OSBA Capital Conference Recap: Student Achievement Fair and Trade Show Highlights

n this special on-site episode of OSBA’s Leading the Way Podcast, host Scott Gerfen takes you inside the 2025 OSBA Capital Conference & Trade Show, exploring two of the event’s biggest highlights:• The Student Achievement Fair, where students from across Ohio showcase hands-on learning, career pathways and innovation in action.• One of the largest education-related trade shows in the nation, featuring more than 500 exhibitors supporting Ohio’s public schools.Whether you attended the conference or couldn’t be there this year, this episode gives you a front-row seat to the innovation and energy at Ohio’s premier education event.Thank you to our podcast sponsor: Lincoln Learning Solutions!

For more resources, training and advocacy updates from the Ohio School Boards Association, visit ohioschoolboards.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_09 0:00

Welcome to the Leading Away podcast, where we bring you the voices shaping public education across Ohio. A big shout out to our sponsor, Lincoln Learning Solutions. They offer accredited K-12 digital curriculum and support schools with flexible content and expert training for educators in all learning environments. Hey everyone, welcome to a special edition of Leading the Way. We're at the OSBA Student Achievement Fair, where we have students from all over the state showcasing their programs and student initiatives. It's really some exciting stuff, and I'm gonna take you there.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

Brian, tell me about uh what Jackson City has brought to the student achievement fair. Today we have our Jackson High School Ironman esports team. Uh it's about 35 students that compete weekly in various uh video games competitively across the state of Ohio in a league called esports Ohio.

SPEAKER_09 0:53

How popular is esports? I see a lot about it.

SPEAKER_03 0:57

It is growing in popularity, right? Yeah, it's it's pretty popular. It depends on what the most popular game at that time is, but you can find it just about anywhere from middle school, elementary level, all the way up to professional level gameplay. Yeah, and and you look at like, well, we're talking about sports, uh, this is another as a exactly. And they're held to the same standards that all of our athletes are in terms of attendance, GPA requirements, things like that. It's it's a it's a it's a completely sanctioned activity.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I played a lot of kids' uh games growing up as a kid, and when I got into high school, the esports team kind of like comes from doing that for fun with sports. And how are you as a competitor?

SPEAKER_09 1:38

Uh I'd sound pretty good. Tell me a little bit about your program, how it started, and how many kids do you have involved?

SPEAKER_03 1:46

Um, this program started. This is my first year as one of the coaches, and I'm co-coaching with um our art teacher. I think it started maybe five or six years ago. I think it was right before 2020. Um, but it's it's pretty cool. It started off just as a small team with a couple of computers, and now we have our own classroom that we've transformed into our esports arena. It's all decked out with uh all kinds of new toys and systems and things.

SPEAKER_09 2:16

Just tell me a little about the program and what you're trying to convey to attendees here.

SPEAKER_07 2:20

Uh really, just kind of how we we differ from auto technology. So we get a lot of confusion between all the automotive programs. So we're not doing oil changes, we're not doing tire rotations, we deal with how the car looks, how to keep the car safe, how to assemble disassemble the car.

SPEAKER_09 2:34

So, like if my car would hit a deer, then you guys would be able to fix it.

SPEAKER_07 2:37

We would be the guys you'd look for, yep, absolutely.

SPEAKER_09 2:40

Uh tell me about um what you have on display here. What is this?

SPEAKER_07 2:44

So we brought a couple of different things. Uh, so a little bit of what we do in the classroom. So, an example of a spray gun we would use, along with a test that we use to just kind of keep up with uh just competencies, making sure students know what they're working with, and then a few examples of things that we've painted and repaired as projects. And then uh for recruitment, we use the sim spray system, which is essentially just a VR headset that you put on, and it puts you right in the paint booth, and you're able to apply primers, clear coats, base coats, and do all the adjustments virtually that you would do without spraying a bunch of expensive paint.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I've always really liked cars and just like the things that go into restoration, but as well as I like designing and working on cars in my free time, so this helps a lot with learning how to do like custom paints, custom work, and all that.

