April 14, 2026 · Education Committee · 15,927 words · 4 speakers · 118 segments
This meeting of the Senate Education Committee to order. Will the clerk please call the roll?
Present. Here. Here.
Present. All right, we do have a quorum. The minutes of the prior meeting are on your iPads. Are there any corrections, additions, or changes to the meeting minutes
from the last meeting from March 24th?
There are no additions, changes, or corrections. the minutes will be approved as written. We are going to go to skip over to Senate Bill 290 because we're going to have some votes on that, and the bill sponsored for Senate Bill 400 is actually running in another committee. So we're going to go with Senate Bill 290 for its fourth hearing, and I recognize VICE your blessing for a motion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Move to adopt Amendment 1628.
The amendment is in order. Will you please explain the amendment?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This amendment is an LSC technical amendment correcting various cross-reference and updating code sections.
All right. With that, are there any objections to the amendment becoming part of the bill? Hearing none, the amendment becomes part of the bill. The chair recognizes Vice Chair Blessing for a motion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Move to adopt Amendment 2187.
The amendment is in order. Will you please explain the amendment?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The amendment does the following. requires public and chartered non-public schools to purchase and install at least one, rather than only one, exterior secure master key box for each building assigned with an IRN by due. Two, requires a district or school to install an exterior secure master key box on the school building or in a strategic location for optimal law enforcement response on school premises. and three, requires a district or school to ensure that all master external keys, master internal keys, and access cards are in current operable form. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
All right. Are there any questions or objections to that amendment becoming part of the bill? Hearing none, that amendment becomes part of the bill. Chair recognizes Ranking Member Ingram for a motion.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move to amend with Amendment 2193.
The amendment is in order. Will you please explain the amendment?
This amendment would increase the appropriation for the school safety training grants administered by the Attorney General's Office by $5 million. These funds can be used to purchase and install the master key boxes as outlined in 290 and the amendments that were just made. budget office that indicated that over $9.7 million has been spent by the fiscal year 26, $10 million in appropriations. Therefore, I believe that the amendment is necessary to ensure that schools have the resources they need to follow the requirement that we put forth in this particular bill.
Well, thank you for that explanation. I have also checked with it. My understanding is from the bill's sponsor. as well as looking into this, that the Attorney General's office in the next fiscal year will have that fund reopened, and money will be available for schools to be able to apply for the grants, to be able to install the lockboxes. And given the current timing of this, my guess is this bill, even if we were to pass it today, and it were to get to the floor anytime soon, and probably will not have until towards the end of the General Assembly, so there's probably going to be some additional adjustments that are going to need to be made to that when it goes through the House. So for that reason, I would recommend tabling of the amendment. I recognize Vice Chair Blessing for a motion Thank you Mr Chairman Move to table the amendment Motion has been made Will the clerk please call the roll on the motion to table Mr Chair may I ask the question before you We're already to that point. Go ahead and please call the roll.
Yes. Yes. No. No.
All right. I'm going to go ahead and authorize LSC to harmonize these changes to a substitute bill. We do have written testimony on Senate Bill 290 on your iPads from Tom Radican as an interested party from the Ohio Catholic Conference. With that, I recognize Vice Chair Blessing for a motion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move to favorably report substitute Senate Bill 290 to the Committee on Rules and Reference.
The motion has been made. Will the clerk please call the roll?
Yes. Yes.
All right. With that, I'm going to leave the voting rolls open until the end of the hearing for this bill. Everybody would please sign the bill.
Chair Brenner, I just have to say, and I did vote yes on this particular bill, but this is a requirement for those boxes to be purchased by the school districts to be placed wherever. And my concern is that that particular safety grant dollars that are there in the AG's office right now are for various things. And as I just indicated, all of those monies have already been used up through the end of this particular year. and therefore despite the fact it's going to be up in June, if this is not put toward the requirement or there's not additional monies there for this requirement, then it becomes an unfunded mandate as far as those school districts are concerned. So when you say that there will be money there, we've already used up all that money and guess what? They weren't on lock boxes. So my concern is what do we do without and this is a first come, first served kind of grant that then means if people are asking for other things, then those lockboxes will not be covered.
Just want to make sure you understood. I also understand that the lockboxes are $1,000, and if you've got 20 buildings, that would be $20,000. I'm sure local school districts can find that money if the money isn't available, but my understanding is the money is available through the AG. With that, that will conclude the, I believe, what was this, the fourth hearing on Senate Bill 290. All right, so, well, let's committee all stand at ease. The service center associated provided by Craig Buford up next, since we're waiting on a member to come over to give testimony. So, Craig, welcome to committee, and you may proceed when ready.
All right, good afternoon, Chairman Brenner, members of the Senate Education Committee. Appreciate the opportunity to briefly explain Ohio's ESCs and some of the work that we are doing in partnership with the Department of Education and Workforce and other state agencies. And I appreciate the chair entertaining the idea of giving us the opportunity to come and talk with you, the significant investments that you have made as a General Assembly through ESCs, ensuring that we're coming back and sharing with you what has been done with those. So just to sort of contextualize it a little bit in terms of that funding, in any given General Assembly you obviously appropriate money for our operating of the ESCs but beyond that during the course of the federal stimulus funds we had million that flowed through ESCs and any various number of programs The largest pot was something called Learning Recovery Grants. We had some broad latitude in terms of working with the department to identify specific priorities, literacy, math, chronic absenteeism. We also had $268 million in emergency assistance to non-public schools that came through the ESC. So over that three to five year period, nearly $400 million flowed through ESCs. I'm not sure that we've had the opportunity to come and share with you again what came out of that. So I wanted to make sure that we had the opportunity to do that, but also to give a little bit of context about what ESCs are and our role inside of the system as you talk about Senate Bill 19, Senate Bill 328, other vehicles where you're going to be looking for a vehicle to partner with the department in implementation of some of those things. So I'll try to just, again, go through some of these at a high level. But we have 51 ESCs that employ roughly 15,000 folks, supporting 240,000 educators. In any given year, we provide direct services, direct instruction in core instructional areas to about 30,000 kids, but related services to over 250,000 students with disabilities. So oftentimes there's question about to what degree do ESCs provide direct services? It's a significant portion of what we do. Last, in fiscal year 25, which is the most recent year, we did about $2.4 billion in business with school districts. Again, a big part of what allows us to do that is the investment that the legislature makes in ESCs. While it seems like the $45 million that comes in our operating subsidy is a small piece of that, what it does is it allows us to exist. It hires the superintendent treasurer, open our doors, and allows us to go after and pursue a lot of the other things that we're able to do in support of our client school districts. One of the things that we're required to do is every year ESCs, and we just finished our 10th year, have to compare the costs of our services to those of school districts doing it themselves or contracting with third-party providers. and so in fiscal year 25 we achieved on average a 38 percent cost savings we have to hit a 5 percent benchmark but each year we exceed that I was just over a hundred million dollars in savings to districts last year that's in five service areas so we don't look at the entire book of business that ESC's do we're required to look at five core areas and report that back to the Department of Ed. In the past 10 years, it's been nearly $800 million in savings that we've provided by partnering with school districts. That's through shared service delivery, itinerant staff, economies of scale through pooled purchasing, and that type of activity. So what are ESCs? One of the things I will tell you is we often run into difficulty when legislation is passed that ESC programs, despite the fact, again, that we do serve students and oftentimes we're providing their entire instructional course of study, ESCs are often programs are not considered schools. So there are oftentimes things that we don't qualify for particular grants. An example would be when we did the Grow Your Own scholarships. Initially, ESCs weren't eligible for that because we did not have schools and it identified the recipients as schools. So as we go through a number of those things, trying to make sure that we're consistent with those opportunities. ESCs are school districts in state law. We local political subdivisions and we are considered local education agencies in federal law One of the reasons that important and something that we be I been working with the Department of Ed and Workforce on and perhaps coming to all of you is that oftentimes there are questions about ESE ability to lead consortia on behalf of school districts. So in the last few years we have seen the state move away from ESEs being able to lead consortia around McKinney-Vento homeless education grants where we would serve as the fiscal agent and administrative support, and instead asking districts to recreate those consortia and run those themselves. This year it was around Title I-D in juvenile delinquent and neglected youth, and next year they're looking at Title III English language learners. And again, historically that's something that ESCs have been able to do on behalf of school districts that create efficiencies and economies of scale that we would like to ensure continue. It's one of the value propositions that ESCs provide. So who do ESCs serve? Traditionally, our client base has been the traditional public school districts, but over time we have added community schools. We serve over 175 charter or community schools, just over 500 chartered non-public schools. That work that we did with the chartered non-public schools during the pandemic around the emergency assistance for non-public schools has largely continued post-pandemic. And if I would think about the services that we provide, again, there are things that we do that are largely around operational efficiency, but ESCs do provide instructional support, student supports, those operational and regional activities as workforce as well as workforce readiness. So if you think about the requirement for districts to have business advisory councils, just over 90% of the business advisory councils in the state are operated by ESCs on behalf of their client school districts. And so we've become more and more of that important connection between the school districts and workforce. So we appreciate in Senate Bill 328 that continued focus on that, but also the flexibility that every region and in every district, they can determine who the best partner is. Some instances it may be us, and in others it may not be. But ensuring that we have that flexibility is really important. So where do we partner with the state? This is, again, somewhere that I appreciate the previous state superintendent, DeMaria, and trying to identify ways in which we could be more intentional on leveraging all the regional assets that Ohio has. To the General Assembly's credit, we have a regional system that is envied by a lot of other states. When you look at the ITCs, ESCs, public broadcasting stations, what we sometimes don't do is maybe use it as intentionally and strategically as we can. But I would put it up there in terms of the recognition that Ohio gets for its libraries, its parks. you could put our regional delivery system up there in that same vein. So where we have partnered a lot with the state in the last few years is around literacy, school improvement. 