The Legislature's Summer Send-Off

What happens when a bill about school psychologists suddenly becomes the vehicle for some of the most debated education proposals at the Statehouse?

That's just one example of the fast-moving legislative action that unfolded before the Ohio General Assembly recessed for the summer.

In this episode, OSBA's Jennifer Hogue, Nicole Piscitani and Malania Birney unpack the major education bills now awaiting action from Gov. Mike DeWine, including Senate Bill 276, House Bill 455 and Senate Bill 19.

The conversation explores new sports mobility legislation, the Success Sequence graduation requirement, math achievement initiatives, capital budget investments and property tax changes. The team also shares what districts should expect when lawmakers return to Columbus after the November election, and why now is the time to strengthen relationships with legislators back home.

Whether you're a board member, superintendent, treasurer or education advocate, this episode provides a good look at the legislation that could affect your district in the months ahead.

00:00 Introduction: The legislature's summer send-off

01:05 Senate Bill 276 takes an unexpected turn

02:15 Sports mobility legislation explained

04:05 The Success Sequence requirement

04:55 Transportation and testing provisions

06:20 What's next for Senate Bill 276?

06:55 House Bill 455 deregulation bill

08:45 Senate Bill 19 and math achievement

10:55 Academic interventions and curriculum requirements

12:05 Diagnostics and accelerated learning pathways

14:15 Additional education provisions added to Senate Bill 19

15:45 Capital budget investments for schools

17:15 House Bill 479 and facilities funding updates

17:55 Property tax legislation: What passed and what didn't

21:45 Looking ahead to lame duck

24:00 Why districts should engage legislators now

25:05 Closing thoughts

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The following program is a presentation of the Ohio School Boards Association.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hi, and welcome to Learning the Legislature. I'm Jennifer Hogue, the Director of Legislative Services here at OSBA. And joining me today are Nicole Piscitani, our Deputy Director of Legislative Services, and Milena Burney, our Legislative Services Consultant. We've had quite a few weeks. The General Assembly is now in recess, but they did lots and lots of things, a very hectic time, fast-paced, lots of amendments going here and there, things popping up as an amendment that we had never heard about. And so today we are going to just review for you all of those things that made it through the General Assembly and are on the governor's desk for his pending signature. We're not going to give you a full rundown of everything that happened because that would take hours. If you want to see the full recap, our latest edition of Facts in a Flash, I think it's about nine pages long, but it covers everything that happened in the General Assembly last week. There were lots and lots of changes. An example, a perfect example really, of all of those changes is Senate Bill 276, which originally started out as a school psychologist compact bill. Very simple, very easy. Nicole, why don't you tell us what happened with that bill and what things in there impact our members?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Sure. You always get surprises right before long breaks. And 276 was one that was not on a radar. It was this easy peasy bill that deals with a compact. And just to make sure everybody understands what that is, is basically a shared licensing agreement between different states. And so over the course of several years, there's been lots of different compacts that Ohio has done just to help improve workforce options. If there's people moving into Ohio, it gives them the ability to be able to continue work and to be licensed faster. And so that is what this bill's original intent was. And it dealt with school psychologists, giving them those same compact abilities that other professions have. And so we saw a lot of, I'm going to say the more controversial issues were put into that bill, which again is a little interesting because the school psychologists compact wasn't controversial, it was very bipartisan. But there were several amendments put in the house since it was a Senate bill. And so it was in house education. And the first piece that they put in has to do with sports mobility. And so there was a bill that was currently being discussed in the house called the SAM Act. And essentially, public school students, if they, if their school does not offer a sport, we're going to say soccer. Then it would allow that student, if the superintendents agree, to go to a neighboring school district. If you recall back in the budget, we saw this kind of happen with ice hockey. Those mobility permissions do exist for homeschool and private school students. And so this is a way for public school students to also receive those same flexibilities if their school doesn't offer that sport. There are a couple implementation concerns that one should be aware of. For an example, if this district that a school, the kid wants to go to has multiple high schools, there's nothing in the bill that really outlines that procedure. It really leaves it up to the board and the superintendent to figure out how they're going to implement it. But they put that bill into Senate Bill 276. Now, also one other piece that's really important that it deals with this is OHSAA. Every year they have a referendum and they vote on several items for that. This was one of those items, and it was the only item that actually failed. And so I don't, I my take is that the legislature saw that it failed. OHSA was trying to, in my opinion, deal with it in their membership way. And the membership spoke, and the legislature saw what that vote was and decided to move forward with that bill anyway. So SAM Act got folded in. Districts will need to develop what that policy looks like. There does need to be agreements between both superintendents, but that was a big surprise that came into 276. The other bill that was really surprising too was the success sequence. That bill actually passed out of the House Education Committee. It was waiting for a floor vote. And then we saw those provisions of that bill being dropped into 276. So again, they did pass it on its own. They incorporated it into another bill, one that there's