SPEAKER_07 3:27

Some are going right into the workforce. Two of our students are actually already a part of the workforce. So, our senior year program, we're able to work with local employers and get students out working in shops during lab time. So they come to school, take just what they need for their academic uh to graduate, and then they leave and work half days, they report back to me once a week. Most of where our students go land in production shops, but personally I came from really high-end restoration and custom car building. So, with our custom paint jobs you can kind of see on the table, I try to expose students to all facets of collision and refinishing, not just working on everyday cars, but go home and turn the TV on and flip through the channels, and it's hard not to find a restoration show or some some cool car show now. So, yeah, aftermarket's bigger than it's ever been.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

You're with Euclid City. Uh, tell me a little bit about this program. Okay, this program is music production engineering, also audio broadcasting. It's a two-year course, a career technical course. Your first year, your junior year, we focus on getting your credentials because I don't want you to be stressed out your senior year. Your credentials and industry standard admin pro tools. I get you certified Pro Tools Artists. There's three levels to Pro Tools. It's Artists, Studio, and Ultimate. That gives you some college credit to go on for audio engineering if you would like. I also teach you how to create music and sell music as well. That's something I already do personally.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I like the freedom of expression. Like we have uh we have the time to sit. Like we have like three periods long of class. Like, so we have all the time to sit in the world. We need to, we can ask, we ask our teacher questions. He will help us out. If we need anything, he he's there. The freedom of expression is there. So if you want, you can take the time. You can take time. You can make whatever. You can make whatever. Like the freedom of expression is always there, and I think that's like my favorite, my favorite thing about this class.

SPEAKER_09 5:09

The OSPA trade show is one of the largest education-related trade shows in the nation. We have more than 500 booths here. Let's go take a look at some of the highlights. Looks like you uh help kids eat good food and probably healthy food, right? Healthy scratch, delicious food. Healthy scratch delicious food. Healthy scratch food. That's a lot different than what I was used to in the cafeteria.

SPEAKER_08 5:32

A little bit different, right? Yeah, me too. So we always want to try and make sure that we're doing some scratch-made and locally sourced food whenever possible. So we want to try and work with our vendors and local farms, whenever we can to bring that into the school system so that we can teach kids about nutrition and healthy eating from a young age. Let's try something. Absolutely. So, get you a tray here. Oh, a tray, all right. Alright, so what we have here is a house-made tomato biscuit. Alright, all right. Then we have a wheat bread, nut-free pesto, mozzarella cheese, and tomato incrustible. So try and take something that is a little bit familiar with the kids, be a little bit uh fun with that. Alright, good. Fantastic. Really good.

SPEAKER_09 6:17

My big question is where are some of the new trends in security? I mean, school security is not going away.

SPEAKER_05 6:22

Yeah, no, it's not. Yeah. Say metal detector. Um turn it on, but everybody that walks by is being signaled right now. So um, and it's it's nice because it's portable. So let's say you have a uh football game, yeah, and you want to be able to screen people coming in and for guns, whatever, knives, whatever it is. So you have that capability, very easy to just roll out, put it back in the maintenance shop, and then roll it out for those different events that you have, whatever those events are. Um we also uh do um uh alerts that have the basically a panic button uh for all the teachers that are able to press that if they need it.

SPEAKER_06 7:03

So IST is a manufacturers representative for a lot of manufacturing-based uh companies in the robotics and engineering career fields, and our goal is to really align industry and education with the tools that the students are going to need to have skills to be job ready when they leave the school. We cover anywhere from industrial robotics, welding equipment, uh, CNC equipment, 3D printing equipment, laser cutting equipment, and pretty much anything, even within the EV and automotive industry. So we cover a long range of engineering technologies.

SPEAKER_09 7:32

Thank you so much for being a part of the 70th OSBA Capital Conference and Trade Show. And hey, it's not too soon to start thinking about next year, our 71st annual conference, your business or your student program. We want you to be a part of Ohio's premier education event. And thank you for watching OSBA's Leading the Way podcast.