said in the article, some of these kids, you know, I serve my own kids, mac and cheese, you know, from craft.

[00:18:26] Laura: So I know. But if you don’t offer healthy options, kids will never eat them. When you know, like, And, and these kids, I, I thought the same thing, Lisa, like they are, this is a crisis. They are undergoing trauma. This is so, such a difficult time for them. But like they also, if they’re being taken by dcfs, probably haven’t had, I mean they haven’t had the best home life.

They’re probably not eating the best food. This is an opportunity to at least get some healthy food in them, cuz they probably haven’t been eating it at home. But

[00:18:53] Leila: also foster care is a traumatic uh mm-hmm. Situation as well, but, There are [00:19:00] requirements for foster families to feed children appropriately. I mean, the problem here is that the kids are, are between placements, right?

So the requirements appear to fall into this gray area where the policies don’t reach. And yet, I mean, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services told Kaitlyn that actually state law does speak to the gray area, that the law states that. No court agency resource caregiver, residential facility, or any employee, volunteer intern or subcontractor of a, of an agency, uh, is, is allowed to, in any way violate any rights of children, and that includes their right to receive access to the same type of nutritious and well-balanced foods that they’re required to receive in foster care.

So, you know, those nutritional guidelines are outlined in places like. The National School Lunch Act, and that lays out the def definition of a balance, though.

[00:19:47] Chris: It is though a temporary stop. I mean, this is someplace, I mean, nobody wants this to be a solution. Nobody wants kids sleeping in a county office building, and if it’s a temporary stop, how egregious [00:20:00] is it that for a couple of days they eat junk food That makes ‘em happy.

[00:20:04] Leila: Some kids are longer there, longer, you know, than a couple days at this building. I mean, some of their, I mean, we’ve heard of kids who are there for weeks. You

[00:20:13] Laura: know, the food bank does provide those lunches and libraries and stuff in the summer. I wonder if, not that I’m saying they should be taking like donations from the food bank, but I wonder if they have any kind of setup that the county could contract with.

[00:20:27] Chris: Good, good conversation piece. I’m sure people were talking about it. Check out the story by Caitlin Durbin. It is on cleveland.com and this is today in Ohio. Let’s talk about another way the pandemic has changed our habits for the long term. How has consumer commerce been turned upside down in ways we had not imagined before 2020?

Laura?

[00:20:49] Laura: I love this story from Mark Bono because it is, it really has revolutionized that what we expect from consumer businesses and it’s basically based on [00:21:00] customer service and convenience and cleanliness and a reliance on technology. I don’t think anybody wants to talk to anybody else, right? If you could do it on your phone, people are much happier.

So staff is. Uh, e expensive. It’s expensive to hire people. Stuff is more expensive, especially food customers are in for sticker shock when they go into a restaurant because you think, like, you know, that, you know, it’s such a big deal when eggs went up, right? The, the cost of eggs went up. Well, all groceries went up and you might see it at the store, but then you go into, uh, a medium casual restaurant and a burger is like 20 bucks and you’re taken aback, but you’re not thinking about all the stuff that went into making that 20 bucks apparently, like fryer oil.

Used to cost $50, now it’s 120. And so that kind of stuff is just adding up and people have to decide if, you know they wanna pay for it. Uh, the convenience people became used to ordering groceries and picking ‘em up in a parking lot. Giant Eagle added all sorts of coolers, freezers, [00:22:00] and other areas based on this demand.

Now they have pickup and delivery in 103 of their stores, about half of them. Chipotle’s business is about. 40% takeout. So if you have a, uh, a place like Chipotle or Panera or Piat or whatever, you don’t need so much dining room space anymore. What you need is like a drive up window or a designated spot to put the orders so that people can come in and pick them up quickly.

And then you don’t need the staff to ring them out cause they’ve already paid online. And that’s another thing. A lot of businesses are going cashless. They don’t accept cash. It’s, it’s more work than it’s worth. And so you’re just swiping or showing your phone for Apple

[00:22:35] Chris: Pay. Lisa, you’re a big. Cash person, you don’t like using the other methods.

Have you found it more difficult to buy stuff?

[00:22:42] Lisa: Absolutely not. And I’ll tell you what, I pay cash in restaurants all the time cuz I don’t like letting my card outta my site. And actually, you should always tip your waiters and waitresses and cash because then they don’t have to claim it. But yeah, I, you know, they’re saying, oh, money’s so dirty and money has cocaine on it.

And [00:23:00] it’s like, okay, whatever. Yeah, I’m gonna pay cash until they pry it outta my cold

[00:23:04] Chris: dead hands. And, and Layla and Laura. Do you take advantage of the order online and just go pick it up? Or do you still go into stores?

[00:23:15] Leila: Um, I, I, I think we, we order up, actually it was, I’m laughing because yesterday my husband was having trouble.

He only orders food online and goes and picks it up. And the other day, like one of his options wasn’t available and he was like, I was like, well just call them. He’s like, oh

[00:23:31] Chris: God. He was like,

[00:23:34] Leila: what? You think this is the Middle

[00:23:36] Chris: Ages? I was just, no, I’m with him. I’m with him. I’m

[00:23:39] Leila: completely, he doesn’t wanna talk to anyone anymore.

Um, yeah. Yeah. So that’s where we are. I’m interested though, like I was just at the, um, the Akron Rubber Duck Stadium the other day for a 5k, and notice that they are one of those cashless facilities and they have like reverse ATMs. How are you coping, Lisa, with that?

[00:23:58] Lisa: I haven’t had to deal with that [00:24:00] yet.

