Troy School Board reviews state-driven policy updates on cellphones, religious release time, parental rights and sex-designated facilities

At the March 10 meeting of the Troy School District Board of Education, district staff presented proposed revisions to multiple policies required by recent Ohio legislation and said the board will consider formal approval next month.

Mister Piper, a district staff member, said House Bill 250 requires districts to adopt a personal communication device policy by July 1, 2025, and that Troy already has varying rules across its buildings. “We have had a cell phone policy in place for many, many years,” Piper said, describing different approaches at each grade level: elementary students must keep phones in backpacks; the junior high uses red, green and yellow zones; and the high school relies on an adult-in-charge approach. He said the district consulted principals and the parent advisory committee and chose only minor revisions. “We didn’t feel like [locking phone bags] was something that we needed to do,” Piper said, describing other districts’ experiences with locked-storage systems as costly and difficult to manage.

Piper also described changes tied to House Bill 8. “The new House bill says that we must allow release time for religious instruction,” he said, and noted that the district plans to put guardrails around that release time to avoid removing students from graded core classes. On the same law, he said the district must adopt a parents’ bill of rights that includes parental notification regarding student health and well-being and access to instructional materials. “This law requires that we have a policy for it,” Piper said.

On another change, Piper described Senate Bill 104’s requirement that schools designate specific facilities — restrooms, locker rooms, shower and changing rooms, and other similar spaces — for exclusive use by a person of the male biological sex or female biological sex. He said this, too, is a new legal requirement and would be reflected in district policy.

Board members asked clarifying questions about the scope and implementation. A board member asked if the district would be required to adopt the most restrictive model policies offered by the state; Piper said the district reviewed model policies and is taking a “look-see” approach to avoid operational burdens. Another board member asked whether the district had data motivating new sudden-cardiac-arrest training referenced in the model interscholastic-activities policy; Piper said he had not seen data and that many changes were driven by state law rather than local studies.

The district presented the proposed policy language as a first reading; board members were told a motion to adopt will be on the agenda at next month’s regular meeting. No formal votes on the policy language were taken at the March 10 meeting.

The board’s next regular meeting will include the list of policies for formal consideration and a request for approval.