Day Care Hiring of Home Educated Students: Resolved!

First Home Education Legislative effort since 1989!

Home educators may recall Home School Legal Defense Association starting work last year (2010) on a controversial law that said that home educated students that were 18 years old could not work in a child day-care facility if they did not possess a state-issued diploma. This has been the case for several years.

http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/oh/200712190.asp

The home education regulations provide home educators with the complete freedom from state scrutiny of curriculum choice and thus, students that “graduate” from home education do not receive a state-issued diploma. Parents issue their own. Therefore, the past law was discriminatory against home educators and eliminated home educated students from obtaining employment in Ohio’s child day-care facilities.

In covert fashion, Ohioans for Educational Freedom’s director, Mark Stevenson, initiated continuing work on this issue with CHEO’s Melanie Elsey and HSLDA’s Mike Donnelley to put together a plan to insert language, as an amendment to the state’s biennial budget bill.

Mark and Melanie kept tabs of the amendment to confirm that the amendment made it through both chambers and a conference committee until it got to the governor’s desk. We are happy to release the news that this amendment was passed, and Ohio home educated students are no longer being discriminated against as they are now able to accept employment at a child day-care facility.

OEF is a statewide Political Action Committee for home schoolers in Ohio and is dependent on contributions from the grassroots home educating community and is in dire need. OEF recently got two State Board of Education members elected and one appointed by our governor, any these three, in addition to other conservatives on this board are making a huge impact on education policy in Ohio. Please support OEF, now, with your donations, today. OEF currently needs funds to keep its post office box open and development of campaigning tools at its web site to position OEF for wins in next years’ election of 7 more State Board of Education candidates. Also, needed are funds to develop materials to train our grassroots on campaign strategies, as well as raising our own candidates.

OEF, PO Box 8777, Canton, Ohio 44711-877 (make checks and donations payable to OEF or Ohioans for Educational Freedom.

Web site: http://www.ohioansforfreedom.com

Below is the text of the new language (underlined) that gives home educated students the new freedom to be employed by child day-care facilities. The language submitted made it through the budget process and is effective immediately. Please feel free to share this policy change publicly.

Here is a link to the bill. The revision may be found on p. 2048. The section actually begins on p. 2041.

Sec. 5104.011(B)(5)(b)(iii)

http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/BillText129/129_HB_153_EN_part3.pdf page 2048 of the document.

Page 48 of 1000 in the PDF file.

(5) All child-care staff members of a child day-care center shall be at least eighteen years of age, and shall furnish the director evidence of at least high school graduation or certification of high school equivalency by the state board of education or the appropriate agency of another state or evidence of completion of a training program approved by the department of job and family services or state board of education, except as follows:

(a)    A child-care staff member may be less than eighteen years of age if the staff member is either of the following:

(i) A graduate of a two-year vocational child-care training program approved by the state board of education;

(ii) A student enrolled in the second year of a vocational child-care training program approved by the state board of education which leads to high school graduation, provided that the student performs the student's duties in the child day-care center under the continuous supervision of an experienced child-care staff member, receives periodic supervision from the vocational child-care training program teacher-coordinator in the student's high school, and meets all other requirements of this chapter and rules adopted pursuant to this chapter.

(b) A child-care staff member shall be exempt from the educational requirements of this division if the staff member:

(iii) Is receiving or has completed the final year of instruction at home as authorized under section 3321.04 of the Revised Code or has graduated from a nonchartered, nonpublic school in Ohio.