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One of the bills that was passed by the Ohio General Assembly at the end of 2024 was House Bill (HB) 257. The bill, which is effective on April 9, 2025, enacted Ohio Revised Code (RC) 121.221, which allows some public bodies to hold meetings by video conference or similar electronic technology. (For purposes of this blog post, I’ll refer to these meetings as “virtual meetings.”) However, as discussed below, this provision does not allow boards of education to conduct virtual meetings and may actually make virtual attendance at meetings more restrictive.

RC 121.221 allows “members of…

The General Assembly passed a number of key new laws impacting school districts in its lame-duck session to round out 2024. OSBA will continue to push out information on these provisions and changes districts will need to make in the coming weeks and months. Two of these bills impact the administration of medication to students in schools and may require your district to update its policies and educate staff on the new language.

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On Nov. 27, 2024, Governor Mike DeWine signed SB 104…

On Thursday, Oct. 24, new requirements regarding student data privacy are set to go into effect. These changes are the result of Senate Bill (SB) 29, which was passed by the General Assembly this past July. SB 29 places significant new requirements on school districts as it relates to entering into contracts with technology providers and tracking and monitoring the…

As reported in an August Legal Ledger blog post, Ohio’s 2024-25 fiscal year budget bill included changes to district obligations to students in reading instruction. 

The budget bill enacted…

Earlier this week, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) released a new webpage to assist school districts to meet new health curriculum requirements in Ohio Revised Code (RC) 3313.60, enacted in Senate Bill (SB) 288.  

The SB 288 amendments…

Last September, the Ohio School Boards Association issued a bulletin alerting school districts that the General Assembly had amended Ohio Revised Code (RC) 2915.092 to remove a school district’s ability to conduct raffles. The law was amended in Ohio House Bill (HB) 110, which removed the term “…

Earlier this month, Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill (HB) 583 which made changes to the dyslexia support law. The changes take effect on Sept. 22.

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In the recently enacted biennial budget bill (Am. Sub. H.B. 110),…

Last week, the U.S. District Court concluded that the territory transfer law enacted in the 2019-2020 biennial budget bill violated the Ohio Constitution. As a result, six territory transfers enacted under the law were halted and two territory transfer matters that were to be on the ballot in November are now moot.

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