House Bill 318 makes changes in Ohio schools
Words by Ashton Vogelhuber
Ohio schools will see many changes due to House Bill 318 in the upcoming school years.
The bill targets school safety and security, positive behavior intervention and support,suspension and expulsion procedures. The bill was passed in June and went into effect on Nov. 2.
The changes in the bill can be found in the document below.
Orrville Elementary School (OES) in Orrville, Ohio, has already started to implement some of these new efforts. Beverly Waseman, OES principal, said they had to be aware of other alternatives to suspensions beginning this year.
“You have to become more creative and proactive on ways to service those students who would traditionally have been suspended but now will remain at school because they are not a harm to themselves or anyone else,” she said.
Ashley Vargo, OES assistant principal, said the district has added mental health professionals and counseling services that have helped tremendously.
“It’s just finding unique ways for those students and how we can support them and it’s no longer now having them in ISS or out of school suspension,” Vargo said.
The bill also separates kids into three categories of behavior to determine whether suspension is needed. Category 1 and 2 are still suspendable offenses.
Category 1 is the most serious offense and includes bringing a firearm to school, possessing a knife that’s capable of bodily harm or making a bomb threat.
Category 2 is an offense that the district or school determines suspension is necessary to protect the immediate health and safety of the staff and other students.
“When you look at the category three, which is primarily what we deal with,” Waseman said. “Which is truly back to the disobedience, disrespect, apathetic learner, frustration level for teachers because they won’t cooperate with what needs to happen within a classroom setting.”
Reaching these category three kids is a main priority for OES. Vargo said constantly working with the school’s student coordinators, Kelly Ryan and Brad Fortune, and their counselors is a great way to achieve this.
“We’re revamping that whole framework and that’s basically identifying students who have needs and how can we support them so no longer is it just academics, but we’re also focusing on those students,” Vargo said. “Now we can create and have been creating behavior plans which target what behavior do we want to reduce,what are the steps we’re going to take to get there and what’s the incentive for the students to make this happen?”
The bill also gives schools a time frame for certain goals to be met regarding suspension rates. By 2020-2021, schools should have suspension rates reduced by 100 percent.
Along with new suspension restrictions, the bill adds qualifications and training requirements for school resource officers. In the second half of the 2017-2018 school year, Orrville added an additional resource officer who splits his time between the elementary and middle schools.
“Within Orrville Elementary, we’ve had a resource officer for about five or six years,” Waseman said. “But I would say it was not someone who was dedicated to Orrville Elementary. We shared that position with the middle school and the high school and when there was really nothing big going on in the school setting, the person was still a patrolman or detective.”
Per the bill, resource officers who are appointed on or after Nov. 2 must complete,within one year after appointment, at least 40 hours of specialized training.
OES resource officer, Doug Miller, completed a week-long training session this fall.
“Most of it was classroom lectures,” Officer Miller said. “A lot of it was experience based, what to do and what not to do.”
Officer Miller said having security resource officers present who had been through a school shooting added invaluable information to the training.
“My highest priority is security,” Officer Miller said. “I walk through the schools and I make sure the doors are locked and talk to the kids when I have the chance. I spend a lot of time out at recess and lunch, just being seen by the kids and talking to them.”
Vargo said having Officer Miller around is great for the kids.
“A lot of our students have experiences with police officers that may not be good,” Vargo said. “So, it’s nice to have. He’s a part of our mentoring program, so especially for the young males here that needed nice positive male role models.”
Positive Behavior Intervention and Support, PBIS, is a system-wide framework that’s designed to improve academic and social outcomes and increase learning for all students.
“The new bill requires everybody has a refresher training and it’s offering alternate solutions to situations that’s not just discipline based giving rewards,acknowledging good behavior, being very proactive on setting students up for success before something happens,” Waseman said.
