Ramaswamy said Ohio children should be in school year-round and until 4 p.m. Then he deleted the video.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy told Ohio voters last fall that one way to make parenting cheaper was to keep children in school longer — through the summer, and an hour later each day.

Then the video came down.

Nine months later, the episode has not gone away. Democratic nominee Amy Acton still raises it on the campaign trail. Ramaswamy has never publicly explained why the video was deleted, and the proposal has not resurfaced in the education agenda his campaign describes to voters.

What he said

On Monday, Nov. 24, 2025, Ramaswamy posted a video titled “How to ACTUALLY make life affordable,” running through ways he said state government could lower costs for Ohioans across housing, energy, property taxes, health care and child care.

“I’m a dad,” Ramaswamy said in the video. “Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going til 4 o’clock instead of 3 o’clock so you don’t have to pay for child care.”

The video did not address what a longer school year or school day would cost districts, or who would pay for the additional instructional days, staff time, transportation and building operations.

Acton’s campaign clipped the education portion and posted it. The clip spread quickly.

The video disappears

Ramaswamy deleted the original post. A new version went up without the education section.

Some Republicans responded by claiming the clip Acton’s campaign had saved was generated with artificial intelligence. It was not. Ramaswamy’s campaign confirmed to the Columbus Dispatch that the video was authentic, and Snopes independently traced the deleted post to Ramaswamy’s own feed.

The campaign did not dispute that Ramaswamy said it. It disputed that he meant it as policy.

“Parents across Ohio are demanding a better education system for their children – and that is exactly who Vivek is listening to. A casual back-and-forth on TikTok is not a policy rollout; it’s a conversation with voters, despite Democrats pretending otherwise,” campaign spokesperson Connie Luck told The Center Square.

“They’re trying to manufacture an issue because they know Amy Acton’s education agenda amounts to the same failed policies that continue to let down our children,” Luck said. “Vivek will keep listening to parents across the state and remains open to any option that gives our children a real chance at a better future.”

Ramaswamy posted a follow-up video defending himself and attacking Acton’s record on pandemic-era school closures.

“We want an education system that lifts every child up. We’re going to think creatively on how we deliver it. That’s the answer,” Ramaswamy said in that video, according to 13abc. “If Democrats want to distort my position, let them. My opponent, Amy Acton, has absolutely zero vision for how to help education in Ohio.”

Acton’s campaign manager, Phil Stein, said in a statement to 10TV that forcing teachers and students into year-round school would blow a hole in public school budgets and showed Ramaswamy was out of touch with Ohioans.

Where the idea stands now

Ramaswamy has not restated the proposal since. Asked about it later in an interview with Signal Statewide, he did not explain why he posted and then deleted it, describing the idea instead as a way of being “open-minded” about improving education in the state.

The education platform his campaign has described to voters since does not include a year-round calendar or a longer school day. His campaign has told outlets his priorities are raising academic standards, giving parents more control, expanding career-technical pathways and moving teachers to merit-based pay. At an education forum in Hilliard before the video, he emphasized reading and math standards and teacher compensation.

Acton has kept the episode alive. She brought it up again this year while appearing on Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s podcast, citing it among what she called Ramaswamy’s “interesting policy ideas.”

“That’s been a lot of our campaign — it’s literally just been pointing out his own words,” Acton said.

Why it matters in Seneca County

The question the video skipped — who pays — is not hypothetical for districts in northwest Ohio.

Three weeks before Ramaswamy posted the video, Tiffin voters approved a 0.75% earned income tax levy, the district’s first operating levy since 2012, generating roughly $3.2 million a year for salaries, student programs, transportation and day-to-day operations. Superintendent Jerry Nadeau thanked voters for making it possible to continue providing existing programs and services.

That levy was not an expansion. It was a backfill. Tiffin City Schools Treasurer Anne Spence has identified state property tax legislation as directly responsible for a projected $1.2 million annual revenue loss that took effect in March 2026.

A mandated longer school year and longer school day would land on districts already in that position. Additional instructional days carry costs in staff contracts, busing, utilities and building maintenance. Neither the original video nor the campaign’s response addressed where that money would come from.

Ramaswamy is simultaneously campaigning on deep tax cuts that analysts say would reduce the revenue schools rely on. Innovation Ohio, a progressive policy group, has estimated that his property tax rollback would cut $6.6 billion a year from local budgets, including roughly $4 billion from school districts, and that eliminating the state income tax could force a roughly 20% statewide property tax increase to replace lost school funding. Ramaswamy has not identified replacement revenue for either proposal.

A recurring pattern

The year-round school episode was not isolated.

Ramaswamy vowed to abolish property taxes at his campaign launch, then clarified this spring that he wants to reduce them. In March, a campaign post revived a 2025 speech in which he said Ohio has too many public universities and that they need to be consolidated; he named Cleveland State University, the University of Akron, Kent State University and Central State University in a March 27 Columbus Dispatch opinion column. After Gov. Mike DeWine, state Sen. Jerry Cirino and university presidents publicly rejected the idea, Ramaswamy told a Strongsville town hall it was “incorrect” that he wanted to shut down universities — a shift TiffinOhio.net documented against his own video.

His campaign frames that willingness to float big ideas as a virtue. Spokesperson Evan Machan told Signal Statewide that Ramaswamy is not a career politician reading from a script and is unafraid to have open, unfiltered dialogue with Ohioans, while his opponent offers no solutions.

Nonpartisan analysts have read it differently. The Cook Political Report cited the rollout of the university proposal as an example of the recurring controversies Ramaswamy has handed Democrats, and analyst Jessica Taylor moved the governor’s race from Lean Republican to Toss Up on July 10.

Ramaswamy and Acton meet in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.