by Nicole Piscitani • May 22, 2024
The Ohio General Assembly is scheduled to continue its work until June 26. After that it is unknown when the Ohio House and Ohio Senate will return to the Statehouse. The Ohio legislature typically takes a summer recess during an election year to allow incumbents running for reelection time to campaign in their districts. This election year there are several factors impacting the legislative calendar and, more importantly, legislative activity.
One of those factors is the change in several committee chairmanships. House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) replaced several chairs of House standing committees, including House Primary and Secondary Education Committee Chair Rep. Adam Bird (R-New Richmond). Stephens selected Rep. Gayle Manning (R-North Ridgeville) as the new House Primary and Secondary Education Committee chair. Manning, a former teacher, served as chair of the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee in the last General Assembly session.
The committee chair has a lot of decision-making authority on the bills that will receive hearings and whether those bills will move out of committee. Additionally, chairs work closely with bill sponsors and interested parties. Due to the change in committee chairs, some bills that may have been on a path for committee passage could be stalled in committee. Other bills may now receive additional hearings but that will all depend on the new chair.
Based on committee hearings and discussions, the following bills could move in the Ohio House.
House Bill (HB) 432
This bill is sponsored by Rep. Don Jones (R-Freeport), and the bill’s intent is to provide additional licensure pathways for career-technical educator applicants. HB 432 would permit an applicant to apply for an initial career-technical workforce development educator license instead of only permitting an employing school district to apply on the applicant’s behalf. The bill would also permit an applicant who has received an employment offer to enroll in one of two alternative educator preparation programs in lieu of a career-technical workforce development educator preparation program offered by a higher education institution. The two alternative educator preparation programs are a program created by the lead district or a two-year alternative license mentoring program; each pathway has bill provisions that outline requirements. Additionally, the bill requires that the State Board of Education issue a career-technical educator license to certain individuals who are already validly licensed educators.
HB 432 passed out of committee and is waiting for a floor vote.
Senate Bill (SB) 168
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Michele Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester) and is known as the education deregulation bill. The bill has received numerous hearings in committee and has not received any amendments in the House as of yet. SB 168 is not only an education deregulation bill but has also turned into a budget correction bill. Typically, after a budget bill passes, a budget correction bill works its way through the legislature to fix technical issues or unintended consequences. While SB 168 is not officially the budget correction bill, it did pick up several correction items while it was in the Ohio Senate.
SB 168 contains numerous provisions, some of which are listed below:
- Allows school districts to develop and use their own frameworks for teacher evaluation, instead of using a framework developed by the State Board of Education;
- Clarifies that a school district is not required to hold a separate, individual public hearing on a proposed school calendar, but that the calendar may be addressed as part of another public hearing or meeting;
- Modifies license or certificate qualifications for senior or lead professional educators, holders of professional administrator or alternative superintendent licenses and nonteachers employed as teachers;
- Eliminates seniority as a preference when making reductions in nonteaching staff positions;
- Clarifies when nonlicensed individuals working in a school must be entered into the RAPback system and that the RAPback provision will be overseen by the State Board;
- Requires a school district that conducts an intradistrict enrollment lottery to engage in certain deadline and notice procedures;
- Creates an exception to the 30-minute time frame within which students must be picked up following the end of school day if students are provided academic services provided by a school employee and limits those services to up to one half-hour.
As stated, the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee has not accepted any amendments to the Senate-passed version of SB 168. However, the bill is seen by many legislators as a promising bill to reach the House Floor and will likely pick up amendments. Any changes that the Ohio House makes to SB 168 will have to be agreed to by the Ohio Senate.
House Bill 440
The bill is sponsored by Reps. Sarah Fowler Arthur (R-Ashtabula) and Beth Lear (R-Galena) and looks to make permanent telehealth options that were available to certain students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill allows services prescribed in the finalized individualized education program of a student receiving either a Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship or an Autism Scholarship to be provided remotely. Additionally, the bill specifies that remote services be provided by qualified credentialed providers in the same manner that telehealth services are provided to patients by specified health care professionals under continuing law. The bill also expands the list of approved credentialed professionals.
The bill has only received one hearing in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee. However, due to the concern that telehealth options would no longer be permitted, both Republican and Democrat committee members expressed interest in moving the bill expeditiously.