Senate committee hears overview of Ohio school-transportation law; department details impracticality rules, payment-in-lieu and penalty structure

Jenny Stump, chief of policy and legislative affairs at the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, gave the Senate Education Committee a detailed review of state student-transportation law, outlining who is eligible, how districts may declare transportation “impractical,” payment-in-lieu rules, allowable transportation modes and statutory penalties for noncompliance.

Stump reviewed eligibility criteria that state law sets for resident-district transportation: K–8 students who live more than two miles from school, students with physical disabilities who cannot walk to school, students whose IEPs require transportation, and open-enrollment students on parental request within resident-district boundaries. By default, responsibility rests with the resident district; community schools may assume responsibility but then must follow the same laws as districts.

Stump explained two common exceptions to required transportation. First, a district need not provide transportation if the bus-drive time between the student’s assigned public school and the actual school the student attends exceeds 30 minutes; the timing is performed during the bus’s actual route time and may be re-timed by the department at a parent or school’s request. Second, a district may declare a student “impractical to…