The Ohio House voted Wednesday to replace Ohio’s controversial system for taking over struggling school districts, though debate on the issue remains far from over as the Senate works on its own plan.

The House proposal, which passed 83-12, seeks to eliminate the current academic distress commissions, where a state-controlled panel appoints a CEO that has broad, escalating authority to control nearly all aspects of a district’s operations. The House wants a new process, focusing on individual struggling school buildings, while not cutting off involvement from local officials.

Gov. Mike DeWine and lawmakers in both chambers are exploring alternatives to the current system, which has taken over districts in Youngstown, East Cleveland and Lorain, with Dayton on pace to join them in September. A district is taken over after three consecutive “F” grades, and nine other districts, including Columbus, are set to come under state control in 2020.

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Local districts and communities, particularly in Youngstown and Lorain, have pushed back hard against a system that quickly passed in the legislature with almost no debate in 2015. Lorain officials worry that if a change doesn’t occur soon, it could jeopardize a renewal levy on the November ballot.

“We as a state have overstepped our bounds. It’s a state takeover that usurps the will of the community,” Rep. Don Jones, R-Freeport, a prime sponsor of the bill, said of the current process. “The lack of local control contributes to a number of unintended consequences.”

That, he said, includes low morale among district employees.

House Bill 154 would dissolve all current distress commissions and instead require district leadership at those three schools, starting July 1, to create improvement teams for each building that got an “F” grade the prior year. Those teams would conduct performance audits and develop and improvement plan submitted for the school board’s approval.

For districts not currently under state takeover, improvement team requirements would start in July 2020.

House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, said he moved the bill to provide a full debate and vote, with the intention of adding it to the two-year budget bill next week.

Associations representing school boards, superintendents and treasurers urged lawmakers to swiftly pass the bill, arguing that the focus on individual buildings is a better option.

“Our members have expressed the need to move to a tailored system of improvement that involves the locally elected board, existing administrators, teachers, and community members,” said Jennifer Hogue of the Ohio School Boards Association. “We believe that HB 154 will go a long way in building partnerships that will lead to successful student outcomes.”

DeWine included an overhaul of the academic distress commission system as part of his proposed two-year budget, allowing for some additional local controls but also starting the takeover process more quickly. School associations and some GOP lawmakers have advocated for pulling the language out of the budget.

Rep. Niraj Antani, R-Miamisburg, voted against the bill, arguing that the current law has not been given enough time to play out. “This bill completely guts any accountability for failing schools."

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy advocate, said the bill weakens intervention of poor-performing schools to the point of making it meaningless.

“Rather than providing important fixes for ADC implementation issues, HB 154 dismantles any sort of accountability,” said Chad Aldis, Fordham's vice-president for Ohio policy and advocacy.

The Senate Republican who has taken the chamber’s lead role in altering the distress commission process also isn’t sold on the House plan.

Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, has been working with a group of principals and superintendents to develop a different system to help chronically struggling schools. She said it’s vital that something pass before lawmakers break at the end of June, ending a takeover process “that causes far too much turmoil in a community.”

“It’s so much more complicated than so many people seem to think,” Lehner said. “We continue to want to ensure that children have access to a high-quality education and schools are accountable for those things.”

Lehner said she has talked to House leaders, and they share the same goals, but she is looking in a different direction than the House-passed measure.

The House bill "basically turns the solution back to people who haven’t been able to solve it up to now,” she said. “If they had the answers, they would have already tried it.”

Lehner said her pending proposal would have have districts use specialists in turning around school achievement. “I would like to see a situation where they have more resources available to them, perhaps some additional funding from the state, to bring in experts that they need to make long-term changes.”

The House bill also would repeal current law that requires a district to restructure the organization of any school building that finishes in the bottom 5 percent of schools in academic performance for three consecutive years.

jsiegel@dispatch.com

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