a lot of differing opinions about. Success sequence is essentially a graduation requirement that schools would need to ensure that students are taught that first they need to graduate high school, second, they need to get a full-time job. And then third, they need to get married before having kids. And so that would be a mandated curriculum that districts will need to implement for graduation with it and embed it into a class. Another provision that they put in had to deal with transportation. And so districts or private schools could work with a we're gonna call it Uber to help transport students to school. That originally went in, and then there was a lot of concerns from even Republicans that basically said, I think we need to take that out and kind of look into this deeper. So there was a floor amendment that took out those provisions. But when it passed the House, it or House Education Committee, it was originally in there. The other, I guess, new provision that we never saw before has to do with norm reference testing, basically giving the Department of Education the task of looking not only at the state test, but also norm reference testing and try to figure out a way if there's a path moving forward. So they're supposed to look at how they could potentially create one test for both. What that looks like, it'll kind of remain to be seen. Again, provisions were new and not discussed in a bill before. But 276 passed out of the House. It was concurred over in the Senate. It is still waiting for Governor DeWine to act on. There is no, there's no, I'm losing the word. There's no money in the thing. So there's no appropriations. That's what I was looking for. So there's no appropriations. So the governor cannot do a line item veto. He would have to either approve the whole bill or veto the whole bill. And so we'll have to see what he does with that.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Thanks. And just to let you know, those changes all happened in a two-day period. So a lot of frantic changing. But that wasn't the only bill that saw a lot of changes throughout the process. We also have House Bill 455 and Melena, you've been working on that one for months, but it again took on life of its own there at the end. Can you kind of walk through the process and what's in there, what's out, where did we land?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Yeah, absolutely. House Bill 455 is one we've been working with our members on for quite some time now. This was a really big deregulation bill, getting rid of a lot of outdated or mismatched sections of the code. Three big things that we had requested that made it through to the final version were that currently, under current law, if you have a student on an IEP and they meet all of the metrics for graduation, but then defer to graduate in order to receive services from you until their 22nd birthday, they count against your graduation rate on your report card. 455 is going to correct that and make sure that those students are counted as graduates. 455 is also reinstating the district's role in the early childhood education grant process. So letting districts determine eligibility and allowing you to continue using EMIS to track students in that program. That third thing that we were pursuing and made it through to the final version is revising the timeline to appoint a board vacancy. We are getting rid of that 10-day holding period that is in current law right now, allowing you to appoint a new person at any regular special meeting within 45 days of that vacancy. So an expanded timeline there. As I mentioned before, a lot of different groups were trying to get things in this deregulation bill. So we saw other items get included towards the last minute that have been floating around the state house. So revising the state board of education's membership, increasing that to seven important members. There were a few bills out there addressing school board members who are active or reserve duty military and if they can be revoked from the board during deployment. And so we have a prohibition on that in this bill. Some automatic closure criteria from Senate Bill 127 was included and some changes around youth working hours on school or not school nights. So those things were included as well. And the last few hours of debate on this bill, our team found some language buried in its 600 pages that would have created a state depository for reading a math curriculum. So requiring districts to go through that depository to make purchases. This was totally new language, had not been discussed before. And we were able to get it removed before the bill passed both chambers. So that we we count as a win. And it's not the only bill. They got a lot of changes that we have some good stuff on. So how about Senate Bill 19? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So Senate Bill 19, it's dealing with math achievement for students and intervention and all of those things. You've probably heard us talk about it a lot. This is not the first General Assembly we have seen it. In fact, when it first came on the scene, it was a mandated math curriculum that you would have to purchase. It was reading improvement or math improvement plans similar to those reading improvement plans. But over time we've seen a lot of changes. I think there was a real recognition that there's not really the science or the evidence or the coalescing and consensus around what is the science of math. And so this bill ended up in a very different place. We did a lot of work with our partners at BASA, the Alliance, the Principals Associations to try to make this bill better and make it more workable and implementable for districts. And so, in terms of the curriculum, no longer mandated curriculum for all districts, the Department of Education and Workforce will be putting together a list of what they believe to be high-quality evidence-based curriculum and instructional materials that are aligned with our state standards. So that list will exist. They've got to come up with that by about April 15th of 2027. There's also going to be a notation on district and building report cards from the state that talk about what curriculum you are using for math and whether or not it comes from that list. But again, you are not mandated to purchase from that list. And there's also some flexibility in there for districts to be able to use disadvantaged pupil impact aid to pay for professional development