Prepare Ohio Schools for the Next Generation

Protect classrooms, strengthen career pathways, plan for growth, and prepare Ohio for a changing federal role in education.

Ohio cannot build an education system around the assumption that Washington will always provide the same money, programs, or administrative support.

The federal government is already debating a smaller role in education. Whatever happens in Washington, Ohio will still be responsible for educating children, supporting students with disabilities, preparing young people for work or college, and making sure growing communities can keep up with enrollment and facility needs.

Education policy should be built for decades and generations, not the next election cycle.

Protect classrooms before bureaucracy

When budgets tighten, students and teachers should not be the first place government looks for savings.

Ohio should review education spending with a simple priority order:

Protect classroom instruction and services students directly rely on.
Protect legally required and high-need services, including special education.
Reduce duplicated reporting, unnecessary administrative work, and fragmented purchasing where savings are possible.
Publish the tradeoffs before shifting costs to districts, families, or local property taxpayers.

The point is not to pretend every district can operate the same way. Rural, suburban, urban, fast-growing, and high-poverty districts face different pressures. Ohio should compare genuinely similar districts, identify practices that work, and make the information public without forcing every community into one model.

Create an Ohio Education Independence Review

Ohio should conduct a six-month public review of every major federal education dollar, mandate, administrative function, deadline, and data system on which Ohio schools currently rely.

The review should:

Identify which programs are required by federal law and which depend primarily on federal administration.
Map federal funding for special education, low-income students, school meals, career and technical education, and other major programs.
Identify functions that could shift to another federal agency or back to the states.
Produce budget and legislative options for protecting essential services if federal funding or administration changes.
Identify duplicated reporting, overlapping programs, and administrative requirements that could be simplified.
Publish district-level impact estimates before the General Assembly makes major funding changes.

Preparation is not panic. It is basic stewardship.

Ohio should use federal dollars wisely while they are available, but we should also know exactly what we would do if those dollars or administrative systems change.

Strengthen career and technical education

College should remain an open path for students who want it, but it should not be treated as the only path to a successful life.

Ohio needs electricians, welders, nurses, machinists, technicians, construction workers, advanced manufacturing specialists, cybersecurity workers, and skilled tradespeople. Schools should make those careers visible before students are asked to take on large amounts of debt.

I support:

Expanding partnerships among high schools, career-technical centers, community colleges, apprenticeship programs, unions, and local employers.
Making industry-recognized credentials and apprenticeships easier to earn before graduation.
Giving students better information about local wages, job openings, training time, and expected debt before choosing a path.
Allowing qualified career professionals to teach or mentor through practical, accountable pathways without unnecessary licensing barriers.
Measuring programs by completion, placement, wages, credential value, and employer demand, not only enrollment.

Workforce policy should begin before someone is unemployed.

Plan school capacity alongside growth

Housing and economic development decisions create school impacts. Ohio should stop treating those systems as unrelated.

When large developments receive state support or when communities experience rapid growth, local leaders should have clear information about expected effects on:

Enrollment.
Transportation.
Classroom capacity.
Special education services.
School construction and maintenance.
Local property-tax pressure.

The state should improve coordination among school districts, local governments, transportation agencies, utilities, and economic-development programs so communities can plan infrastructure before growth becomes a crisis.

Public incentives should never hide the local costs they create.

Protect special education through any federal transition

Families of students with disabilities should not become collateral damage in a fight between Columbus and Washington.

Ohio should identify every federal funding stream, administrative function, and compliance responsibility connected to special education and publish a continuity plan before any major federal change takes effect.

That plan should explain:

Which protections remain required by federal law.
Which administrative responsibilities Ohio may need to assume.
What funding gaps could emerge.
How districts will be supported during a transition.
How parents can understand and enforce existing rights.

The state should not wait until a federal office closes, moves, or changes responsibility before deciding who answers the phone.

Give teachers and districts clearer rules

Good teachers should spend more time teaching and less time navigating redundant paperwork.

Ohio should:

Review recurring reports and data submissions for duplication.
Standardize forms and definitions where possible.
Expand shared purchasing and administrative services when districts choose to participate.
Publish clear timelines for state approvals, reimbursements, and program decisions.
Give districts reasonable notice before major reporting or funding changes take effect.

Accountability matters. So does administrative competence.

A rule that consumes hours of staff time should be able to explain what problem it solves.

Keep local control meaningful

Parents, teachers, school boards, and communities should remain central to decisions about local schools.

The state has legitimate responsibilities for constitutional rights, funding rules, academic transparency, special education, safety, and statewide standards. It should not use those responsibilities as an excuse to micromanage every local decision.

Local control should mean real responsibility, not abandonment. The state should set clear rules, provide dependable information, enforce rights consistently, and give communities room to solve local problems.

Give families options without hollowing out public schools

Parents should have meaningful choices for their children's education. I am also wary of voucher systems that treat the full public-school per-pupil allocation as portable cash.

A school district's costs do not fall dollar for dollar when one student leaves. The building, bus route, teacher, special-education staff, and other fixed costs often remain. A school-choice policy should give families a real option without quietly destabilizing the public system that still serves most children.

I am more comfortable studying a capped parent tax credit or modest scholarship than automatically transferring the full per-pupil amount. One model worth examining would tie assistance to a family's own state tax liability, or to the public costs actually avoided when a student leaves a district, rather than treating the entire school-funding allocation as an individual entitlement.

Whatever model Ohio uses should:

Make the fiscal effect on the student's home district public before the policy is adopted.
Keep local property-tax revenue from being quietly converted into a statewide voucher.
Require schools receiving public money to meet clear financial, safety, and transparency standards appropriate to the program.
Give parents understandable information about cost, academic outcomes, student growth, safety, and services.
Review the program regularly to determine whether it is expanding meaningful choice without creating hidden costs for taxpayers or districts.

Choice should not mean a blank check. Neither should public schools be protected from every form of competition.

Test less and measure growth better

Students should not spend large parts of the school year taking test after test because adults want another metric.

Ohio should meet federal testing requirements and maintain enough statewide assessment to understand whether students are learning. Beyond that, the state should reduce duplicative testing and make every mandated assessment justify the instructional time it consumes.

I support:

Using statewide tests primarily to measure student growth over time, identify learning gaps, and give parents and the public useful information.
Avoiding funding formulas that mechanically punish a school because one test score moves in one year.
Publishing a clear testing calendar and the total instructional time consumed by required state assessments.
Reviewing state testing mandates for duplication and eliminating assessments that do not provide information teachers, parents, or policymakers actually use.
Giving districts and teachers room to use fewer, better formative assessments instead of creating a cycle of benchmark tests and test preparation.
Reporting both achievement and growth so schools serving students who begin behind are recognized when those students make substantial progress.

Testing should help adults understand how students are doing. It should not become the purpose of school.

The standard

Ohio's education system should prepare children for adulthood, not merely move them through a system.

That means strong classrooms, protected services for vulnerable students, honest career information, practical workforce pathways, responsible local planning, and a state government prepared for changes Washington may make.

The question is not simply how much Ohio spends.

The question is whether students, families, teachers, employers, and taxpayers are getting a system that works.