I’m gonna go to a captain’s game later on and we’ll see. And I thought about that because I guess the guardians and all the, the, the, uh, stadiums here are going completely cashless. I don’t know, I’ll probably freak out.

[00:24:11] Chris: It’s, it’s, it is really kind of astounding to think of how much things have changed in just a short three years.

Nobody would’ve predicted a lot of this three years ago, and now it’s what our lives are. It’s today in Ohio. We’re still in prime birding time in northeast Ohio, which is prime birding territory. Lisa, how much time is left for people to do the spotting before the birds all go away?

[00:24:35] Lisa: Yeah, the, uh, the migration season for Ohio, you know, starts in April and usually ends about the middle or late.

Part of May. There’s been a, a spring birdwalk series that, uh, you know, where they lead, uh, birding hikes in the, during the migration season. Uh, but the last one here in the northeast Ohio will be the 21st of May at several Metro parks and Cleveland, [00:25:00] Lorraine Lake Gaga, Cuyahoga Medina Counties. Um, Julie West with the Nature Center at Shaker Lake says, may is the best time to see a variety of birds during the spring migration.

And she, her walks that she hosts, Average is about 20 people. And lately they’ve seen Baltimore Orioles, warblers, blue Gray, Nat Catchers, a Solo Sandpiper, which is unusual. That was on Don Brook. And she says, for many people the return of the hummingbirds and the Orioles are the HARs of spring for them.

So, uh, yeah, you still have a chance you can go to the Western Cuyahoga Audubon. Website to see the list of remaining walks, and they’re, they’re pretty interesting. Uh, Nancy Howell with the Audubon Society says Bird watchers tend to be over the age of 40, but she’d love to see more young people so they can carry on this 90 year old spring birdwalk

[00:25:49] Chris: tradition.

Wait, wait, wait. 40 isn’t young people. What? How old is one? I know, I was just say, wait a minute. If they’re 40, you’re listening [00:26:00] to Today in Ohio, rare Day, where we really did save the best for last, we had one of the most charming and most unforeseen installments this weekend in our Cleveland’s Promise project, in which two reporters have been embedded in Cleveland classrooms for two school years.

Layla, what’s the story? Oh

[00:26:19] Leila: man. I’ll try to get through this without crying. One of those two embedded reporters, Cameron Fields, announced in a story this weekend that he has decided to resign from his job@cleveland.com in the Plain dealer to become a teacher in the city of Cleveland. After two years immersed in the elementary school environment at Elmira Elementary and Cleveland Westside, he has discovered that education.

Is his life’s calling. He’s joining Teach For America, which is a nonprofit that’s dedicated to educational equity. They train up a core of teachers who have come to education through non-conventional ways, and each core member commits to two years, I believe, of [00:27:00] teaching in an underserved community.

After that many go on to get degrees in education or, or they go on to other careers in other fields. And Cameron will begin his intensive training pretty soon. He’s leaving us this Wednesday, and by the following week he’ll be training and he’ll be in one of the charter schools in Cleveland. From what I understand, he’s gonna be teaching kindergarten and I just couldn’t imagine a better person suited for that work.

He’s such a warm, kind. Supportive person. He has been a delightful colleague. He’s dedicated to this project. He was dedicated to the kids. He’s become so close with the kids who’ve been the focus of his stories. In, in the piece that he wrote for this weekend, he described how he and and pan around his B partner would frequently end up jumping in to help kids with their classwork.

And while, um, you know, they were in the classroom reporting and for one assignment, Kids were writing their own folk tales and preparing to perform them on stage. Cameron helped these kids write and polish their their own work and helped them [00:28:00] build the confidence to perform them. And he said that watching them unleash their creativity and give it their all in performance, moved him to tears.

It really solidified this decision for him. That’s when he knew that this was his calling. This is the work he finds most gratifying. And we’re gonna miss him, but we wish him the best. Well, when

[00:28:18] Chris: he came in to give me his resignation, I’ve never been more conflicted about a resignation for about 20 seconds of sitting there thinking, man, we’re losing this bright light.

This guy with the big promise, but then it washes over you just how super cool this is. He was immersed with kids. And realized this is how I wanna spend my life. And what a resounding affirmation for the Cleveland School system. The whole purpose of this project was to illuminate for people who know nothing about the Cleveland schools, just how hard they’re working to teach kids in poverty.

And here’s a guy who has a full career as a reporter that. Is confronted with that situation every day and thinks so highly of it. He [00:29:00] wants to be part of it. I don’t know that you can say there’s any better legacy for the outgoing C E O Eric Gordon. This is just charming beyond

[00:29:09] Lisa: words. And you know what I was struck by is that it.

You know, so few of us have career clarity in our life. I mean, he really said, okay, this is my calling. I, that really struck me. It’s like, it just was like a lightning bolt to his brain.

[00:29:25] Chris: Yeah. I look, I’ve mentioned my wife’s a, a teacher as I’ve been married to a teacher for a long time. I’m into education and I believe greatly in it.

The, the, the generations of kids now who will have Mr. Fields as their teacher, they’re going to be launched in a great way. You can just feel what, what Layla said about Cameron. He cares and the kids love him and we’re, we’re losing some content here. So we were gonna wind this series down toward the end of summer.

I think we’ll make it maybe to the middle of summer, maybe the early part of summer, cuz we’re losing [00:30:00] one of our chief guys. But what a great. Development for this series. I don’t know that you could have a much better ending. We wish him well. That’s it for today in Ohio, for Monday. Thanks, Layla. Thanks Laura.

Thanks Lisa. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll be back Tuesday.