16 of the ESCs have contracts with the state to serve as the state support teams and are part of our statewide system of support for school improvement. Instructional coaching, professional learning, AI implementation. So one of the things that we did use funding for during the pandemic was to create 100 AI champions, two in each one of the ESCs, so that school districts could make that transition to understanding policy, practice, putting those things in place. What are the good uses? What are the bad uses that we have regional supports to support educators around that work? In terms of accountability, we do have a statutory framework. Districts have the ability to choose which ESC they align to every two years, consistent with the state budget process. And one of the things that that has done is it has driven improved quality, but it's also had the effect of driving down the number of ESCs that we have. So when I started with the ESC Association 25 years ago, we had 63 ESCs. Today we have 51. A lot of that has just been by virtue of district choice, right-sizing, and what they found to be financially viable. Districts always have the ability to purchase services from any ESC that they want, but they also have the ability to take the state money that ESCs get with them when they want to go somewhere else. We have locally elected boards, as well as, again, that high-performing ESC application that we have to do each year where we compare the cost of our services, as well as every ESC has to post its services online. the cost of those services, and if they can't post the cost of the services, they have to post their methodology for how they determine the price that they charge to school districts. So as it relates to transparency, it would be hard to find others that are perhaps at that same level. So I think just one of the things I wanted to highlight, and I'm going to appreciate the chairs allowing us to be here, is just the ability that when the state needs to roll something out. We have been able to have a quick ability to stand up state initiatives, get those out. So whether it was threat assessment training, whether it was vaccination clinics, within 30 days, we worked with the Department of Health, healthcare providers, vaccinated 300,000 educators, distributed 10 and a half million units of PPE during the pandemic, and again, have worked with the department around alternative bath pathways, instructional coaching. One of the things that we used some of the federal stimulus funds for was to create a foundations for instructional coaching initiative. So while it wasn't specific to literacy, it's not specific to math. It's to get more people in the pipeline that we can then focus on content area specific areas so that should Senate Bill 19 move through we have a greater focus on math like we have on literacy. We have people in the pipeline and the infrastructure in place to roll those things out quickly and with some type of of fidelity. So I think just what I have included in my packet for you, rather than going into endless detail, are a couple of things. There is an overview of the 51 case studies that were done coming out of the pandemic. If you've not had an opportunity to do that, I encourage you to take a look at that, particularly for your respective ESCs. We did see instances where there were significant gains in literacy achievement, significant gains in math outcomes, reductions and chronic absenteeism, and the degree to which we can work with the Department of Education and Workforce, and instead of having pockets of excellence, figure out how we can take those things to scale and improve outcomes for all kids, that's where I think the opportunity rests in our conversations with all of you. I think what we tend to still see are pockets of excellence and not opportunities where we can do it on a grander scale. So I guess the lessons that I want to leave with and share with you is utilize a proven channel of supports that we have. Again, between the ITCs, ESCs, our state support teams, our partnerships with the Department of Education, a number of things that Director Dakin and his team have put in place through the ESCs, I think we have the infrastructure in place to move things forward and just being more intentional when we think about where those investments are. And we still have instances where we very initiative driven without enough of an eye towards the future and welcome the opportunity to talk about that with all of you Investing in some of those scalable functions and then just making sure that we have the right data systems in place to measure what we doing ensure that it's producing the outcome that members of the General Assembly and the public expect from us and working with you to advance those things. and with that I'm happy to answer any questions but again just appreciate the opportunity to be here and share a little bit about what our members have been doing on behalf of the state
well thank you very much for your presentation today are there any questions from committee members? Senator Smith
thanks very much Mr. Chairman, thank you sir for being here looking back on slide number four instructional support I'm wondering if you can maybe take us through what the process is for that. It says, again, literacy coaching, structured literacy implementation, math pathways, high-quality instructional materials selection and support, tutorial programs, instructional coaching, AI readiness planning, ESCs, help districts align instruction with state standards and evidence-based practices. to your understanding is there like a how would you decide what instructional support is needed is that the district initiates and I guess I'm looking for you to kind of expand on you know I mean the evidence-based practices is is what caught my eye because I would I don't mean this in the wrong way, I would hope that you would be using evidence-based practices. So if you could just expand on the kind of the process of that. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Chair Brenner, Senator Smith, appreciate the question. So I think a broad answer is the level of services that are provided, and I think this is something that may create challenge from time to time when people don't understand why does not every ESC provide the same service to every district? and the way that our system has essentially been set up was each ESC provides the services that the districts have chosen to purchase from them. Because by and large, there aren't many things that we are directly funded for to provide to districts. We have a largely fee-for-service model unless there is something we're specifically tasked with by the department or the General Assembly. So there are instances, if I use literacy coaching as an example, Every ESC, virtually every ESC, has gone out and made some level of investment to have literacy coaches on staff. We have five who have contracts with the department to roll out the Read Ohio initiative, and they're providing a higher level and a more intensive level of service to those schools that have been targeted for assistance and are funded by the state to do that. For the other ESCs, they've gone out, they've created a service, and the districts are choosing to purchase those. We can get you. We've been working with the department to collect all the data that we can in terms of where are all the licensed instructional staff with all the credentials, all of those things, where are they, so we can identify where there are gaps in those types of things. But we've worked very closely with Melissa Webber, Mayor, her team to ensure that our staff are trained and implementing the department's priorities with fidelity around literacy so our staff have gone through the dyslexia the science of reading training all of those types of activities in the if you were to look at the case studies that university of cincinnati did of the learning recovery grants that we did they looked very closely at ensuring that there was evidence of those evidence practices and ensuring that there was alignment for the ESCs that chose those to be highlighted. So they have been reviewed through that process as well, if that answers your question. I think for each one of these, like the math pathways, So we had a grant through the ESC of Central Ohio that worked with, I'm going to get this, I'm not going to remember all three, but there are three different pathways to algebra two. So we identified regional facilitators. We set up trainings across the state. It was all around how we build teacher capacity at the district level so that we had more of those folks in the pipeline. I know Dr. Orban will talk about that with computer science and being able to use those data science foundation courses towards the computer science. requirement, but those are the types of things that we've been doing on math as an example, in partnership with DEW. Follow-up? Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for that answer. So I get that all 51 are kind of autonomous and working with the districts that they're working with, but I haven't heard you dispute the statement that I'm about ready to make, but I want you to clarify whether or not I'm kind of understanding correctly. Would you say 100% of your instructional support is evidence-based, you know, one way or another, that you're doing some peer-reviewed research as you, whether it's an existing model or whether you're crafting kind of your own case-by-case? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chair Brenner, Senator Smith, thank you for clarifying that. Yes, I would say that every one of the ESEs that are offering those services are ensuring that those are evidence-based and aligned to best practice. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your presentation. I just have a question regarding the fees. Besides dollars that are sent down from the state for specific actions that they hope that you would take, because that's what the ESCs are there for, to supplement that, how does each determine the fees? Is it based on where you are, from district to district even?
