John Cranley, Nan Whaley unveil plans for statewide summer school, lower drug costs

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Democratic gubernatorial candidates John Cranley and Nan Whaley this week have unveiled their plans about what, if elected, they would do about summer school and prescription drug prices, respectively.

Cranley, speaking with The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com editorial board on Wednesday, said that as governor, he would seek to provide optional summer school for K-12 students around the state.

Under Cranley’s plan, summer school would be voluntary for both teachers and students enrolled in private and charter schools, according to details provided by his campaign. State officials would work with local districts to designate which public school buildings would house summer classes.

Classes would have to run a minimum of six weeks, and the state would provide transportation and free and reduced breakfast and lunch to qualifying students, according to Cranley, the former mayor of Cincinnati.

Students enrolled in virtual schools would be required to attend in-person summer classes.

The cost of the program would depend on the number of students who take part, according to Cranley’s campaign, but the program would be paid for out of unused money from Ohio’s portion of federal coronavirus aid for elementary and secondary school emergency relief. As of the end of February, Ohio only spent about $1.46 billion of the roughly $7 billion allocated to the state, according to federal statistics.

Even if that money can’t be used, Cranley said during the editorial board meeting, he would alternatively seek to pay for the summer-school program via a one-time payment from the state’s rainy-day fund.

“They were out of school for a year in many, many cases,” Cranley said “The amount of generational harm that will cause is incalculable. …This is a moral crisis.”

Cranley also vowed to the editorial board that, if elected, he will unveil a standalone K-12 funding bill within his first 100 days in office. Twenty-five years after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the state’s education funding system was unconstitutional, Cranley said his funding bill would be “fully constitutional.”

Cranley noted that a proposed “constitutional” school-funding plan proposed by House Speaker Bob Cupp, a Lima Republican, and then-state Rep. John Patterson, an Ashtabula County Democrat, in 2019 would cost $1.5 billion – a figure Cranley said is “completely achievable.”

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton, visited Youngstown to release her plan to lower drug costs for Ohioans.

Whaley’s plan, laid out online, calls for state lawmakers to pass several pieces of legislation to:

• Levy fines against drug companies that raise prices without sufficient clinical evidence
• Tie drug prices to international reference rates
• Cap the price of insulin at $30 per month (the U.S. House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation last week that would limit insulin prices for diabetics at either $35 a month or 25% of an insurance plan’s negotiated price, whichever is lower)

Whaley’s plan also calls for implementing recommendations made by Ohio’s Prescription Drug Transparency and Affordability Advisory Council in 2020 (both through the governor’s office and via the state legislature). In addition, she is calling for the creation of an independent health-care prices oversight board similar to boards set up in Oregon and Massachusetts.

“No Ohioan should have to choose between keeping food on the table and paying for life-saving medicine, no matter where they live in our state,” Whaley said in a statement. “But for too many of our friends and neighbors, the prescription drugs they need are priced out of their reach, while wealthy drug companies see record profits.”

Cranley and Whaley are competing in Ohio’s May 3 primary for the Democratic nomination for governor.