CMSD Charter Office Newsletter

We hope you’re rested and ready to finish the next half of the school year strong!

We are almost ready to begin scheduling spring site visits at all of your schools. These visits, in addition to allowing us to verify legal and contractual items, help give us additional insight into what parents, students, and teachers experience at your schools. We also hope they provide you with helpful ideas and feedback related to your school priorities. We will plan to debrief with your boards at the end of the spring site visit process.

On April 1 we will be hosting our annual contract review meeting virtually, where we will be discussing required updates to our contracts to ensure they are aligned with changes in state law. It is mandatory that each board send at least one member.

We will be presenting the revised contracts to CMSD’s board for approval in May, and your board should plan to approve them by June 30.

One important reminder we’d like to share for the rest of the school year is that all board members and select school staff must complete public records and open meetings training by June 30.

Please visit the pages below for more information on available approved training:

Ohio Attorney General Trainings (scheduled; remaining dates are 4/2, 4/8, and 6/4):

https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/legal/sunshine-laws/sunshine-law-training

Ohio Auditor Trainings (virtual and on demand):

https://ohioauditor.gov/trainings/publicrecords.html

Thank you for choosing CMSD as your sponsor. Please let me know if there is anything we can do to support you and your schools.

Before the 135th Ohio General Assembly came to a close at year-end, the House of Representatives and Senate passed a number of bills including two of particular interest to K-12 education stakeholders.

Passage of legislation (H.B. 8) originally introduced as the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” and amended to include provisions of legislation addressing student release time for religious instruction was a priority to Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill). As anticipated, it was approved by both the House and Senate and sent to Governor Mike DeWine, who signed it into state law on January 8.

The new law, which becomes effective April 8, requires public schools to adopt policies by July 1, 2025, that promote parental involvement and establish requirements regarding sexuality content, school-provided healthcare services, and student mental, emotional and physical health and well-being. It maintains that a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child.

Schools will be required to ensure that sexuality content (defined as any oral or written instruction, presentation, image or description of sexual concepts or gender ideology provided in a classroom setting) is age and developmentally appropriate for students. It excludes from the definition instruction in, or presentations on, sexually transmitted infection education, child sexual abuse prevention and sexual violence prevention.

Prior to providing instruction that includes sexuality content, schools must provide parents with an opportunity to review the instructional materials. If required by a student’s parent, schools must excuse that student from that type of instruction and permit the student to participate in an alternative assignment. The new law will prohibit schools from providing instruction with sexuality content to students in grades K-3.

Provisions dealing with student healthcare and well-being address parental notification requirements. Parental involvement policies generally must require schools to adopt procedures for obtaining authorization from parents prior to providing any type of healthcare service to students. Schools must notify parents at the start of each school year of the healthcare services offered by the school and their option to withhold consent or decline any specific service.

Schools must also promptly notify parents about substantial changes to a student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being, including counseling services or the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment.

Policies must prohibit school personnel from directly or indirectly encouraging a student to withhold from a parent information about the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being or a change in services or monitoring related to the student’s health.

District school boards will also be required – rather than permitted, as under prior law – to adopt policies authorizing students to attend released time courses in religious instruction conducted by a private entity off school property during regular school hours. Boards must collaborate with the sponsoring entity of religious released time courses to identify a time to offer the course during the school day. Boards may require the sponsoring entities’ instructors and volunteers to undergo criminal background checks.

Governor DeWine also signed legislation (H.B. 206) passed by the House and Senate in December to allow schools to establish policies authorizing a district superintendent (or equivalent administrator) to expel a student for not more than 180 school days for actions that pose “imminent and severe endangerment” to the health and safety of other students and/or school employees.

Key provisions of the bill require:

• Development of conditions for an expelled student’s return, one of which must be an assessment by a psychiatrist or licensed psychologist;
• Conditions for reinstatement be provided in writing at the beginning of the expulsion period and given to the school board, the student, and the student’s parent, guardian or custodian;
• An assessment at the end of the expulsion period to determine whether the student has shown “sufficient rehabilitation” to return, allowing for a 90-day extension if necessary; and,
• Development of a plan for the continued education of the student during the expulsion period within 15 school days after the beginning of the expulsion period for students who do not have an individualized education program (IEP) or within 10 school days for those who do.