Good question. So Chair Brenner, Senator Ingram, so I think there are different ways in which ESCs determine what their pricing model is. Some of that is dictated by what is the best way I can say it is we have some instances where an ESC might be selling special ed as a service. And so it's this broad category and districts are paying their share of what the pooled cost for special education is. In other instances, they may be paying for a specific person or people, a PT, OT, school psych, speech language pathologist. It's really driven largely by what the cost of people are and what the market dictates in terms of salary and benefits. So the overwhelming majority of our costs are people costs. The overhead for running an ESC is somewhere in the 6% range. the majority of our costs go out the door in the form of services and the people delivering those services.
All right. Follow-up?
No, I'm good.
Kind of a follow-up. So kind of looking at the return on investment, because I know we've got another bill here, Senator Kaler's bill, that's looking at it for kids and going on. What kind of, you said the administrative cost is about 6%, and then the bulk of your costs are labor, basically, specialists going into schools. How is that determined or can you come up with what a return on investment would be for each of those Because I know we had discussion to make sure that you know ESCs are not every person there is considered administrative overhead because, in fact, they're mostly specialists, so those should not be counted towards, you know, a cost to a school that is administrative when, in fact, they're actually people going in helping the students. Has the association come to an ability to be able to convey that a little better or convey it to the public or the school districts or even the community schools and others? Chair Brenner, I think we've talked about, I guess,
return on investment in a couple of different ways. There is obviously the financial cost savings that we can demonstrate, part of that being through how do you share staff between and amongst districts, particularly hard to find positions in special ed, in either hard to staff positions or hard to find people in particular rural geographic area. So there's the cost sharing between and among districts that helps to drive down the cost. We have greater flexibility in terms of our ability to employ, move staff, make reductions in force than what districts have. So if a low incidence student in a district is being served and that student moves out, we have the ability to pivot that person to another place where the demand comes in at a different time, if if that makes sense. So part of it is that cost sharing. The other, frankly, is where we think about the cost savings is the ability to go out and identify grants, apply for those on behalf of districts. This is where I referenced before, ESEs being able to lead some of those federally funded consortia. ESEs being able to do that, so if you use Title III as an example, those are small dollar amounts at the district level. The ability to pull that together, $10,000 from a handful of districts and able to do something meaningful with it, hire a person, but provide the broad scope of service to all five of those districts in that example is what helps to drive that down as opposed to a district having to go out and find those people themselves. The only other thing I would say in terms of return on investment is the administrative burden that we're able to take off their hands. So it's also doing any of the reporting. It's taking on the administrative costs of running those programs and the overhead, taking on the risk and the liability for employment and those types of things.
Are there any questions from committee members? Seeing none, thank you very much for your presentation today. Thank you, Craig. All right, up next, we will go back to Senate Bill 400 for its first hearing with sponsored testimony provided by Senator Manchester. Welcome to committee, and you may proceed when ready.
Thank you very much, Chair Brenner, Vice Chair Blessing, Ranking Member Ingram, and other members of the Senate Education Committee. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to give sponsored testimony on Senate Bill 400, which creates a designation for high-quality youth development programs. Senate Bill 400 establishes clear and consistent criteria for youth development programs and helps ensure that organizations meet and maintain standards that protect Ohio's youth and promote positive youth outcomes, while also helping to safeguard public resources and protect against waste, fraud, and abuse. Youth development programs play a pivotal role in supporting students both inside and outside the classroom. These programs provide academic support, mentorship, and safe environments that foster student success in school while preparing the next generation for future opportunities. The legislation creates a designation process through the Department of Education and Workforce. Programs seeking designation must apply to the department and program eligibility will be determined by the director based on whether a program fits the following criteria. The ability to document measurable outcomes for participating youth, compliance with federal, state, and local safety laws, along with documented safety assessments and staff volunteer screening protocols, exhibiting financial soundness and accountability through audited financial statements, independent financial reviews, and responsibility of public funds. Evidence-based programming focused on academic success, healthy lifestyles, and future readiness for youth administrated by quality staff. A demonstrated history of operating year-round programming for students in grades K-12 across multiple counties in Ohio, adequate and sufficient program operation in one or more facilities with consistent hours of operation, active partnerships with local communities and engagement with families. Many youth development programs in Ohio already operate with the designated framework outlined in the bill. This legislation creates a formal designation to recognize those programs and ensure strong safety standards, sound financial practices, and measurable outcomes. Organizations such as the YMCA, Open Doors Academy, and the Ohio Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs have expressed support for this legislation. Senate Bill 400 increases transparency, supports proven programs, and gives parents, schools, and communities confidence in the organizations serving and supporting the growth and success of Ohio's youth. And I'll just add, I think that youth programs are one of the best investments that we can make in the state of Ohio. I've been supportive of the aforementioned three organizations in the past, and I believe that having some criteria to standardize what qualifies as a high-quality program is only going to be useful moving forward to ensure that our kids are getting the best care possible. Thank you
for the opportunity to provide sponsor testimony, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much for your testimony today. Any questions from committee members?
Ranking Member Ingram. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this. Why do we need it?
Through the chair to the senator, thank you for the question. I think that personally what I've seen over the years, especially when we are in the operating budget period, a lot of these organizations come to us for funding, and rightly so. And personally, I am always happy to put in those amendments and ask for funding for these organizations because I believe that they are such a great investment. At the same time, having some kind of designation so that we know that we're investing in high-quality programs, I think, is critical moving forward. Because these programs I have always supported because they are able to demonstrate measurable outcomes. They typically have data showing that the participants in their programs have had greater academic success. And I think that's something that we should ask and standardize. Now, this does not prohibit people or organizations without that designation from applying for state funding, but I think having that high-quality designation is helpful for us in determining what organizations we want to fund.
Follow-up? Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for that. I get it, but the organizations that you just mentioned, the Y and Boys and Girls Club, those are, for the most part, national organizations. And I not concerned with that because as a matter of fact I just went to a program with our Boys and Girls Club just recently for the student of the year as they have them My concern is for those other organizations that may be startup organizations that are impacting those students. Does that mean that they will be on a different tier as to receiving dollars or are we setting ourselves up for only giving the money to certain organizations all the time?
Through the chair to the senator, I would just add, Open Doors Academy, I believe, is primarily operating in Ohio. I don't think they have a national presence, and if I'm wrong on that, please feel free to correct me.
I didn't say them either. Oh, sure, sure.
So, again, this is not to prohibit any of those startup organizations from existing or even applying for funding. It is just to ensure that we have a metric to look at when we consider what organizations are we going to fund at the state level. So I would say for any startup organization, the criteria in this legislation is very clear, and perhaps they may not be able to meet some of those metrics in the first year, but as we all know, if these programs are successful and can continue, I wholeheartedly believe that the metrics are not impossible for them to meet. All right.
Any other questions? Actually, I want to follow up with Ranking Member Ingram. This kind of is per your own testimony. I've also had the same issue. We've had a lot of organizations come that are really good organizations. You put the requests in for maybe money in the capital budget or specifically the operating budget, but there isn't maybe a standard of a designation. Do you think this would be a way to make it easier for legislators and maybe the Department of Education and Workforce to say, yes, these organizations have hit a next tier, so maybe they should be able to qualify for grants more easily? Thank you for the question, Chair.
And, yes, I would just say that this puts standards into place for these organizations to follow. So we're ensuring that our kids are ultimately receiving the best programming and care available. That's really the goal at the end of the day. We don't want, unfortunately, sometimes there are organizations that are not adequately prepared to deliver these kinds of services like the organizations I've mentioned who have for many years. So I think it's not, it is beneficial to have standards in place.
All right. Seeing no other questions, thank you very much for your testimony today. This will conclude the first sponsor testimony on Senate Bill 400. Up next, amended House Bill 326 for its second hearing. Michael Torres will be up first for testimony. Welcome to committee, and you may proceed when ready.
