In its first meeting of 2021, the State Board of Education (SBOE) heard testimony from members of the public, many of whom voiced concerns with current remote learning measures which they said hamper students' learning and mental health, adding that students should be in the classroom despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

New board members were additionally briefed on various procedures and duties of the office by Ohio Department of Education (ODE) staff.

Elizabeth Parker, a Licking County mom of three, said her youngest daughter, who is in kindergarten, has trouble keeping her attention on her virtual class, and she said all of her children are not learning much from remote classes and prerecorded videos. This has necessitated Parker's constant guiding and supervision of her children while in class in order to keep them engaged and learning, and she's heard even greater concerns from other moms in the district who can't stay home with their kids.

"It's more of a 'get it done and survive' type of feeling," Parker said.

Responding to questions from board members, Parker said she has contacted her local school board and health department with her concerns, but those bodies have not moved schooling back to an in-person format. Parker further told board President Laura Kohler that she would accommodate a mask mandate if that was the "only option" for sending her kids back into school.

In addition, new board member Brendan Shea said he's heard similar concerns from his constituents and plans on bringing such concerns to the board over the course of his term.

Also testifying was Cathy Stein, an associate professor of epidemiology at Case Western Reserve University and mother of three, who said epidemiology literature has not identified much spread of COVID-19 in schools, adding that better data is needed with regard to which populations are experiencing the highest rate of COVID-19 spread.

She further worried that much of the instruction has fallen to parents in remote learning situations, which she said could exacerbate gaps between students with disadvantages such as economic hardship or family strife and their more well-to-do peers.

The board additionally heard from Beth Honse, also a mom of three, who spoke about the importance of graduating students who businesses want to hire and further said that suicide risk is increased because students are not socializing in an in-person school setting.

Offering testimony on another subject were Tom Roberts, president of the NAACP of Ohio, and Jimma McWilson, director of the new Campaign for African American Achievement, who voiced concerns with the state's target setting measures on report cards that they said provided different expectations for Black students and White students.

Roberts invoked the landmark Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended segregation in schools as mandating that states must provide education to students of different races on equal terms, and he said the state should equalize the target setting scores based on that decision.

New board member Christina Collins said that other subgroups are also given different targets, including economically disadvantaged students, English language learners, Hispanic students and several other subgroups.

"My experience has been that for districts, subgroup targets had been helpful to districts because that way there's some opportunity to allow each subgroup to be successful every year instead of having such a large gap on the district report cards," Collins said.

McWilson more broadly voiced concerns with African American student achievement and used Youngstown City Schools as a case study, saying the district has received F's on its report card for the past 22 years; meanwhile $3 billion was spent in the district in that time frame, he said.

Board member John Hagan asked State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria to weigh in on the subject, to which DeMaria said that the subgroup targets as defined through the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) "are not what Ohio has stated as expectations for students," further noting that expectations for students as defined in statute is that they should be "proficient." He said the state developed its ESSA plan under specifications from the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE), including target setting.

DeMaria added that USDOE's Office of Civil Rights approved Ohio's ESSA plan, and the National Urban League rated Ohio's plan as "excellent," with the superintendent stating, "I think there's some general misunderstanding as to what the numbers in that appendix signify."

Following public participation, board members received numerous briefings from ODE staff, including information about teacher professional conduct cases and rulemaking.

The superintendent's report to the board consisted of an overview of the ODE strategic plan for education, "Each Child, Our Future" and its various components, with DeMaria emphasizing the importance of educating the "whole child" as being at the core of the plan. He said this led to the plan's including measures on the importance of social-emotional learning and leadership skills, as well as more traditional academic subjects such as math, reading and technology.

The board went on to approve its consent agenda and all voting items.