POLICY UPDATE: NEXT STEPS
August 11, 2008
The Ohio Department of Education has completed the collection of public comments during the first formal phase of their review of the state home education regulations. Over a three week period of time 8,733 comments were received by the ODE! Our deepest appreciation is extended to each and every person who took a few minutes to log onto the ODE’s comment page and provide a response to their request for public input! Your comments are a very important part of the process.
We now need to turn our attention to the State Board of Education. There is no meeting scheduled for the month of August. The next regularly scheduled meeting will be held on September 8 - 9, 2008 at the Ohio School for the Deaf in Columbus.
The ODE is expected to make a presentation to the Capacity Committee of the State Board of Education. This committee typically meets on the Monday morning of the two day meetings. As soon as the time schedule is released to the public we will post it, along with a confirmation of the committee’s agenda. We anticipate the ODE staff will provide their analysis of the public input and make a recommendation to either move forward with revisions to the regulations or to notify JCARR that revisions will not be sought at this time.
We will provide a detailed summary of the ODE’s presentation and the discussion of this policy issue among committee members by the end of the day on September 8th. Please feel free to check back for updates and suggested steps of involvement as this process moves forward.
State Board of Education Elections - 2008
The State Board of Education election is nonpartisan. Because Ohio has a hybrid board of appointed (8) and elected (11) members, this election may be the most important for home educating families and citizens who care about protecting the rights of parents to make the decision of how their children will be educated.
The filing deadline for nonpartisan candidates for the State Board of Education is August 21, 2008. Of the 11 elected state board districts, SEVEN will be up for election as follows:
District 1 - currently held by LouAnn Harrold
District 5 - currently held by Colleen Grady
District 6 - open seat
District 7 - currently held by Heather Heslop Licata (note: Ms. Licata was appointed to this seat after Tom Sawyer was appointed to an open Senate seat. Assuming she runs for re-election, it will be her first campaign for the seat.)
District 9 - open seat
District 10 - currently held by Jane Sonenshein (note: Mrs. Sonenshein ran unopposed for her first term in 2004)
District 11 - open seat
The incredible importance of this year’s State Board race is that the total number of counties represented by the districts in this year’s campaigns are all or part of 70 out of 88 counties! This means every family will virtually have a campaign in their backyard.
Please visit www.ode.state.oh.us and click on State Board of Education to find the state map depicting each district. These are very large districts and candidates will benefit from the involvement of caring citizens. Once all candidates have filed, we will post the names and contact information. Please consider getting involved with one of these important campaigns.
melsey | August 12, 2008