House Education Committee adopts substitute to allow Ashtabula waiver after Lakeside High roof collapse

The Ohio House Education Committee on an initial hearing approved a substitute to House Bill 43 that would allow the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to waive up to 24 hours of instructional time for the Ashtabula Area City School District after a winter roof collapse rendered Lakeside High School temporarily unoccupiable.

The substitute — adopted by the committee without objection at the first hearing and later favorably reported — is written as an uncodified measure applying only to Ashtabula for the current school year; it includes guardrails intended to prevent the waiver from becoming a precedent for routine calamity-day relief and requires graduating seniors to demonstrate competency under existing state graduation pathways.

Committee members said the measure is narrowly tailored to avoid broader changes to the state’s instructional-time rules. Vice Chair Odioso, who moved to adopt the substitute, told the committee the bill “provides additional guardrails” and that the department “would be authorized to waive no more than 24 hours for the state of emergency, ensuring that this waiver does not become a free for all or waive any traditional calamity days.” The Legislative Service Commission staff…