Governor DeWine signed House Bill 8 on January 8, 2025, and the law goes into effect on April 9, 2025. This bill, known as the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” not only adds to the decisions that parents can make regarding their children’s education but also contains new requirements for public schools.
New School Policy Requirements:
By July 1, 2025, all public schools must adopt a policy that promotes parental involvement in the public school system and establishes requirements regarding sexuality content, and school-provided healthcare services (including student mental, emotional, and physical health and well-being). This policy must be made publicly available and posted prominently on the school’s publicly accessible website.
In the policy, the school must provide assurances that sexuality content is age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate for the age of the student receiving the instruction, regardless of the age or grade level of that student. Parents must be provided with an opportunity to review any instructional material that includes sexuality content. The act also requires that each public school have a parental involvement policy adopting a procedure to obtain authorization from parents prior to providing any type of health care service to the student.
Each public school must also adopt a policy prohibiting school personnel from directly or indirectly encouraging a student to withhold from a parent information about the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or a change in services or monitoring related to the student’s health. With that, the policy must prohibit school personnel from discouraging or prohibiting parental notification of and involvement in decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.
The school policies must permit parents to file with the school written concerns related to topics addressed in the policy, notify parents of this permission, and establish a process for a principal or assistant principal to resolve the concern within 30 days of its receipt. A parent may appeal a principal’s or assistant principal’s decision to the district superintendent or equivalent official for a community or STEM school (“superintendent”).
Finally, all public schools must adopt a policy authorizing students to be excused from school to attend a released time course in religious instruction. The school board must also collaborate with the sponsoring entity of a religious released time course to identify a time to offer the course during the school day. When students are released for religious instruction, the sponsoring entity, not the school district, assumes responsibility of the student such as: transportation (including for students with disabilities), funding of the program (school districts cannot provide funding), maintaining records to be shared with the district, and liability for the student during release time. The student will be responsible for making up missed schoolwork for released time.
Furthermore, students who complete religious courses during released time may earn up to two units of high school credit. HB8 states that, in determining whether to award credit for completion of such a course, the board shall evaluate the course based on purely secular criteria that are substantially the same criteria used to evaluate similar nonpublic high school courses, except there cannot be criteria requiring that released time courses be completed only at a nonpublic school. Finally, a school’s decision to award credit for a released time course of religious instruction must be neutral to religious content or denominational affiliation.
Parent’s Rights
Finally, HB8 amends R.C. § 3313.473 to expand upon parent’s rights regarding the education of their children, including record keeping and healthcare at school. Below is a list of the new parental rights that are listed in HB8:
- Parents have the right to review the materials of any sexuality content and excuse their children from instruction of any sexuality content. R.C. § 3313.473(B)(1)(b)
- Parents have the right to be notified of any substantial change in their child’s services, including counseling services, or monitoring related to the child’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being or the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the child. R.C. § 3313.473(B)(2)
- Parents have the right to be notified of and choose whether to authorize a district to provide a health care service (physical, mental, and behavioral health care services) for their children, except for emergency situations, first aid, or minor unanticipated health care services. R.C. § 3313.473(B)(4)
- Parents have the right to uninhibited access to their children’s educational and health records maintained by the school R.C. § 3313.473(B)(2)
- Parents have a right to file with the school principal or assistant principal a written concern regarding a topic addressed in R.C. § 3313.473(B).
What does this mean for your district?
Obviously, public school district boards of education will need to adopt new policies by July 1, 2025. However, beyond the policy(ies), school districts will want to ensure their staff understand the language of HB8, the language of the district’s policies and procedures, and how practically this will play out within the schools of your district.
Meetings and training for guidance counselors and administrators are important to understand the practicalities for HB8, as well as implications for how this could affect the student services offered within the schools and to set a common standard for when and how parents will be notified of substantial changes in their student’s services.
As for religious release time instruction, the deadline for updating this policy is April 9th (the effective date of the law). Practically, this may result in RRTI not being provided until the 2025/2026 school year, but entities could choose to seek applications to provide RRTI once the policy is in effect. Review of any entities seeking to provide RRTI must be neutral without favoring one religion over another, and should comply with the standards set in statute and board policy (background checks, not during “core” instruction (as defined by policy), etc.).
If you have additional questions on the implications of HB8 or would like training for your staff on the same please contact your EB attorney for assistance.