The new law also addresses an issue of particular interest to charter school stakeholders: automatic school closure exemptions. It exempts from closure requirements for the 2024-2025 school year any charter school that meets established closure criteria but, for any of the 2022-2023, 2023-2024 or 2024-2025 school years, receives a performance index score on its report card within five points below the score required to receive two stars on its achievement rating. Exempted schools will be required to close if they continue to meet the closure criteria in the 2025-2026 school year or meet the similar specified criteria in the 2026-2027 school year.

Leadership Series - Dealing with Anxiety and Trauma: The Power of One

2/26/2025

6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.

Dr. Stephen Sroka, an internationally recognized speaker, author, and motivational speaker who integrates cutting-edge research with reality-based strategies for dealing with the issues that face our young adults and youth today including, drugs, violence, bullying, suicide as well as mental health and school climate and safety. Sroka has spoken worldwide with The Power of One message, how one person can Make a Difference.

Location: 6393 Oak Tree Blvd., Essex Place, Independence, Ohio 44131

Cost: $30

Registration Deadline: 2/25/2025

To register: https://www.escneo.org/protected/EventRegistration.aspx?rCode=5GAGUB

A teacher’s toolkit: leap into engaging instruction

2/27/2025

9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Ready to elevate your teaching game? Join our professional development session to enrich your toolkit! Craft dynamic classrooms with practical tips for diverse learner needs. Explore eliciting student response techniques, evidence-based practice strategies, and the art of scaffolding.

Tailored for K-12 teachers and instructional leaders, this session incorporates effective writing strategies across all content. Walk away with practical strategies ready for your classroom tomorrow!

Location: 6393 Oak Tree Blvd., Essex Place, Independence, Ohio 44131

Cost: None

Registration Deadline: 2/24/2025

To register: https://www.escneo.org/protected/EventRegistration.aspx?rCode=5GAY0Y

How K-12 Principals can Leverage the Science of Reading Modules for Improved Student Outcomes

Series: 3/6/2025, 3/17/2025, 4/7/2025

9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

In his 2015 article published in Educational Leadership, Dr. Mel Riddile stated, “Nothing Significant Happens in a School Without the Personal Involvement of the Principal.” This three-day learning series is dedicated to assisting principals with the important role instructional leadership by leveraging the professional learning provided to all educators via the Department of Education and Workforce’s Science of Reading Modules.

Join Adolescent Literacy Specialist, Roger Howard, ESC Teaching and Learning Consultant, Kristi Sacha, and Urban Literacy Specialist, Jodi Snyder as they provide proven tools, resources, strategies, and advice for planning and implementing evidence-based adolescent literacy practices in the secondary setting.

Location: 6393 Oak Tree Blvd., Essex Place, Independence, Ohio 44131

Cost: None

Registration Deadline: 3/5/2025

To Register: https://tinyurl.com/SUPLIT25

Restorative Practice Discipline Training for Middle and High School Administrators

3/13/2025

1:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.

Disproportionate discipline and Chronic Absenteeism are issues facing the majority of school districts in Northeast Ohio. Restorative Practices, specifically aligned to the work district administrators do with students and families, may be one tool to mitigate these issues.

From conducting initial meetings with students when dealing with code of conduct infractions, to facilitating family attendance conferences, to holding suspension meetings with parents and students, to conducting expulsion hearings, to managing a reintegration meeting - restorative practices provide you with the ability to not only deal with the issue at hand, but to lessen the chance of the same infraction happening again. It may also stem the rising practice of appealing building and district-level discipline decisions to the Board.

Location: 6393 Oak Tree Blvd., Essex Place, Independence, Ohio 44131

Cost: None

Registration Deadline: 3/12/2025

To register: https://www.escneo.org/protected/EventRegistration.aspx?rCode=5GA3YB

Math in Words: Transforming Thinking Into Writing

Choose one or more sessions: 2/25, 3/4, 3/11, 3/20

3:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.

Learn how the evidence-based approach, the Hochman Method, as defined in The Writing Revolution, enhances writing, reading, and reasoning in math! Gain practical strategies and create activities to integrate seamlessly into your math instruction.

