Who you're voting for: Don Jones runs for re-election in 95th district

Prior to his decision to run for Ohio State Representative of the 95th District, Don Jones worked as a public school teacher, where he was initially inspired to run for office.

When Jones worked as a teacher, both his colleagues and himself often pondered where the rules and regulations for teachers came from, he said. As he began to learn more about the system and look into the justifications of various regulations, Jones found much of it was passed down from the state legislature.

“Rather than sit back and complain, it was an opportunity to get involved and to try to make a difference,” said Jones, the Republican candidate for the 95th District. “I made my decision and we started from there — so this was not on my list of things to do. It was not on my bucket list or anything like that. So again, it was an opportunity.”

Jones’s inspiration to run for re-election this year, however, comes from his late mother.

Before she passed away due to poor health last year, Jones had no plans of continuing his time in office, he said. Instead he wanted to be able to spend time with her and help care for her in any way possible. When he spoke to his mother about the issue, however, she pushed him to run one last time.

“Her and I talked and you know, and she’s like ‘You need to finish what you started,’ — you know with term limits, there’s only four, you know, four terms, eight years, that we have this,” Jones said. “And I thought about it because, you know, I have had a lot of success and you know, I do want to finish what I started.”

Now serving his third term since being elected in 2018 to the Ohio House of Representatives, Jones has worked on two items he finds to be particularly important — education and expansion of broadband throughout southeast Ohio.

In terms of education, Jones worked with Phillip Robinson of Cuyahoga County to overhaul and redo the evaluation system for public schools, he said. Previously, public schools were given a ‘report card’ with a letter grade to demonstrate the quality and success of the facility, he added.

Jones found the biggest issue with this format was the interpretation by the public of what each letter grade truly meant. A letter grade of ‘C’ may mean different things to different people, as it gives no empirical description of its meaning, he said. In light of this, Jones and Robinson worked to push through legislation which changed the grading system from letters to a five star scale to improve clarity, he added.

During his time in office, Jones has also worked to help facilitate the expansion of broadband throughout the 95th district. Around $200 million was dedicated to broadband expansion in a recent budget pushed through the state house, he said.

When he was first elected, Jones discovered the 95th district was nearly empty in terms of broadband coverage, he said. The budget allocation will help to alleviate this issue, as a variety of companies received grants from the budget $200 million and are already working to finish out the broadband system by their 2026 deadline.

As he looks into the upcoming term, Jones hopes to continue working to improve education and broadband access as well as a variety of other issues, he said.

“I just think people need to know that you know, I’m here for them. I have no political agenda,” Jones said. “...I don’t know what’s next. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have an office that I want to run for. And I think that’s one of the things about politics, you know, that’s not it’s not meant to be a career. It’s more of a calling than a career.”