Autumn brings back to school, deadlines and resources

September is almost here! School buses are back on the road, lunch bags are back on the kitchen counter and educators are in that exciting back-to-school mood. As the new school year begins, it’s a good time for a reminder of upcoming school deadlines required by state law and resources available to districts.

September deadlines

Back-to-school enrollment resources

In just a few weeks, schools across the state will open their doors and officially kick off the 2022-23 school year. As they prepare for the arrival of their students, we see a significant uptick in the calls we receive about Ohio’s attendance, tuition and custody laws.

Attendance Awareness Campaign

Attendance Works and its national partners are launching the 10th annual Attendance Awareness Campaign webinar series for 2022. The free, four-part series will emphasize the power of using chronic absence data to recover from challenges heightened by the pandemic.

Attendance Works Professional Development

Students who are absent from school miss important learning opportunities that can be difficult, or impossible to make up. Engaging students is the key to getting them focused and ready to learn.

Attendance Works is offering a three-session virtual training for elementary and secondary school leaders and staff to provide proven, evidence-based tiered strategies to engage students and promote attendance using a team approach. The series cost is $300 per person. Group sessions will meet every two weeks on assigned dates.

Participants will learn:

Attendance, tuition and custody law resources

OSBA’s legal services division hosted its annual Attendance, Tuition and Custody Law Workshop today in Columbus.  This year, more than 170 school district EMIS professionals participated in an open and active discussion about a variety of topics. 

At the workshop, speakers shared information about resources that have been prepared by the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). For those of you who weren’t able to attend the workshop today, here are links to some of those resources.

HB 410

The Safe at Home program

House Bill (HB) 359, Ohio’s new Safe at Home program, became effective yesterday, Sept. 8. The HB 359 bill analysis is available here. The program creates a system of address confidentiality implemented through the secretary of state’s (SOS) office.

Can a school district require a Social Security number to enroll a new student?

With the end of summer comes falling leaves, football, and OSBA’s legal hotline abuzz with enrollment questions throughout the state.  One of those questions:  our school district requests a student’s social security number (SSN) to enroll students.  What do we do if the parent doesn’t provide one?

Under the Privacy Act of 1974, a school district may not prevent a student from enrollment for failure to provide their SSN or proof the student has an SSN.