Location: Virtual

Cost: None

Registration Deadline: None

To register: https://escneo.zoom.us/meeting/register/Un5k_hw9QKyZKH-2aAtXHg

Teaching twice-exceptional students: Integrating special education and gifted strategies

3/25/2025

9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

This session will provide a brain-based discussion of the two over-lapping labels of giftedness and disability, explore this complicated interplay, and provide practical strategies that teachers can use to nurture outstanding talents and abilities while mediating for the impacts of disability. Working with twice-exceptional children requires an understanding of how these combinations of neurological, emotional, and learning characteristics can both help and hinder the talent development process.

Participant goals:

• Describe the needs of twice-exceptional students.
• Describe how to plan instruction for academic, behavioral, and social emotional needs of twice-exceptional students.
• Practice collaborative lesson planning to prepare classrooms for twice-exceptional students.

Location: 6393 Oak Tree Blvd., Essex Place, Independence, Ohio 44131

Cost: $50

Registration Deadline: 3/23/2025

To register: https://www.escneo.org/protected/EventRegistration.aspx?rCode=5GAGPB

Teaching Creatively: Exceptional Teaching Strategies

4/2/2025

8:30 a.m.- 3:30 p.m.

Be dazzled as we recognize and engage participants in outstanding teaching strategies that enrich classroom content and challenge gifted learners. Awards will be presented in the categories of Differentiation, Creativity, Social-Emotional Support, Arts Integration, Lyric Learning, and Literacy.

Location: 6393 Oak Tree Blvd., Essex Place, Independence, Ohio 44131

Cost: $100

Registration Deadline: 3/24/2025

To register: https://www.escneo.org/protected/EventRegistration.aspx?rCode=5GABUY

The Nation’s Report Card was released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) late January, showing that the country’s fourth and eighth grade students are not achieving adequate academic outcomes to regain ground lost during the pandemic.

Fourth grade math scores improved from 2022 to 2024, a two-point gain that follows a five-point decline from 2019 to 2022. Eighth grade scores in math showed no significant change.

Among Ohio fourth-graders, math proficiency increased from 40 percent in 2022 to 43 percent in 2024 – slightly higher than in 2019. Proficiency increased among eighth grade students from 29 to 31 percent – significantly below the 38 percent rate in 2019. Both results were slightly above the national average.

Nationwide, reading scores dropped in both fourth and eighth grades over the last two-year period, continuing declines first reported in 2019. The percentage of fourth graders who scored below National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Basic was the largest in 20 years, and the percentage of eight-graders reading below NAEP Basic was the largest in the assessment’s history.

Ohio’s results were slightly higher than national averages, but only about one-third of Ohio’s fourth and eighth grade students demonstrated reading proficiency in 2024. Pre-pandemic proficiency rates in 2019 were 36 percent among fourth grade students and 38 percent among eighth graders.

State biennial budget season is soon to arrive with Governor Mike DeWine’s last budget proposal being introduced as legislation in the Ohio House of Representatives early February.

The process begins with state agencies, including the Department of Education and Workforce, submitting budget requests to the Office of Budget and Management for review and consideration.

Governor DeWine said that his final budget proposal will continue to invest in Ohioans, particularly in the areas of education and mental health. He has not indicated whether it will continue implementation of the “Fair School Funding Plan.”

New House Speaker Matt Huffman, who previously served as president of the Senate before being termed out at the end of 2024, has characterized what many refer to as the Cupp-Patterson funding plan currently being phased in as unsustainable. The original plan was to phase it in over a six-year period, but state budgets cover just a two-year period.

Absent continued federal COVID pandemic recovery funding, some have characterized the next budget as tighter, while Governor DeWine prefers to describe it as pre-pandemic “normal.”

In a briefing for members of the Ohio House and Senate education committees, Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) Chief Integration Officer Chris Woolard provided an update on efforts to add a new component to Ohio School Report Cards for the 2024-2025 school year: College, Career, Workforce and Military Readiness. The plan features 11 ways students can demonstrate postsecondary readiness, and “is really built on previous efforts from the Prepared for Success measure.”

In December, Governor Mike DeWine announced his appointments to the State Board of Education: Sara Carruthers of Hamilton (Butler Co.); Gloria Rodgers of Stow (Summit Co.); and, Lori Kershner of Springboro (Warren Co.). He also reappointed Amy Fugate of Springfield (Clark Co.). Their appointments began January 1, 2025 and will end December 31, 2028.