OFT Press Clips

2026

"It’s heartbreaking to have that lie of indoctrination perpetuated. We’re not the ones in that business. There is a whole business of indoctrinating but it’s not in schools. It’s on phones. We just want to love them, and teach them, and enable them to live wonderful lives." — Heather Stambaugh, HS History Teacher and President of Greenon Federation of Teachers

"Today we are standing together to fight for our students, patients and colleagues... You make communities safer by building trust with that community, not by intimidating them by force and violence" — Theresa Kulbaga, English professor and president of the Faculty Alliance of Miami University

"We know [cooperation with ICE] will have big impact for our students' attendance — we are already seeing that. That's not fair to any child, to have to live their lives in fear. " — Julie Sellers, President of Cincinnati Federation of Teachers

OFT President Melissa Cropper interviewed about HB 671, a bill moving through the statehouse that puts Ohio school districts on notice: if they sue over private school vouchers, the measure could allow the state to withhold funding.

“If they come into school in kindergarten, maybe lacking in some foundational skills, that gap just increases as the years go by. Teachers are seeing that in the classroom in terms of language and literacy skills, where they lack vocabulary and background knowledge.” — Jean Hribar, Executive Director of Learning Lighthouse (organization founded by OFT).

“They made drastic changes to the composition of the retirement board, and those changes are completely unnecessary…And I would say that our members are much more fearful of decisions of the legislature than they are of decisions made by the people that they chose to serve them.” — OFT President Melissa Cropper

“We’ve seen SNAP benefits cut so that families with needy children are not able to get the food and assistance that they need. Currently, all the benefits are going towards corporations and not going to the people who actually need help getting by.” — OFT President Melissa Cropper

"Educators are already stretched thin, with large classes and students who need more support than ever. It is not reasonable to add another new unfunded mandate, especially one with this many specific requirements for an improvement plan.” — OFT President Melissa Cropper

“I feel like library communities are a reflection of statewide issues that the greater community is experiencing...If Columbus is experiencing issues with housing and people struggling to find jobs and access to food, they need help connecting to things that might help, and we’re needed even more.” — Rahaf Fares, Customer Service Specialist at CML and Organizing Committee member
“I was at my library every chance I got. It was a place where I felt safe when that wasn’t necessarily the case in other places...Libraries are an essential part of a functioning democracy,” — Jude Virostko, Adult Services Librarian at CML and Organizing Committee member

"We can't rely on our administration or the government to protect our labor rights or the most vulnerable of our customers or co-workers. We need to have solidarity ... to use the power that we have in our numbers to organize and demand that our rights and our dignity as employees are upheld." — Phoebe Chung, Customer Service Specialist at CML and Organizing Committee member

In a statement, OFT President Melissa Cropper said Brown has “spent his career fighting for the dignity of work and economic justice for Ohio families.”

“Statehouse politicians have underfunded our public schools, rolled back our collective bargaining rights, fully eliminated Ohio’s elected State Board of Education, and told us what we can and can’t teach. Now they’re taking away our representation on our own retirement board.” — Glenetta Krause, member of Cincinnati Federation of Teachers