Board voices support of S.B. 216
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Supportive services and targeted intervention received by pupils in Bellefontaine High School’s Success Center will receive a boost through a $49,999 Ohio Department of Education Students with Disabilities grant accepted by the Bellefontaine Schools Board of Education at their Monday evening meeting.
This funding is the second phase of a grant that the district previously received that assisted with implementing the IMPACT coordinator position, Superintendent Brad Hall explained. The IMPACT program, which stands for Imagine Making Accountable Changes Together, began in the 2016-17 school year with the goal of identifying and coming alongside students who are struggling in school as a result of challenges faced in their personal and home lives.
Students can be referred to the IMPACT program by school staff members, their parents, court staff and others if they are identified as experiencing barriers to academic, social or community success.
The newly accepted grant will assist IMPACT program pupils as they move through the BHS Success Center, which started this school year and provides credit recovery options and a number of other supports for students to ensure that they can be successful in graduating high school.
Also during the meeting, board members voted unanimously in favor of a resolution supporting Ohio Senate Bill 216, which encompasses a number of different areas relating to public education, such as school district instruction and state testing, teacher education requirements, professional development and student attendance. The overarching goal of S.B. 216 is to return control back to local school districts and decreasing the burden of state mandates on public schools, the superintendent said.
Relating to student attendance policies, Hall said school districts in Ohio currently are required to send letters to parents once pupils miss a certain number of school days, whether those absences were excused or not. The bill would change that policy by no longer requiring excused absences to count toward an absence intervention plan.
“We want to restore the rights of parents to have some control over their child’s attendance, and for students to focus on getting better when they’re ill and being able to come back to school healthy and ready to learn again,” Hall said.
Read the full story in Tuesday’s Examiner.