Controversial Bipartisan Bill In Ohio Would Pay Students Up To $500 A Year To Attend Class

(AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

In a bid to end truancy, a controversial Ohio bill with bipartisan support would pay students up to $500 a year to attend class.

The pilot programs would also pay an extra $250 for students who graduate high school.

One of the bill’s sponsors, State Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) said, “We went from 15% pre-pandemic to over 31% in this most recent school year. That’s almost a third of our ninth-graders that spend their first year of high school missing more than 10 percent of their school days. This is the number one issue we are facing in education.”

The second sponsor, Republican State Rep. Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati), said other incentive programs to keep kids in school haven’t worked.

“So, we’ve tried pizza day and we have tried playground hours and we have tried all kind of foo-foo stuff. It doesn’t seem to work,” Seitz said. “So let us talk about the immediacy of a payment in cash. Cash is king. Cold, hard cash. In God we trust, all others pay cash.”

The Statehouse News Bureau reported:

The bill would set up a pilot project that would focus on kindergartners and ninth-graders in public schools that have high absenteeism and high dropout rates. If it is successful in raising the attendance rate and lowering the number of dropouts, the sponsors said it could be expanded statewide.

A total of $1.5 million has been set aside for the initial pilot project. But the sponsors added the savings in not having to provide extra money for dropout recovery or other interventions could help pay for the program.

Opponents of the bill, like State Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sylvania), emphasized that state law already required minors to attend school.

“Why are we going to pay kids to follow the law?” Williams asked. “We have laws in place that say ‘You cannot skip school. You cannot be truant. You can be criminally charged and penalized…I mean, are we going to get to the point where we are paying rapists not to rape?”

Lawmakers have until the end of 2024 to send the bill to Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH). The governor has not commented on the bill.