Youngstown Daily Legal News

Bill would stop schools from withholding grades of abused or neglected children

TIFFANY L. PARKS
Special to the Legal News
Published: April 16, 2012

Rep. Dorothy Pelanda is focusing on children who become “victims” of school systems’ widespread practice of withholding grades and diplomas from students who have not paid curriculum fees.

“(Ohio law) allows this practice, and while I believe that this form of collecting fees should not victimize any child in Ohio, I have focused on one particular group of children in my bill,” Pelanda, R-Marysville, said of House Bill 462.

The proposal, which was inspired by Union County Juvenile Court Magistrate Sharon Walls, is mainly targeted at cases involving children who are the subject of abuse, neglect and dependency cases.

“If the magistrate removes the child from the parents’ home and places the child into a home in another school district, the home school routinely refuses to transfer the school transcripts of that child to the new school if the parents of that child have not paid the child’s school fees,” Pelanda said.

“The receiving school, then, has no idea about the child’s current grade-level or performance.”

The lawmaker said Walls wrote her a letter describing “her frustration with this law.”

“Despite the magistrate’s repeated calls to the school, pleading with officials to cooperate and transfer the school records, the school officials point to their rights of refusal under current law,” she said.

“This punishes the child for the parent’s actions and the child’s academic progress is jeopardized.”

In such situations, Pelanda said the student’s school attendance often stalls while the schools “battle over their respective needs.”

In addition, she said, if a student has completed all academic requirements to graduate, schools across the state can refuse to issue a diploma to that child if school fees are outstanding for any year.

“Once again, the child is victimized for the actions of his parents. A child without a high school diploma has virtually no employable future and will become a cost to every taxpayer in Ohio,” Pelanda said.

HB 462 would prohibit school district boards from withholding the grades, credits, transcripts or diploma of a student for nonpayment of fees for instructional materials if a complaint has been filed at any time alleging that the child is or has been adjudicated as an abused, neglected or dependent child.

The bill also would require school districts to transfer such a student’s grades, credits or transcripts immediately upon request from another school or school district where the student has enrolled under an order from a juvenile court judge.

The proposal states that a juvenile court judge, in the event of a filed complaint alleging that a student is an abused, neglected or dependent child, would be permitted to order a school district to follow through with the bill’s provisions.

“This bill does not prevent a school from continuing its efforts against the parents to collect school fees, nor does this bill waive the fees that are owed,” Pelanda said.

“It simply places the burden on the proper party — not the third-party student.”

Pelanda said she attended a legislative breakfast last month for Central Ohio school superintendents and presented HB 462 for discussion.

“The only comment from one superintendent was this: Did the school have to comply with this bill if the school knew the parents had the ability to pay? This points to the very need for the bill,” she said.

“The current focus on this issue is not on the best interests of the child. It is apparent that a mandate is needed.”

Pelanda said it has been difficult to track down firm statistics as to how many students would be affected by HB 462.

“One set of statistics were provided by the case management section in the Ohio Judicial Conference for 2010. That number was 22,920,” she said, but noted that figure includes children from infancy though age 5.

Pelanda said the proposal has garnered the “enthusiastic support” of policy teams of the governor and the Ohio Attorney General.

“This bill, to date, has generated much positive discussion from those policy teams and from constituents, about whether to include extra-curricular fees in this legislation and whether to expand the targeted population to include all children who are determined to be indigent,” she said.

Pelanda said enacting the proposal would have no fiscal impact on Ohio because schools would still have the right to collect fees from parents.

HB 462 is co-sponsored by Reps. Terry Boose, R-Norwalk, Nancy Garland, D-New Albany, Connie Pillich, D-Cincinnati, Debbie Phillips, D-Athens, Jay Hottinger, R-Newark, Zack Milkovich, D-Akron, Terry Blair, R-Cincinnati, Gerald Stebelton, R-Lancaster, Kenny Yuko, D-Richmond Heights, and John Adams, R-Sidney.

The bill has yet to be scheduled for a second hearing.

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