Good afternoon. Chairman Brenner, Vice Chair Blessing, Ranking Member Ingram, and members of the committee, Thank you for the opportunity to testify in favor of House Bill 326, which aims to make the Classic Learning Test college entrance exam an option for Ohio students. I'm Michael Torres, the Policy Director at Classic Learning Initiatives, which makes the CLT, along with other standardized assessments. The CLT was founded in 2015 by a former public school teacher and college counselor who came to recognize widespread frustration with the SAT and ACT. The two exams had again been rewritten in 2014 and the schools and students he worked with at the time had to simply accept the changes whether they liked them or not because no alternatives existed So he decided to create that alternative The following 11 years have proven the desire for this alternative to college admissions exam duopoly among students, families, and educational institutions. Last year, we administered nearly 200,000 CLTs, up from 20,000 just a few years ago. We now partner with 340 colleges and universities across the country, including major publics such as the universities of Florida, Florida State, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, and the U.S. Service Academies. And that number does not include the university systems of North Carolina, Georgia, and Indiana, each of which will soon be accepting the CLT. This momentum is in part driven by the policymakers in several states who have made changes to allow for choice and competition in college admissions testing. As you consider doing the same via HB 326, you may wonder how can we be sure that the CLT is a valid test on par with the other options? Well, in the last two years, the CLT has been reviewed and approved by three state university systems and the DOD staff that makes the ASVAB.
Additionally, the departments of education in Florida, Wyoming, Louisiana, Indiana, and South Carolina have each reviewed and approved of the CLT for various programs, ranging from qualifying students for high school graduation, publicly funded scholarships, and public school accountability programs. Our concordance study has been used with zero issues by all 340 of our partner colleges, including 12 private institutions of higher education here in Ohio. And we have now published three predictive validity studies, proving that the CLT is as predictive, if not more, than the CLT with regard to predicting first-year, or than the SAT with regard to predicting first-year college GPA, including our latest study with Franciscan University here in Ohio that found the CLT to be 6% more predictive. HB 326 is a recognition of the need for competition in a marketplace that has remained stagnant since Dwight Eisenhower was president. We are honored that this committee is considering HB 326 and the CLT. Thank you. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much for your testimony today.
Do you have copies of those studies that you could give the committee that we could distribute?
Of course, they're on our website, and I believe I put a link to them in my written testimony, and I'd be happy to text them to you or email them to you.
Thank you very much.
If you do, we'll forward it to the members. Any questions from the committee? Ranking Member Ingram.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for that. So is the intent that each institution would accept any test that it chooses?
It would be that the institutions would accept all of the exams that are available, so that students could use whichever one they choose.
Well, what it says, though, is that if you choose one or the other, say if a college accepts the ACT, then they have to take the classical along with it. And the SAT. It would require all three, as I understand.
Okay, well, maybe we should check the language again, because that's not what it says.
All right. That was my understanding is that it would require all three exams to be accepted equally.
All right. Any other questions from committee members? Senator Smith.
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here. Yeah, I'm curious to see the validity studies also that you allude to in your testimony in the second last paragraph that you've published three predictive validity studies showing how the CLT compares to the SAT. So do you have a kind of a score equal number like this on the SAT is worth this Do you understand what I asking Yes Senator thank you for that question Those are two separate things Predictive validity studies kind of look at what how a test predicts first year GPA is the usual metric So if a student gets X score or if they, how likely are they to get an A or this GPA when they get finished with their freshman year.
Concordance studies align the scores between two separate tests. So before we were able to be used in Florida public schools and Florida universities, which was the first test to allow the CLT in the public institutions of education there, we had to create a new concordance study. Essentially, the Department of Education said you need to create a new one. So we did that. We hired four PhDs that did not work for us. They conducted the study, had an administration of the test among public school students. We completed that, submitted it, and they reviewed it and approved it. Once that was done, then the Florida legislature decided to move forward with adding CLT to graduate students from high school, allow them to earn dual enrollment, publicly funded scholarships, and then the university system approved it. So that has been established and reviewed by multiple university systems across the country, including, as I mentioned, the folks who make the ASVAB. So that does exist. It's on our website, and I can send you the chart.
Follow-up? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, yeah, thank you for that answer. But so do you, I guess I'm asking for the numeric value that the study suggested. So, and again, I don't know what your, I don't know what the CLT scoring range is. I don't know if it's one to 50 or whatever it might be. But I guess I'm asking that whatever the high end of that is, what is the predictive equivalent of what the first year GPA would be?
Oh, so you're not asking about the alignment between a CLT score and SAT or ACT score?
I think that was my first question, but then based on your answer, now I'm asking a slightly different one.
Oh, I don't have the studies in front of me to give this specific GPA. What I know the studies did find was the proportion of predictive value. That's how the researcher at Grove City College who did the first one put it together. He essentially took the finding from the SAT's self-published study that found they were X percent predictive of first-year GPA and then compared that to his research of CLT students and found that we were 6 percent more predictive than the SAT study. Or in Grove City's instance, it was 5 percent. At Franciscan's instance, it was 6 percent.
All up?
All right. I see no other questions. Thank you very much for your testimony today. Thank you very much. Up next is Nathaniel Beckman. Welcome to committee, and you may proceed when ready.
All right, thank you. Dear Ohio legislators, the Chesterton Academy of St. Joseph, a classical high school in Greene County, strongly supports House Bill 326. We have been using the CLT for the last several years to assess our students' college readiness and track their academic growth. We have found it to be convenient and well-aligned with our educational model and our values. As a normed, valid, reliable, and nationally accepted test, it does the work of the SAT and ACT with some other benefits. In particular, the reading comprehension section is drawn from time-tested sources, the sorts of things I want my children to read and think over. These readings are robust and longer than social media posts. As students grow into voting, into the voting citizens of our community, needing to weigh complex issues, they must able to read and comprehend more than just headlines. Its quantitative section is designed to be calculator-free, emphasizing mathematical and logical thinking over a calculator or jointness, which I personally support as a math teacher for 15 years. The CLT rightly maintains analogy questions since understanding analogy or metaphor is crucial for logical thinking and rhetorical speaking. We have seen that there will always be some amount of teaching to the test. When the SAT shifted focus, many curricula followed. This is another reason that we as a school value choice among different assessments. Since a standardized test is at least subtly going to affect what is taught, we need to have the option that is aligned with our discerned curriculum. When applying to colleges, our students send their scores to many of the hundreds of colleges and universities that currently accept the CLT. This includes private as well as state university systems. However, the Ohio State system is not yet on that list, but we can change that. So thank you.
Thank you very much for your testimony. Questions from committee members?
Ranking member Ingram. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Who scores the test?
The CLT company.
Follow-up? The CLT company?
Yeah, so similar to when you would proctor the SAT, so it would be proctored in school, and then we submit Scantron, very similar to how you would when you proctor the SAT, and we send that in and then it is scored, and we receive the scores back.
Follow-up? Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Scantron includes the verbal portion of that based upon the review?
Yeah, absolutely. So in the format of the test, with the reading aspect, it's not an essay as much as they have longer readings. So you expect about, say, 500 to 1,000 words in there, which is a distinction that we value. When you take the SAT, nowadays the reading size is about 150 words. So the texts that they're reading and responding to are longer, more robust, and then the way they answer them, It's still multiple choice in its format and has reading comprehension or grammar or things like that. Does that answer the question?
Follow-up? Thank you, Mr. Chair. And that's basically what they're reading in the classroom all the time, passages from particular texts.
Sure, yeah, absolutely. So the CLT has a lot of different authors that they draw from. A lot of them are – some of them are older. Say you might be reading something from Livy or Homer with translations. but you might also be reading something from the 20th century. But all the texts that they're drawing from are things that are sort of established in the canon. And so one thing that we really appreciate with that is when our students are, say, prepping for reading comprehension for this test, that means they're going to be practicing reading and understanding some things that we're going to be reading in the classroom anyway. Does that answer your question?
Thank you.
Senator Smith.