around mathematics. Or if you choose to purchase curriculum off of that list, you can use those funds there as well. And then in terms of academic intervention, it was very prescriptive in the first versions of this bill, where it really had that math improvement and monitoring plan for students that was really cookie-cutter and wasn't really what's best needed for students. We heard from a lot of districts that they really felt like the best interventions was that multi-tiered system of supports, moving away from those MIMPs, as we call them. And so we're happy to report that came out of the bill. The interventions are much more flexible for districts. And so we're excited to see that the bill does require intervention for students who meet certain thresholds. So if you are student scoring limited on the math assessment or diagnostic, also in your language arts assessments, those are the students that will need to be getting those interventions. But again, districts can intervene with any student at any time, but these will be those mandated under Senate Bill 19. In terms of curriculum, there is a group of districts that will be required to purchase off of that ODU list. So while it doesn't apply to everyone, if you are a district or building with 51% or less of your students proficient in mathematics, there is a mandate that you buy from that list. And we pushed really hard to try to get that out of the bill, but it does remain there. And then there's also an auditing requirement for the Department of Education and Workforce. So every year they're going to randomly select 5% of buildings and districts and take a look at those academic intervention requirements to make sure we're all on track in it and doing what the bill requires. Terms of diagnostics, we had a win there. The state had a list of five diagnostics that districts are to be using. That list is going to be expanded to six to include the sixth one that we've been hearing a lot of districts are using. But in addition, there's also a grandfather clause in there. So if you're a district using something that's not on the ODU list of approved diagnostics, you'll have time to continue to work out that contract. And so you'll need to finish with that diagnostic and move to a state approved one either by July 1st or when your contract runs out, whichever is earliest. So we're glad we got that grandfathering language. Also, another facet of the bill deals with students and making sure that they have access to advanced learning opportunities in mathematics. There's a belief by a lot of folks that districts aren't pushing students into higher-level math courses at the rate that they should be. The first version of the bill was very specific. If you scored at those top two levels on the state assessment, you were taking algebra one as an eighth grader. And we worked with the members of the General Assembly and our partners to really say, let's slow down here and really make sure we're making choices that are in the best interest of students. Let's look at some of these multiple measures and make sure that we are making the best choices. And so we sort of got a hybrid compromise there in the end. And so for students who fall into two different categories, if you are scoring at that very top level in the state assessment, you are to be enrolled in an accelerated math course. If you are scoring at that next level down, then the district has a choice of taking a look at two measures. So you can either look at the student's grade in the course, are they getting an A or a B, or you can take a look at their diagnostic assessments and the state will pick some cutoff levels for those tests. And if the student meets one of those two measures, then they will be enrolled in an accelerated opportunity. Also, the original version of the bill looked at students in seventh grade, and we said, let's look at that, because if you're taking a seventh grader and putting them in algebra one, they're missing all of that eighth grade content. So this bill looks at sixth graders, determines if they meet those two measures. If they do, then that student will go into a combined seventh, eighth grade course for their seventh grade year and then algebra for eighth grades, filling that gap. There are also requirements in the bill about providing accelerated learning opportunities for students in three through five, those grade levels as well. So lots of changes there, which also means changes to your math acceleration policies. And so our team here at OSBA, if you're an OSBA policy client, is already working on that model policy and we'll begin with you about what those changes need to be. Not only did this bill get these changes, but there were also other things added in at the last minute. So we saw something pop up in a committee for a different bill about allowing patriotic youth organizations to come into buildings and present to students. That language actually ended up in this bill at the last minute, but districts will now need to allow what they're terming patriotic youth organizations who are federally recognized, serving students 21 and younger, who are involved in workforce readiness, civic engagement, all of those things to come into your buildings for at least 10 minutes per year to present to students. And this really came from the scouting programs asking for that, but it's not just limited to that. So it's any of those programs that meet those criteria. Also, some changes around career tech for homeschool students. So homeschool students are now eligible, should this bill be signed by the governor, to participate in career tech part-time in the district where they reside. They have to be allowed to do that without being charged fees or tuition above and beyond what you're currently charging other students who are public school students attending those programs. Those students will be enrolled in that district's ADM, though, so you will get career tech funding for those homeschool students. And then there was also a carve out for Classical Learning Academy, some of those community schools that give that classical learning curriculum will now be exempt from the science of reading. So that was added to that bill as well. You know, we've covered a lot of topics that the General Assembly worked on, but they were still able to squeeze in time to do a capital budget. Melina, can you talk a little bit about what is a capital budget and how do our districts benefit from that?

