Fourth Hearing Slated for Education Deregulation Bill
The Senate Education Committee has announced a fourth hearing on Senate Bill 216 to be held on Wednesday, December 13, at 9:45 a.m. in the North Hearing Room of the Senate Building in Columbus. The time of the meeting has been changed to allow for a longer meeting, as...
Ennis Britton attorneys named 2018 Ohio Rising Stars!
We are very pleased to announce that four Ennis Britton attorneys have been selected as 2018 Ohio Rising Stars! No more than 2.5 percent of attorneys in Ohio receive this award, which is given for demonstrating excellence in the practice of law. Congratulations to...
Workers’ Compensation Legislation in the Works
The General Assembly is currently considering three different Workers’ Compensation bills that may affect schools. These bills will most likely undergo changes during the deliberation process. The summary below describes the provisions of each of these bills as...
Ohio Supreme Court Decision: Substitute Custodian Is Not a Regular Employee
The Ohio Supreme Court recently determined that a substitute custodian was not a “regular nonteaching school employee,” a designation that would have entitled him to better wages and benefits. The employee, substitute custodian Kurt Singer, demanded that the Fairland...
Unboxing the Education Deregulation bill: What’s inside SB 216
Senate Bill 216, introduced on October 10 by Ohio Sen. Matt Huffman, is the culmination of a collaboration of legislators and school superintendents, including a working group of a BASA committee and more than 40 superintendents from Senate District 12. The bill has...
First Amendment Free Speech Rights: Can Student Athletes #TakeTheKnee?
During a speech in Alabama on September 22, President Trump made some comments that provoked a number of professional athletes to kneel or sit – or even stay in the locker room – during the national anthem on Sunday’s NFL games. In a nutshell, Trump said that NFL...
Additional Graduation Pathways for Class of 2018
House Bill 49, the budget bill, provides two additional pathways for graduation for the class of 2018. In short, the first option is an academic pathway, and the second is a career-tech pathway. (See also the Ennis Britton blog post on the new graduation...
Budget Bill, Part II: Uncodified Law
To continue our review of the education-related provisions of the state budget, we will look at the temporary law, or uncodified sections, of the budget. If you scroll toward the end of the five thousand-plus pages of the budget, you will find some odd numbering. You...
Budget Bill Overview: Impacts on Education in Ohio
Every two years, Ohio legislators and the governor are tasked with passing a biannual budget for the state. Ohio’s budget bill always has a direct effect on public education, from both a financial and an operational perspective. On June 30, Gov. Kasich signed a final...
Resignation Triggers Halt to Fringe Benefits
In an arbitration decision published June 12, a grievance calling for a school district’s employment benefits to continue past the effective date of a teacher’s resignation was denied. After three teachers retired, their health insurance benefits ceased, but the...
Arbitrator May Override Employer’s Disciplinary Decision — Absent Contract Limitations
Reversing the decision of two lower courts, the Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled that absent negotiated language in a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) limiting an arbitrator’s authority to modify a disciplinary action for just cause, an arbitrator has authority...
Changes in Teaching Staff: Dates and Procedures
In our May issue of School Law Review, we covered important dates and procedures for teacher nonrenewal, including the required May dates for evaluations. Unless a collective bargaining agreement provides otherwise, a board of education that wishes to nonrenew a...
Ohio Supreme Court Finds School’s Backpack Search Constitutional
In a unanimous opinion, the Ohio Supreme Court has held that a school’s search of an unattended bag, and the two subsequent searches that initiated from the initial search, were constitutional. The court held that the searches served a compelling governmental interest...
Employer Sued for Workers’ Comp a Year After Employee Quit Job
The Supreme Court of Ohio recently issued an opinion in a workers’ compensation case in which an employer was sued for disability payments even after the employee had quit and moved on to another job. The employee, Norman James Jr., worked for Walmart at the time he...
New Laws Governing District Property
General Assembly Once Again Changes Rules on Disposal of Real Property In 2015 Ohio’s General Assembly enacted R.C. 3313.413. This statute added another step to the process for disposing of real property worth $10,000 or more. The statute required school districts to...
Supreme Court’s Special Education Decision
Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District On March 22 the U.S. Supreme Court published an opinion in a significant special education case. Issuing out of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado, Endrew v. Douglas poses the question of what level of...
New State Law Expands Use and Possession of Weapons on School Grounds
Senate Bill 199, which was passed during the lame duck session and signed by the governor in December, significantly expands the rights of certain individuals to possess weapons on public school grounds. State law generally prohibits an individual from conveying or...
The Biennial Budget Bill: How and When to Inform Policymakers
Every two years a new General Assembly convenes in Ohio. The General Assembly will consider hundreds of bill and even pass many of them, but none are more important to state government than the appropriations bills that make up the budget bill. The state budget cycle...
Ohio’s New Truancy Laws
Ohio House Bill 410 was signed by the governor on January 4, 2017, and takes effect on April 6, 2017. Despite its effective date, school districts are not required to implement many of the truancy provisions until the start of the 2017–2018 school year, the majority...
Supreme Court to Decide Level of Educational Benefit for Students with Disabilities
On January 11, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in one of the most significant special education cases in past three decades. In the 1982 case Board of Education v. Rowley, the Supreme Court determined that an individualized education program (IEP) must be...
Update: Lame Duck Legislation
Continuing our tour around the legislation passed in the lame duck, session, please find below a summary of recently passed legislation. After the governor signs a bill, it becomes effective 90 days later, so most of these will be effective generally in mid-March. If...