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Testimony — Melanie Elsey, American Policy Roundtable, on Sub. S.B. 1 (Ohio House, April 25, 2023)

Summary

Melanie Elsey, Legislative Director for the American Policy Roundtable and Legislative Liaison for Christian Home Educators of Ohio, testified on Sub. SB 1 before the Ohio House Economic and Workforce Development Committee on April 25, 2023. The testimony says the bill would create the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, and that shifting authority to a single appointed director will not change the system. It objects to proposed section 3321.042, which describes home educated students as exempt from compulsory attendance yet subjects them to the habitual truancy statute, and asks that the paragraph be removed.

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“Testimony — Melanie Elsey, American Policy Roundtable, on Sub. S.B. 1 (Ohio House, April 25, 2023).” Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/2023-04-25-econ-workforce-dev-testimony-sb1opponenttestimony-4-25-mela-c686d6d454/, SHA-256 da515a7755d659ddd7214a5e54fb866fee5970808c13d7315466ec042f6ce08b.

Full text

                  Ohio House Economic and Workforce Development Committee
                           Testimony of Melanie Elsey ~ Sub. S.B. 1
                                        April 25, 2023

     Chairman Swearingen, Vice-Chair Santucci, Ranking Member Upchurch, and
     members of the House Economic and Workforce Development Committee, thank you
     for the opportunity to share concerns with Sub. SB 1. My name is Melanie Elsey.
     I serve as the Legislative Director for the American Policy Roundtable and also as the
     Legislative Liaison for Christian Home Educators of Ohio. As you are aware, this
     legislation is intended to create the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, to
     which shall be transferred “all powers and duties regarding primary, secondary,
     special, and career-technical education” formerly granted to the ODE, SPI, and State
     Board of Education (except for limited authority over teachers in licensure standards,
     teacher suspensions/revocations, and territory transfers).

     I began attending the monthly meetings of the State Board of Education in 1992. For
     20 years I didn’t miss a meeting of the full board or any of its standing committees. In
     recent years (due to a shift in responsibilities) I have followed the work of the Board
     through mp3 les and more recently through online live streaming. I remember when
     the Board was politically diverse, but not fractured.

     The perspective I would like to share is from my personal observations over the past
     30 years. When I rst began attending the monthly meetings of the State Board of
     Education in 1992, it was an all elected board. It had functioned as an elected board
     since its inception in 1955 (HB212). It has performed its duties as an extension of the
     legislative branch since it was established in the Ohio Constitution in 1953.

     The legislature imposed a hybrid structure (elected w/ appointed members) on the
     Board in 1995 (HB711). As proponents of this bill have noted, this structure doesn’t
     work. It is also not e ective for an elected member to have a district that is more than
     20 counties in size. These structural weaknesses can be xed in statute.

     When the Board was established in 1955 the system of providing education was very
     di erent. The foundation of this system was upended in statute in 1993 (HB152) with
     what was referred to at that time as an outcome-based system. Almost all of the
     shortcomings in education policy we see today - lowering of performance standards,
     teaching to the test, Ohio’s “middle school literacy crisis” (as described by the ODE),
     high remediation rates for colleges/universities, an increasingly complex system for
     graduation requirements, etc. are the result of the system not the Board, which is
     constitutionally required to set policy under the acts of the Legislature.

     Shifting the authority to a single appointed director will not change the system. It will
     only diminish the consent of the governed. Students in every form of delivery of
     education and their parents will not have the direct access they have today in the
     current board structure.

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Diminishing citizen representation and input into state policy contradict the intention
of the 1953 Constitutional amendment passed by Ohio voters. It is inconceivable that
Ohioans intended for the General Assembly to strip the board of every single
responsibility related to the delivery of education to children. That is simply not logical.

Only the General Assembly can change the elements of the system. Putting the same
system under the authority of one political appointee will not work.

In addition to these concerns with the general constructs of Sub. SB 1, I would like to
point out an egregious paragraph that was amended into the bill at the nal stage of
Senate deliberations.

Proposed section 3321.042 (see p. 1565-1566) places a de nitional section for home
educated students in statute. These students have been governed through the Ohio
Administrative Code 3301-34 for decades. In the same section that describes home
educated students as being “exempt” from Ohio’s compulsory attendance law, it
states in the amended paragraph (C) that they will be subject to the state’s habitual
truancy statute (RC 3321.19). It makes no sense to determine that a student, who is
not required to be in attendance, can be penalized as being truant for not being in
attendance.

We respectfully request that this paragraph be removed from the bill.
We also request that the portions of the Revised Code which refer to home educated
students as being “excused” from attendance be harmonized with proposed section
3321.042. There should be a consistency in state law in using the de ning term
“exempt” since the students would no longer be issued letters of excusal.

Thank you for your consideration of these concerns.




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