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah, absolutely. I think it is a testament to how busy what they were the last few weeks that a multi-billion dollar capital budget was pretty low on the headlines compared to the other things that they were doing. So your capital budget is a state budget for think anything you can touch, physical infrastructure, roads, state buildings. And there's usually and was in this in this year's capital budget House Bill 450, a $600 million investment in our K-12 buildings across the state. So that was in there. The bill also created a new pilot program at the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission dubbed the Aging School Accelerator Pilot. There's four specific criteria in there, the chief of which being if you have a portion or all of your building that's over a hundred years old and you meet a few other criteria, you could be tapped to utilize this pilot program. It's to be seen if districts will have to apply or if the OFCC will reach out to you like they do their other programs. If you think you might qualify, stay tuned there. The OFCC got some changes and a few other bills. The other one that I wanted to touch on was House Bill 479, another bill that we weren't even tracking to begin with, but got turned into an operating budget. So the FOIL to the capital budget that passed last year, an operating budget cleanup bill. And in this House Bill 479, we saw some changes to the expedited local partnership program, which is a school facilities construction program districts can use to basically break up their buildings and slowly renovate them. Often what we see is districts will kind of get stuck in that process and be locked into an old state and local share that's a little bit outdated. So in this bill, we're actually allowing districts to update that state and local share after 10 years. So that's a really a positive thing that we were pleasantly surprised to see. 479, that budget cleanup also included some cleanup for the property tax bills that passed in the fall. So, Nicole, do you want to cover those?