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Beckman, for being here. So it sounds like, how long have you all been offering the CLT? It says last several years. Yeah, so we've been doing it for four years. Okay. So I guess during those four years, follow up, Mr. Chair? Yeah. During those four years were your students also taking the ACT or SAT or were they only taking the CLT Great question So in school we been only proctoring the CLT Now, many of my students who are going to apply to different colleges, they may discern to also take the SAT, so many of them did that as well, which is, I think, pretty common for students in America. And one thing that also sort of drives that is, you know, depending on what college they're looking to go to, you know, some colleges would require them to take the SAT, as well. So they will do that. Follow up. Thanks, Mr. Chair. So do you have any data of your students who've taken both tests and kind of just, I mean, have you started to gather the data points of this score on an SAT seems to correspond with this score on the CLT? We have not gathered that for our own students, no. Okay. How many students graduate on an annual basis from the Chesterton Academy? St. Joseph. Yeah, so we are a small school, so our typical senior classes are about 20 students. So we're growing to, we have under 100 students currently. We are also part of a national network of smaller classical schools. Follow-up? All right. Would you be using this particular test? You believe it helps with your curriculum and then be able to, these kids pass the test and then goes on to schools, universities that may want to, in fact, follow kind of your classical curriculum and now you've even gone into, obviously, major universities of University of Florida and others are doing this. Is this essentially the essence of the idea behind it? Could you repeat the question? I'm not quite sure if I understand. CLT, is it being used for you because it meets the way you're teaching your students in the curriculum that aligns to is essentially what you're doing? And then you're saying that this would also align to many of the schools where these students may be going? Yes, so I think there's sort of two things in there. One of the reasons why we really do it is it does align with what we're doing in the classrooms, emphasizing things like we still teach logic as part of that. And so I see that this test maintains some of those aspects that the SAT used to have before it was changed about a decade ago. So it maintains some of those, and it aligns pretty well also with the sorts of questions and the sorts of things that you're going to be thinking about. I've had some occasions, which I really appreciate, where students afterwards will come and say, wow, that was a really interesting reading. I really want to think about that after the test. And that's the sort of thing that we really value in our school, the idea of taking these tests. Like when you sit for an exam, you're sitting for several hours. I'd love it for them to be learning something in that instance as well, instead of just using the assessment for evaluative purposes. And I believe this is sort of a personal belief or understanding for the universities that would be accepting it. Some of that is because they have maybe a liberal arts or a classical aspect, so sometimes they're accepting it for that reason. But then I do also understand that even universities that are not going to be having a curriculum that's classical can still value it for at least two reasons. One, perhaps as far as they're concerned, it does the same work of the SAT, right? And that might just be sort of good enough to get them a number, a numeric number. And I know for myself, there were some questions with Mr. Torres there. When we have our results back for the CLT, it also includes for the administrator that likely SAT score that they would have And so that something that I thinking as a university accepting those that could be a very helpful metric to compare right if they unfamiliar with the CO2 So basically you're saying you have like a crosswalk between the different tests? Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
Senator Smith, follow up.
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. So how long, I understand that you've been given the test for four years, How long has the Chesterton Academy existed? Yeah, so our particular school has been existing for just those four years, moving into our fifth year now. We are part of a network, a national network, that was originally sort of found in 2008. And so a lot of our curriculum and our pedagogy falls from that. Okay. Follow-up. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. All right, so of the four years, have you had a senior graduating class all four years? And if it's been 20 kids a year and maybe it hasn't, do you know how many of those 20 have gone on to higher education, college, that kind of thing? Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, great. So for our numbers, I don't have them directly here, but I would say on average, I'd say about 90, 95% of them go to a four-year college. Others enter into different trade schools for things like mechanics and local community colleges as well. And then we've had some use the CLT score for applying to places like the Air Force Academy to different private colleges as well.
All right. I see no other questions. Thank you very much for your testimony today.
Thank you very much.
Up next is, it looks like, Rocco Galizio, also from Chester Academy out of Akron. Hopefully I didn't butcher your name. Welcome to committee and you may proceed when ready.
You did all right. It's Rocco Galizio, but I'm used to it at this point in my life.
Sorry, I was thinking of Rococo, which was the various form of art at one point. When you're done here, you can come teach for me.
So, my dear committee members, thank you for the opportunity to come here today, and especially after hearing two other people testify in favor of this bill to allow me to add my humble voice. My reasons for supporting this are similar, finding the CLT to be able to do a great job akin to the SAT and ACT. but also one of the great things for our school up in Akron has been the fact that it is designed to be a testing mechanism in the classical space so when we use it for students coming into the eighth grade year for our high school or coming into a sixth or seventh grade program for our middle school, they are already being in the background assessed for how are they ready to come to a classical type of school, a school that is going to be demanding more in terms of long-form reading, in terms of critical thinking, in terms of really digging down into a text. How are they, like my colleague mentioned, how are they doing with things like traditional logic? Are they ready to take this on? And in passing this bill, what we will get for us is the ability to use the CLT as a more standard assessment. We will get the data back. I heard this committee talk about this just today about the importance of data success and data metrics By encouraging and making it available for our students to take this for college graduation we will get more information back and see how those scores line up across their four or six years with us. It will also help simplify our work. We will not have to worry about our students teaching to the test. We won't have to worry about taking time out for also SAT and ACT prep. We will be able to focus on what we do best. My staff, my teachers will not be losing more instructional time, which is always something appreciated by any teacher. So my colleagues have done a great job and taken most of my text. It was the privilege of being last that I get to watch my talking points be evaporated.
All right, well, thank you very much for your testimony. Are there questions from committee members?
Senator Smith. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Galizio. All right, my name's Smith. All right, so some of the same questions. How long has your school been operating, sir? So my school has been around for six years. We've been using the CLT for four and a half of those. Follow-up? And how many kids are you graduating a year, give or take? So our growth has been significantly slower than the Dayton school. We have had five students graduate. Of those, half of those have gone off to half, of two and a half. Two of those students have chosen to go on to higher education. Three of them have gone into the trades. Of the two who decided to go off to a four-year college, the schools that they went to, Franciscan, University of Mary. They also got into Benedictine as well. Follow-up? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm assuming that – well, I don't know, so I'll ask the question. Did those kids take the CLT and either the ACT or SAT? Do you know? The CLT and the ACT. I was never given the ACT scores, unfortunately, although I've pestered the parents for them. thank you very much for pestering parents what's the range no one's been able to answer this question admittedly I don't think I asked this to the last person who gave testimony what's the range of the CLT can you just kind of explain the scores thank you Mr. Chairman if I could ask a follow up to your follow up are you talking like what is the score range like 1 to 120 as the score that's it It is scored 1 to 120. There are three sections. I realize my colleague from the CLT is probably being like, this is my question. These are my answers. I know the score. But I happen to know this one, and I can help. So it is three sections, each one weighted at 40 points, so a total of 120. Okay. Follow-up. So are the three math, literature, or is there logic? I mean, what are the three categories? Thanks, Mr. Chairman. All right. Michael can test me and grade me later. I believe it is language, grammar, and reasoning. And quantitative reasoning is the last one. Quantitative reasoning being the combination logic-mathematics by and large. So reading, grammar, and... The first one is... Reading, writing, and math. Reading, writing, and math. There you go. I've got a question for you. if we were to we're contemplating an amendment for this bill to see if there could be a study done to compare the different tests to see so you'd have a like a crosswalk for the state so we could say okay ACT, SAT, CLT these are what you would expect score-wise this is where the students would perform and be able to go would that be something you as an individual in your school would would it be helpful would it you is it you think it's necessary what are your thoughts on that My thoughts are a little mixed. One of the reasons that we use the CLT is the network of trust that we get when we partner with the Chesterton Schools Network, because they are an international educational body. And they have found the CLT over the many years to be very helpful in both predicting success within their own schools and in the future for their students. So on the one hand, my intuition tells me that it would be a bit more affirming of what we already kind of know with our use in-house, if that makes sense to answer your question. It does.
