BY MATT URBAS

The Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 1 on Wednesday by a 26-7 party line vote, one day after a committee amended the bill and recommended its passage.  Meanwhile, the House Primary and Secondary Education committee heard testimony and considered similar amendments of its version of the bill.

The bill, introduced by Senator Bill Reineke (R-Tiffin), would transfer most of the vast powers and duties currently held by the State Board of Education and its Superintendent of Public Instruction, to a new cabinet-level position, the Director of Education and Workforce, who would be appointed by the governor.

A similar bill was passed by the Senate during the lame duck session in December 2022, but met with opposition from enough Republicans in the House to deny its passage.  Proponents argue that the Department of Education is dysfunctional, and point to data showing that Ohio’s K-12 schools are underperforming.

“We have for twentieth, thirty years have sent various programs and bills to try and improve the schools and they just keep falling apart through government bureaucracy,” Andrew Brenner (R-Delaware) said. 

Critics of the overhaul are concerned about taking accountability for education away from the ballot box and placing it in the hands of a single appointee of the governor.

Among the amendments passed in the Senate version were:

• Changing the implementation deadline from June 30 to 90 days after the effective date (6 months after the bill is signed)
• Permits rather than requires the state superintendent to act as an advisor to the Director of Education and Workforce
• Requires the Director to update or rescind any existing administrative rules regarding home education or nonchartered nonpublic schools within 90 days, after which the bill’s language prohibiting the Director from adopting additional rules regarding home education or private schools would take effect.
• Clarifies that home educated students are subject to truancy law.
• More narrowly defines new director’s authority to clarify that his powers are limited to those expressly prescribed and authorized in statute, and that any guidance or policy adopted or issued by the Director or the Department that is not expressly authorized or required by state or federal statute “shall be advisory in nature”.
• Requiring nominees for the position of Director of Education and Workforce and the 2 deputies serving below the Director, should be given at least one in-person hearing before the Senate before the Senate votes to confirm the nominees.

The House Primary and Secondary Education committee amended their version of the bill, House Bill 12, in similar ways, however the deadline for the transition was stated to be 60 days after passage of the bill, rather than 90 days after the bill’s effective date. Representative Beth Lear (R-Galena) commented on the language intended to restrict the Director’s authority to those expressly prescribed and authorized in law. Lear pointed out that part of the law giving the Director the authority to prescribe minimum standards to be applied to all elementary and secondary schools in the state contains an ‘elastic clause’ allowing the director to prescribe standards for “such other factors as the director finds necessary.”  Having pointed out a potential conflict between language restricting the director’s orders to those expressly provided in law and the elastic clause giving far broader discretion to the director, there was agreement from Representative Don Jones (R-Freeport) to consider further amending the language.  The version of the bill passed in the Senate removed the elastic clause.

Second Time’s the Charm?

A similar bill had a somewhat tortured path in the last biennial legislature. After being introduced in May 2021, the bill was left untouched in the Senate Primary and Secondary Education committee until after the general election in November. Efforts picked up steam at that point, and the bill sped through five committee hearings before being sent to the floor in early December. It passed 22-7 and was sent to the House.  While the bill had near unanimous support among Senate Republicans, the House Republican caucus was divided.  The House Primary and Secondary Education committee held three hearings but failed to vote the bill out of the committee.

On the legislature’s final day of session, Senate Republicans added the entire language of the education overhaul bill to an unrelated bill that had been passed earlier by the House.  That new bill had itself been amended to include language from the Save Women’s Sports Act, introduced by Representative Jena Powell (R-Arcanum), which would require interscholastic athletic teams and leagues to have separate divisions for boys and girls’ teams based on their biological sex. Senate Republicans also added language coveted by some members of the House GOP caucus, to make it illegal in primary and secondary schools to discriminate against individuals who had not taken a COVID-19 vaccine. This version of the bill passed 24-7 in the Senate along party lines, sending the bill back to the House for a vote to concur with the Senate’s changes.  57 House Republicans were present to vote that evening, but 11 remained unconvinced. The final vote was 46-42, four votes shy of the required 50 for passage.

K-12 Education Governance in Other States

Across the country, there are varying models for determining the person ultimately responsible for K-12 education in government:

• 18 states have a state board of education who appoints the top superintendent. This is the model Ohio currently follows.
• 18 states have a state superintendent or director appointed by the governor.
• 12 states hold direct elections for the state-level superintendent
• 2 states have a board of regents who elects the superintendent.