One perennial favorite topic on OSBA’s legal hotline is executive sessions. Lately, we’ve been getting questions about whether the information discussed in executive session is legally confidential. It seems like it should be – after all, the board is going behind closed doors to have private discussions on sensitive matters. But is it?
Here at the OSBA legal division, we've gotten some recent questions about required training on fraud reporting. The training requirement became effective this year and, for school district officials and employees, the deadline for training is Nov. 29, 2024. Let's dig a little deeper!
Districts are now required to have a policy in place that reasonably accommodates the sincerely held religious beliefs and practices of individual students with regard to all examinations or other academic requirements and absences for reasons of faith or religious or spiritual belief system.
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.
In this legal ledger Sidebar, John Price and Jennifer Hardin discuss some of the legal considerations for boards when issuing contracts for coaches, which was one of the highlights from this year’s OSBA Sports Law Workshop Webinar Series.
A consent agenda is a parliamentary procedure tool that allows boards to streamline the approval of routine, non-controversial items that typically do not need discussion or debate. The general idea is to save time by grouping self-explanatory items together and approving them in one motion, instead of handling each one individually.
This past July, the Supreme Court of Ohio issued an important decision in the case known as Look Ahead America v.
Last week, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (ODEW) rolled out resources for school districts as they work to meet the new requirements for automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in school buildings.
In Ohio, boards of education are required to seek formal bids from potential vendors before they “build, repair, enlarge, improve or demolish a school building” if the cost of the work is over a certain threshold amount.
Here in the Legal Division, we answer a lot of questions about board meeting agendas. Agendas are an important tool boards use to conduct efficient meetings and keep discussions at meetings on track. Given how commonly boards of education use agendas, it may be surprising to learn that the Ohio Revised Code (RC) has nothing to say about them.* This means that the creation and use of agendas are governed almost entirely by board policy.