Ranking Member Ingram. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I guess maybe my concern is in regard to when you talk about freeing up the teacher's time because now they don't have to prep for the ACT or the SAT, and I'm sure they appreciate that. My concern, though, is that when you talk about not teaching to the test, that unfortunately it seems like you are teaching to the test, even from the middle grades on because, as you indicated, we teach them by doing this work already, which then means when they get to test time, they know what kind of responses we're looking for
and what they should have. Yes, and that's a great question and a great point because, in essence, there is that very strong aspect that is we are teaching classical material that is going to be on the CLT. The difference for us is that, how do I want to put this? The difference for us in how we teach for the test is this test is designed for what we teach. It's a bit of a directional argument in that sense, if I'm making myself clear.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. You made yourself very clear. I do understand that because here again, the unfortunate part about the ACT and the SAT is many of those students have not been prepped since sixth grade to take that test the same way. Or if there are changes, I mean, somebody's testimony earlier said the ACT was changed and nobody knew anything about it. Oh, I remember my days of applying for colleges and going to basically separate schooling and tutoring so that I could take the ACT and the SAT. So the question becomes here again, as Senator Brenner just alluded to, how do you make that comparison as to your test that the students have been taught to, which will be the only ones taking it?
Because somebody from Cleveland Heights is not going to take the CLT. That's a good question and would probably take a little bit longer than I have here, just to offhand answer a question. I'm not sure if my colleagues actually would have a more ready answer for that one, and I don't want to just sit here and try to off the cuff and disrespect the question. I'm sorry.
All right Seeing no other questions thank you very much for your testimony today Thank you very much Members there is additional written testimony on your iPads With that that will conclude the second hearing on House Bill 326 We will now bring forward Senate Bill 326 for its fourth hearing. And it looks like we have Chris Orban up for testimony on it. Welcome to committee, and you may proceed when ready.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. So my name is Chris Horbin. I'm a professor at Ohio State. I do not speak on behalf of Ohio State today. I testified on this bill last month, so it's good to see everyone again. I published an article in the Ohio Capital Journal that some of you have read about the bill and some of the national debates. The public-facing bill has not changed, so my opinion on the bill has not changed, which is that I'm very excited to see a computer science graduation requirement, and my opinion is that there's some strong reasons to opt for a semester-long computer science requirement instead of a year-long requirement. The thing I want to emphasize in my testimony today is that in the United States right now, no state has fully or successfully implemented a computer science graduation requirement of any kind. Of the 12 states that are trying to implement a high school graduation requirement, None of them have gotten to the point where they've flipped the switch and said,
I'm sorry, son, you can't graduate this spring because you didn't take computer science or you didn't pass that computer science class. Ohio could be the first state in the country to successfully implement a one-semester-long computer science graduation requirement without highway-sized loopholes. Nobody's falling through their cracks. every single student is significantly engaging with computer science skills over the course of the semester. Ohio could be the first state to do that, and it would be a point of pride for our state to do that. So as the debate goes between a year and a semester, that would really be quite an achievement if we could pull that off. The thing I want to say in addition to that is that when I was here last month, I talked about how we need at least 6,000 more computer science teachers to pull this off. I'm looking at the analysis of this bill right now. I'm looking at page 3, and it says they estimate that right now there are about 1,300 teachers in Ohio who are certified to teach computer science, and there are 4,600 health teachers. So if you multiply 4,600 health teachers by two because the health requirement is only a half year, and then you subtract 1,300s, according to this report, we need almost 8,000 computer science teachers in order to pull off a year-long requirement, but if you do a semester-long, that becomes much less difficult to pull off. So that's one of the things that I wanted to say. Another thing to say is that if you look at the 2022 State Plan for Computer Science, in that report, it says I believe it's about 1,080 teachers. And so in the last five years, we've only increased the number of computer science teachers in Ohio by maybe about 200. And so I'm as excited as anyone about the Teach CS funding. Ohio State's grateful for the funding that we've received. I'm going to be helping to teach one of those courses this summer. But if you're pushing for a year-long requirement, you should be concerned that we've only increased the number of computer science teachers by that much over the last five years. The last thing I want to say is that there has been significant federal funding for computer science education research even private funding for that However the research questions that they focus on have been what advice should we give to the teachers to help them better to teach these computer science courses. The research has not been on what advice should we give policy makers who are weighing should we do a year-long requirement, should we do a semester-long requirement, should we do no semester at all, what are the pros and what are the cons. That has not been what the research has been focused on. And so there's not a lot to go on. This is the basis of my statement last time, which is that the tech companies that are pushing for this couldn't tell you why it has to be a year-long requirement. And it's not a, I'm not trying to throw snowballs at just the research basis isn't there. Another thing that has not been researched is that how can Ohio's great high school math classes that integrate computer science, like we were talking about with the math pathways earlier with the ESCs, there hasn't been research on how those great classes, which was in every single one of the districts represented here, how can those contribute to a statewide computer science requirements so that every kid gets exposed to computer science, whether it's in a computer science class or whether it's in a math class that has that content. And so a very important decision to make in this bill is how many hours of computer science instruction in courses outside of computer science, I'm talking about math and engineering and science, how many hours of computer science instruction should count for a computer science requirement? In the 2024 bill, that number was about 20 hours. I think up to 40 hours might be appropriate if you're going to ask me to write down a number. But that's a very important number to figure out because it determines how much flexibility the schools have in order to pull this thing off. So thanks for the opportunity again to testify. Thank you for your testimony today. Are there any questions from committee members?
Ranking member Ingram?
We did. Okay. Well, we can follow up with him later on that. Are there any questions from committee members? Seeing none, thank you very much for your testimony today. Thanks. We do have several written-only testimonies there, a proponent and one opponent on the testimony for this. This will conclude the fourth hearing on Senate Bill 326. Up next will be for its fifth hearing, Senate Bill 328. And we have testimony, first will be Willa Bluestone. Welcome to committee. You may proceed when ready.
Thank you. Chair Brenner, Vice Chair Blessing, Ranking Member Ingram, members of the Senate Education Committee, thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony in support of Senate Bill 328. My name is Willa Bluestone. I'm here on behalf of Ohio Life Sciences Association, representing Ohio's 4,900 life sciences establishments, a network of innovative companies, research institutions, and workforce partners advancing one of Ohio's fastest-growing industries. We are proud to stand in support of Senate Bill 328 and are appreciative of Senator Kaler's thoughtful dedication to the issue. At its core, this legislation recognizes something that we see every day in our work. Students need earlier, clearer, and more meaningful exposure to the wide range of career opportunities available to them. Too often, students are moving through middle and high school without that clear understanding of how their education connects to real-world careers. Senate Bill 328 would change that trajectory starting in middle school. By introducing structured career exploration between grades 6 and 8, this bill enables students to begin approaching their education through a more career lens at a critical stage in their development Rather than waiting until high school or even after graduation students have that opportunity to explore their interests, understand their strengths, and connect those to tangible career pathways. This is especially important in an industry like the life sciences, where awareness and early exposure are especially critical. Our organization has already begun working on issues like this, with initiatives like Biopathways. It's a K-12 career awareness program designed to introduce students and teachers to the breadth of opportunities within the life sciences industry. Through Biopathways and similar programs, we're helping translate complex, evolving career pathways into content that's engaging, accessible, and relevant for students, educators, and families. However, efforts like these highlight a harsh reality. While strong programs exist, they're not yet reaching every student in a consistent or coordinated way. Senate Bill 328 helps to create that structure needed to ensure that every student in Ohio, regardless of the school size, geography, or resources, has access to meaningful career exploration opportunities. This level of coordination is essential to ensuring equity, exposure, and opportunity across the state. Just as importantly, these early experiences do more than just inform students. They empower them. By connecting education to real-world pathways, students begin to develop a stronger sense of agency, ownership, and self-direction over their futures. They're not simply reacting to the options that are in front of them. They're learning how to evaluate those options, understand the long-term implications of their choices, and make informed decisions about the paths they pursue. That kind of awareness is vital, and it ensures that our next generation is not only prepared to take on the challenges and opportunities that they encounter, but equipped to fully understand the significance of their decisions that shape their futures with intention. The life sciences sector offers, again, an incredibly diverse range of career opportunities, everything from research and development to advanced manufacturing, quality assurance, logistics, and regulatory affairs. Most of these roles are evolving alongside scientific and technological advancements, and an increasing number of these don't require a two- or four-year degree. They're high-quality, meaningful careers with starting wages significantly above the state average, often about 40 percent higher. However, awareness of those opportunities does not happen and is not happening organically. It requires intentional, coordinated outreach, not just to students, but to educators, school counselors, and parents. It requires modern, relevant, and accessible materials that reflect the realities of today's workforce, and it requires strong partnership between education and industry. That's where Ohio Life Sciences and our network of partners are ready to contribute. Our members are eager to engage alongside school districts, schools, the state, and other partners to develop and deliver career pathway materials that best serve students. Centerville 328 explicitly allows and calls for these types of partnerships, recognizing that employers and industry organizations are critical to bringing career exploration to life. Just as importantly, it's not about adding burdens, but improving alignment, leveraging existing funding streams, integrating career exploration into current coursework, and allowing flexibility in how districts implement that programming. The inclusion of the Education and Workforce ROI initiative is another essential component here. By better utilizing the data the state already collects, Ohio will be able to understand which programs are truly delivering value for our students, tracking outcomes like employment, wages, and credential attainment without creating new reporting burdens for schools. This is essential not only for accountability, but for that continuous improvement we all strive for. For industries like ours, where workforce needs are evolving, having access to better data will allow the state to refine programs, target investments, and ensure that students are being prepared for real, in-demand careers. Ultimately, Senate Bill 328 is about more than career exploration. It's about helping students make informed decisions. It's about ensuring that every student, regardless of their path after high school, has access to opportunity. And it's about better preparing Ohio's future workforce to be fully engaged, productive members of society. We believe this bill represents a thoughtful, collaborative approach to strengthening Ohio's education to workforce pipeline, and we're committed to being an active partner in its implementation. Once again, Chairman Brenner, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity. I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much for your testimony today. Are there any questions from committee members? Seeing none, thank you very much for your testimony today. Up next is Tom Walsh from Glenn College at The Ohio State University. Welcome to committee and you may proceed when ready.
