With many Ohio students back in school, officials and lawmakers are hoping to prevent a possible crisis in education like the one that had them scrambling to find alternative graduation requirements for the state’s high school juniors and seniors for the last two years.
The current state budget includes a set of graduation alternatives to help as many as one-third of the class of 2018 who, it appeared, wouldn’t meet the existing requirements.
A committee of principals, superintendents and teachers has been meeting every other week, and Senate Education Committee Chair Peggy Lehner said she’s hoping to see some long-term recommendations from that group soon.
“I’m hoping that the legislature will look at that and say, let’s reconsider something temporary for ’19 and ’20 and move to the more robust system further down the road,” she said.
Lehner said longer-term requirements likely wouldn’t go into effect till at least 2021. Some lawmakers said they’re worried about the effect of extending the alternative standards instead of imposing stronger requirements now.