SPEAKER_01 17:57

So I'll just start off in saying there was no property tax bills that passed during this little sprint to summer break. So that's a win victory for a lot of districts because there was a couple of proposals that were being considered. And one of our main messages was there's issues with the four bills that passed back in November. We need to clean those up. Additionally, we haven't seen what the impact of those changes are. So let's not layer on more changes until we actually know what that impact is going to be. So there was some cleanup that needed to happen with those four bills. So if you recall, there were changes made to inflationary caps to inside millage. There was inflationary caps made to districts on the 20 mil floor. And during implementation, so after those bills became effective, you had counting auditors and you had the Department of Tax looking at how you implement that kind of differently. And so what really these changes are meant to do is to provide that clarity. And so there's a lot of language within this, but I'm going to kind of drill it down to be as simple as possible. It basically defines what inflationary changes have to happen first. So before you do the 20-mil floor, you have to do the inside millage calculation. Just basically giving that procedure, how do these fall? Because you'll get different results if you do it the other way. Same thing with existing homestead exemptions and other programs that help various different groups around the state, ensuring how do you implement those changes, what process do you go through. So again, a lot of clarity around the process in implementing those changes. So nothing that I think most people won't even notice those changes. It's just the tax department county auditors now have a way forward for that. There was a significant amount of money that we've seen in our general new fund that we've received over the course of this year. So every year, we either we can receive additional money through the different taxes or our spending may be lower than before. So we do have an excess in our operating budget and the state operating budget. And so they they had that pot of money and they looked at what we can do with it. And so one of the areas that they decided to invest additional funds is with the homestead exemption. Seniors who have a qualifying income and who already can receive the homestead exemption. So they don't broaden it. They don't, others are not included in it. So it doesn't change the definition of who is allowed to apply to the homestead exemption. It just will provide additional funds to those who are already receiving that. And that will be in tax year of 27. So not for this upcoming one. It will take a little bit of time to come into effect, but they will receive more money coming off their property tax bill. And then the other important piece to that is there is that reimbursement to schools and other local governments so that they are not forgoing though those monies. There was also some additional property tax changes as it pertains to TIFFs and abatements. One has to do with allowing the department of tax to approve a TIFF. Typically, those are done at the county or township level. So they're seeing a new TIFF. You always wonder what project is this after. So if anybody knows, you know, feel free to give me a call because I'm sure there's one somewhere that hasn't been approved. And now the Department of Tax has the ability to examine that and look at it as well. And then lastly, there was also a temporary property tax abatement for delinquent properties. And so giving others the ability to abate that property, purchase it, develop it, and not have to pay those delinquent taxes. And so that was another provision that we saw. But it is a temporary law piece.

unknown 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

So a lot of changes all over the place, lots of different topics. Some things we've talked about for a while, some things just popped up. But even though they've done all of this work in a very short period of time, we're not done yet. Like what's coming next?

SPEAKER_01 21:59

We do have. A break for a while, about five months to be exact. So the legislature is not expected to come back until after the November general election. So, right around Capitol Conference time, when we have you all gathered here in Columbus, they will be back as well. And I think really will depend on what the result of the election is. Depending on where there are some incumbents who lost races, what's the count, who won governor. I think as we see those elections take shape and what is decided, I think that will help shape what is in lame duck. There are still a lot of education bills. There are bills that are sitting over in the other chamber that's passed one. All of those are always ripe for the 276, where we saw a lot of amendments being put into one. So I think we will potentially see that again. I think it's expected that we will see something education-wise happen in November. What that is, it's hard to tell. On the property tax side, I think we're still not going to know the full impact of those November property tax changes because those take a while for full implementation and for that full impact to be realized. So could they look at what additional property tax stuff could we do? Yes. Is there still some more cleanup that we need to do with those property tax bills? Yes. So while now they're gone for five months, the work will continue. But Leam Duck will be a mad dash to train now for it because it's going to be long nights and lots of bills. And it's great to have friends who in other committees who are helping to you stay on track of things being thrown into bills into committees that you have never been watching before. So it is always the unexpected um, you know, sprint. You know, it's like running through the woods and blindfolded sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yep. And we still have about probably 270 pieces of legislation dealing with public education that are just kind of sitting out there that could grow legs and take off at any time during that process. So the next few months, legislators aren't in Columbus. They're back home in the districts. What should folks be doing back home in the district with their legislators during this break? Melena?

SPEAKER_02 24:14

Yeah. Just what Nicole said, it's time now to either build your relationships or strengthen your relationships with your legislators when they're at home in your communities. I know that all of our districts just wrapped up one school year, but with them being out until the general election, they will be in your districts around back to school. And I know a lot of our districts have really fun events. Fall sports, a great time to showcase successful student programs. So make sure you're inviting them in and thinking about your current representatives and senators whenever you're planning those events for this fall. Again, as Nicole mentioned, we have a general election in November. So there are probably candidates in your communities you should also be working to get to know. And on our website, we have a tab dedicated to how to host a candidate's night focused on education for your school community.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

So check that out. All great advice. Before we go today, I want to make sure I publicly thank both Nicole and Melena. The last few weeks were hectic. They hung in there with me at the state house, working really hard to make sure that students in districts across the state and public education had a voice at the state house. So want to make sure that you know how much I appreciate you and love being on a team with you. Also, want to remind all of our viewers that we're here anytime you need something. So reach out, ask us questions if you need resources. We are happy to help you be the best advocates that you can be for the districts and your students. And so we'll see you next time on Learning the Legislature.