Mr. Chairman, I think you want to hear from the expert here that actually knows what they're talking about.
This is so Josh Hawley is actually going to be testifying.
I submitted it and I think it might have been.
That's quite all right. Well, then, Joshua, you may proceed when ready.
Thank you, Chairman Brenner, Vice Chair, Blessing, ranking member Ingram and members of the committee. Thanks for the opportunity to provide testimony today on Senate Bill 328 and to offer an overview of the Ohio Longitudinal Data Archive, also known as OLDA. My name is Josh Hawley. I'm a professor and director of the Ohio Education Research Center at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State. And I'm here to give you a little bit of a background of the Ohio Longitudinal Data archive and explain how what we do aligns with and can support the goals and frameworks of the proposed education and workforce return on the investment initiative, otherwise known as Senate Bill 328. The OLDA is Ohio's secure cross-agency data system currently, and it brings administrative records from multiple state agencies and shows how Ohioans can move through education, training, employment, and other major life events over time. It's operated by the Ohio State University's Ohio Education Research Center and another center that I am also associate director of, the Center for Human Resource Research in the College of Arts and Sciences, and it's under approved agency governance. It enables policy analysis, program evaluation, and research on policy and program outcomes. It launched in 2012 as a state-governed resource providing approved access to state administrative data through policy evaluation and research and currently contains records from five state agencies inside the Innovate Ohio platform. That's a critical detail. We use data from the Department of Education and Workforce, Department of Higher Ed, Ohio Housing Finance Agency, and Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, and Opportunity for Ohioans with disabilities. This is collectively known as the Hold Up Partnership. And as stated earlier, we work through the Innovate Ohio platform that DAS operates, where we are able to maintain privacy data linkages, we anonymize and de-identify records, and we prepare research data sets that do not have identification All access all access is governed by formal agency approvals by Ohio State agencies data use agreements and applicable state and federal privacy requirements. We've been doing this a long time and Ohio, OLDA has been able to provide trusted longitudinal data to determine whether Ohio's investments in education, training and credentialing our producing intended results. Some of our flagship projects include the Workforce Success Measures, which was developed in partnership with the Governor's Office of Workforce Transformation, ODJFS, ODEHE, and OOD, and that measures the employment and earnings outcomes of Ohio's public workforce training and higher education programs. I believe we've been operating that since 2014 or 2015. Another dashboard is the Ohio Higher Education Outcomes Dashboard developed with ODHE, and this displays the flows from Ohio's public colleges and workforce universities into the workforce. And then another set of tools with Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and ODHE visualizes Ohio's workforce supply and employment projections. Senate Bill 328 establishes the Return on Investment Initiative, and it is very much aligned with the cross-agency data linkage, the statewide longitudinal research capacity, the public dashboards and reporting tools, and providing policy-relevant, actionable analysis for decision makers. Several of the projects proposed in the ROI initiative in Senate Bill 328 are currently underway. We are doing high school graduate reports. We are producing a talent gap report. We have done and are continuing to do industry-recognized credential reports, and we have consistently done higher education graduate reports. Details of those reports are in the written testimony. OLDA provides a strong foundation for implementing the ROI initiative, and we're well positioned to help you expand reporting. The integrated governance structure proposed in the ROI initiative aligns with our OLDA existing cross-agency governance committees, and we support the enhanced transparency of 328's public engagement goals. In conclusion, Ohio has a strong foundation in place on this area. OLDA provides the secure data infrastructure, cross-agency governance, and analytic capacity envisioned in the Senate's Bill 328. and through strategic alignment without duplication, Ohio can quickly scale responsive statewide reporting, deepen its ability to evaluate return on investment, and ensure that every education and workforce dollar delivers stronger outcomes. Thank you very much, Chairman, for the opportunity to provide testimony. I'd be happy to answer questions.
Thank you very much for your testimony today. Are there any questions from committee members? I've seen none. How is this data already available? I mean, how would somebody get access or who would have access to this data? I know it's probably public, but how does the public or who would know about getting a hold of this data that's available?
Sure. So we have a website that is the, it's a state of Ohio website, OLDA, and you can apply to have access to the data. those applications would run through currently the directors of whatever agencies or their designees for approval Those files then are prepared inside the Innovate Ohio platform and de-identified and secured privacy. And then when agencies have given approval, my staff kind of prepares the research files that are then provided through the state system.
All right. And then we could probably, what you're suggesting here utilize this data to help with this bill and calculating return on investment for the students and everybody going forward.
I'm suggesting that much of the capacity that you envision in the bill, there's a good basis for it, and it would be useful to make use of some of that capacity from the past. In terms of return on investment specifically, the workforce success measures has done annual reporting of program outcomes for virtually all of the workforce programs for the last 10 years, and we have done pilots of actual kind of return on investment calculations. It's for several of the programs in the past.
All right. Well, thank you very much for your testimony today.
Thank you.
To the members, there are numerous proponent testimony on your iPads that are written only. With that, that will conclude the fifth hearing on Senate Bill 328. We now bring forward Senate Bill 311 for its third hearing, and we have Jeff Talbert, co-chair testimony from the Ohio 8 Coalition. Is Jeff here? If not, we will consider it written only testimony. There is additional testimony there. He is here. Okay, we'll hold up. While we're waiting, there is additional written only testimony on the iPads of both interested party and opponent. So, Jeff, welcome to committee. And you may proceed when ready.
