Week In Review
 
Each weekend, the BASA staff reviews the news affecting Ohio education and prepares and edits a short summary of the most important items.  The weekly one-page summary is designed to remind and inform busy school leaders of the issues about which they might be asked during the week.
Current and Historical Reviews (4 Weeks)
  • January 30, 2012 Legislative Update
     
    Week in Review
    Friday, January 27, 2012
    EDUCATION
    State Superintendent Stan Heffner noted this week that while Ohio dropped to a C+ in Education Week's
    2012 "Quality Counts" report, the state actually rose from 11th to 10th place and surpassed the national
    average by two grade steps.
     
    School Choice Ohio cheered the past year's events at an agenda-setting press conference, highlighting
    the expansion of the EdChoice program and creation of a special-needs scholarship, while also laying
    out plans for 2012.  Among the group's goals are helping to win passage of HB136, Rep. Matt Huffman's
    (R-Lima) proposal for a new voucher program whose eligibility requirements would be income-based,
    rather than determined by the quality of a potential recipient's nearby public schools.
     
    Gov. John Kasich's office announced former Reynoldsburg City Schools Superintendent Dick Ross as the
    next director of the Governor's Office of 21st Century Education, replacing Bob Sommers, who leaves at
    the end of January to start a consulting firm.
     
    State Superintendent Stan Heffner is directing educators to a series of webcasts during the next few
    weeks to address topics such as Ohio's new Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant, new
    student assessments being developed as part of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College
    and Careers Consortium, and student body-mass screenings.
     
    State Superintendent Stan Heffner announced the first-round award of Race to the Top (RttT) mini-
    grants this week to 10 school districts and three charter schools for new teacher evaluations based on
    student growth.
     
     
     
     
     
     
  • January 23, 2012 Legislative Update
    Week in Review
    Friday, January 20, 2012
    FY12-13 BUDGET
    Gov. John Kasich said the mid-biennium budget review follow-up bill will debut "soon" but declined to
    be more specific than that.  He said members of his administration met over the weekend to pare down
    a list of about 250 possible topics for inclusion in the bill.  Chancellor Jim Petro has said legislative
    language related to "enterprise universities" could be in the bill, and Office of Health Transformation
    Director Greg Moody said this week his agency is seeking a simplification and streamlining of eligibility
    procedures for health and human services in the bill.
     
     
     
     
     
     
  • January 16, 2012 Legislative Update
    Week in Review
    Friday, January 13, 2012
     
    FY12-13 BUDGET
    State revenues for December failed to reach expectations by $23.8 million or 1.5 percent, with both the
    non-auto sales tax and the personal income tax coming in below estimates: the non-auto sales tax by
    $17.9 million and the income tax by $21.8 million. But for the first six months of the fiscal year,
    revenues remain over estimates by $77.1 million or 0.9 percent.
     
     
     
     
  • January 9, 2012 Legislative Update
    Week in Review
    Friday, January 6, 2012
    Note: The following summary encompasses events occurring during the final week of
    2011 as well as the week of Jan. 2, 2012.
     
    CONSTITUTIONAL MODERNIZATION COMMISSION
    The Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission met for the first time Dec. 28, naming as co-chairs House Speaker William Batchelder (R-Medina), sponsor of the legislation creating the commission, and Rep. Vernon Sykes (D-Akron). The first 12 legislative commission members voted to set a deadline of Jan. 31 for applications to fill the additional 20 commission seats.