Suicide and Crisis Lifeline requirement

One of the bills enacted in the last general assembly requires school districts to make information about the telephone number for the national suicide and crisis lifeline available to students. The new law, Ohio Revised Code (RC) 3313.474, is effective on April 9, 2025. It requires that each district serving any of grades nine through 12 include the telephone number (988) in the following places, if they are used by the district:

Virtual board meetings? Wait a minute ...

One of the bills that was passed by the Ohio General Assembly at the end of 2024 was House Bill (HB) 257. The bill, which is effective on April 9, 2025, enacted Ohio Revised Code (RC) 121.221, which allows some public bodies to hold meetings by video conference or similar electronic technology. (For purposes of this blog post, I’ll refer to these meetings as “virtual meetings.”) However, as discussed below, this provision does not allow boards of education to conduct virtual meetings and may actually make virtual attendance at meetings more restrictive.

General Assembly passes legislation impacting the provision of medications to students at school

The General Assembly passed a number of key new laws impacting school districts in its lame-duck session to round out 2024. OSBA will continue to push out information on these provisions and changes districts will need to make in the coming weeks and months. Two of these bills impact the administration of medication to students in schools and may require your district to update its policies and educate staff on the new language.