Thank you. Chairman Brenner, Vice Chair Blessing, Ranking Member Ingram and members of the Senate Education Committee, my name is Jeff Talbert. I'm the co-chair of the Ohio 8 Coalition and the superintendent of Canton City Schools. I appreciate the chance to provide testimony on behalf of our coalition as an opponent to Senate Bill 311, in particular the school property, school board, and superintendent licensure provisions. School property. The existing mandate of forced sale of school property does not consider ongoing and typical realities of operating a school district, including the impact and implications of the following. Number one, shorten long-term master's facilities plans and swing space for construction, activity, and planning. Such plans should exempt any under-enrolled facilities that are a part of long-term facilities plans. Space for school district administration, buildings best utilized for administration and related programming should also be exempt. Number three, buildings with special equipment and programming including those that offer performing arts, medically fragile student services, students on the autism spectrum, school-based health services, and early learning programming have specific space needs Presently CareerTech buildings are exempt from existing closure mandates Other programming that is key to student success and parent preferences must not be forgotten in this bill. This bill rejects stated preferences of local residents and voters that have been asked to decide on the use or sale of school property or facilities. Any building impacted by voter, approved permanent improvement levies, and bond issues should be exempt. Additionally, if there are community development plans that provide for a greater good for the region, we need the flexibility to plan around that. If this law was in place during the original planning for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Village, we would have been forced to sell an elementary school building that sat in the middle of this very large economic development project. This bill forces the sale of property to a predetermined list of organizations instead of a third party that could pay at or above market price. This provision has the potential to force districts to sell property below market value and runs counter to what is best for the local district's ability to manage the community's investment in us, but also to reinvest those proceeds for either projects in the future or into current academic programming. With regard to school property, we ask you to remember the following. Under-enrollment does not mean a building is underutilized and should not automatically mandate closure. The arbitrary use of 60% enrollment to trigger closure and force sale of a building as such artificial thresholds do not reflect the reality of how a building is actually being used. When it comes to the use, sale, and reinvestment of school facilities and property, local districts and their community members are the best and most knowledgeable decision makers. When it comes to school board and superintendent licensure, similar to the written testimony of our colleagues from BASA, OSBA, and the Alliance, the Ohio 8 Coalition has concerns with this provision in Senate Bill 311 that eliminates a school board's qualified immunity and allows the Ohio State Board of Education to revoke a superintendent's license for purposely violating the law. As it relates to student transportation, we believe these punitive measures are counterproductive. We respectfully request the removal of these provisions and recommend instead the General Assembly consider broader systemic solutions such as those that the Ohio 8 Coalition has testified for several budget cycles as well as recommendations identified by the Student Transportation Work Group related to clearer definition of rule and Ohio Revised Code on transportation and practicality. The Ohio 8 Coalition is supportive of Senate Bills 311 improvements made to public school district governance including expanded timelines and improved processes to fill board vacancies, streamlined wrap-back notifications across all types of schools. The Ohio 8 Coalition would like to thank the committee for the consideration of our testimony and I'm happy to answer any questions and happy to provide you with insight about the Kansas City School District.
All right. Thank you very much for your testimony. Are there any questions from committee members? Senator Smith.
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Talbot, for being here. Your testimony reminds me of the experience that I had as a school board member in the city of Euclid in the early 2000s. And, you know, the timeline of that being that we had closed elementary schools. around 1990 because our enrollment dropped during the 80s so that we sort of had more facilities than we needed. And then in the 1990s, we saw our enrollment increased by 1,000 students from, I want to say, from about 5,000 to 6,000. And at that point, we were overcrowded at the elementary school level. And I literally ran in 2001 on the platform saying, we are overcrowded at the elementary school level. We have buildings that are mothballed right now. We have to do a permanent improvement levy to get these buildings up to speed to reopen them to reduce class size. And voters sent me into office, and after one term, we were able to do just that. And our test scores improved as our class sizes dropped. But, you know, again, the time life of the building is much longer than the enrollment kind of cycles that, you know, and it's the local officials that have to make the case to taxpayers as to why this building is open, why this building is closed. I guess I want to ask whether or not the scenario that I just kind of described is the type of way that this bill could harm some long-term asset management that in the end, I think saved Euclid taxpayers' dollars because when enrollment increased, we then didn't have to build three new elementary schools, we could reopen buildings. And so we're kind of faced with that right now. Plans shift over time. There was this move to grade level buildings to create efficiencies and to help get more teachers at more grade levels in a building to help with curriculum purposes and to provide more services for students. And that was something that Canton did for a long time. Then the community asked us, we want to go back to neighborhood schools. And we passed a bond issue just to do that. But if buildings weren't around that we got rid of or closed that were underutilized during that time, we wouldn't have been able to make this shift. And so all of our buildings were a part of that. And so we just asking for that control to remain for the board to have that opportunity When we went back to our board to talk about this plan actually getting out of some buildings and selling buildings and using that revenue to make improvements to buildings that will come back online are part of that But if we're not in control of selling those buildings, then we can't get the type of money that we believe we can get. And so those are the things that we're asking for you to look at when crafting such a bill.
Follow-up? I'm going to kind of follow-up, actually, with Senator Smith's question, and maybe you can expand upon this.
So the reason this is in the bill is because we've had complaints basically coming from community schools who have said that buildings have been sitting vacant. They've put in requests to purchase those buildings. Nothing happens. and then in the case of one here even in Columbus as an example, it would sit there for four years and then it was torn down. And the concern is that they're being underutilized or not being utilized where they could be utilized for like a community school or something else. In the last few years under the Ohio 8, how many schools have been sold to a community school for utilization or how has this become an issue for the traditional schools who are saying, look, we do have plans and our master plan is showing for the next four years or five years that we're going to redo this site and build a brand new elementary or whatever the case is. Can you give me some more information on that whole area? I can give you, and I can speak on Canton because we've been really heavy into this. So I've been in Canton for six years. Year one, we did a facilities plan. We had a middle school that was used for adult ed that was falling apart. We knew we wanted to build larger buildings so that we can consolidate and then we could go back to neighborhood schools. We tore that building down, that building, that property is being constructed. Down the street from that building was an old elementary school that was sitting empty. We followed the law, offered that school to charter schools within our community. None of them wanted the building So then we tore that building down WE LATER SWAP THAT property with the city who going to build homes there And for that swap we received Munson Baseball Stadium which is now our high school baseball facility And last year brought us in over $250,000 in revenue to support our athletic programming, taking that weight off our general fund. Coming up this spring, we're closing two buildings, for sure closing two buildings. Those buildings have already been appraised and those buildings will be up for sale and anybody can come and get them. But the part of that sale for us is to get those dollars to put into another building that we're going to expand so we can put more kids in it. We have a third building that will be empty after next year. That building sits in a very bad place that we believe is a bad place for a school to be anymore. When they built it, there wasn't a major thoroughfare right behind it. There wasn't a major road in front of it. It is a traffic nightmare. And it's wrapped around two sides by a car dealership that wants to grow and wants to be there, and the city needs to remain. There's one of two remaining car dealers left in the city of Canton. The city wants that property for economic development, which will help keep that business in town, which is good for everyone. But losing the control of that locally will hurt us with that. I think every district has their own situations and why. I think the law that is currently in place has things in place for us to look at. But making it and forcing us to sell to certain groups of people, having the part of the law that says it has to be a lottery, where even if there's multiple schools who are bidding for it right now, if we have multiple schools who are bidding for it, we can get a fairer price. But if it's a lottery, that price is going to be pushed down. And that's going to hurt our ability to do the things we need to do to remain fiscally responsible. All right. And the example that you just gave, actually, of the one that's by the car dealership, do you think that that would be sold to a potentially a community school or another school? Or do you think it would probably not? You put it up, they don't buy it, and then you'd turn around and do that like you've done with the other. The old law before had us market that to the charter schools within our community. right and if they didn want it then then at that point in time we could put it up for bid and we could sell it to and that would help us that would be able to work but now after we go to our local community this bill would have us go out even further so who knows who would come and chances are if someone could get a building and operate a school and make some money that that would happen and again that's asking someone who is not vested in our community to now come in when there are people in our community, our mayor, right, our mayor, there are business owners, folks in the community would love to see that business stay. And one more thing with the building, we have a building right now that we are using for
administrative purposes, for storing, and it is swing space for moving. If that building were to be sold, that building right now, half of it is used by our city for police and fire training. They use it to train their dogs. They use it to train their teams to come in if there's emergencies in schools. and this winter it was used as a warming facility for our community where we partnered as a school district with the mayor to provide space for our neediest people in the community and again that's a community hub that people they wanted that building used that way when we closed the building they said is this going to be a community facility for us or are you going to tear it down and we promised them we would leave it as a community facility they play bocce ball in there and so this takes that away, that option and that opportunity away from the school districts and the local folks to make that choice. Thank you very much for your testimony on that. Appreciate it. To the members, there is additional testimony, interest of party and opponent testimony on your iPads for Senate Bill 311. With that, that will conclude the third hearing on Senate Bill 311. Up next is House Bill 455, Representatives Manning and Byrd. We have only written testimony today on that. We have two of those, one from the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the other one from the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors Association. With that, that will conclude the fourth hearing on substitute House Bill 455. With nothing else to come before the committee, the committee is adjourned. Thank you.