If Senate Bill 295 passes, public school buildings could be forced to shut down if their standardized test scores fall in the bottom five and 10 percent of all ranked school buildings in Ohio. 

This includes any public school or charter school with students in fourth grade and up.

"I've never seen a situation where the state has come in and told a local school board, 'You must close this building and the sole reason being we don't think your test scores are good enough,'" Ohio Education Association President Scott DiMauro said. 

The change would affect schools that rank in the bottom five percent based on the "performance index score" and the bottom 10 percent based on the "value-added progress score," both metrics found on school district report cards. 

"There will always be a certain number of schools that are in the bottom five percent on their performance index, or in the bottom 10 percent based on the value add measure, all of which are tied to standardized tests," DiMauro said. 

If a school falls into those rankings for three years in a row, the school would either have to fire its principal and majority of staff or turn over operations to a private entity, charter, or another district.

"We're having trouble recruiting and retaining teachers. So if you lay off half the staff, fire half the staff of a school building, where do we propose finding teachers to replace those teachers?" Cropper said, "And how are you going to incentivize teachers to come to a district that's under threat of closure?"

If no improvement is made, the school will be shut down. 

"You have three years to [then] turn the school around," Ohio Federation of Teachers President Melissa Cropper said, "If you don't, then that school has to close. All those options are taken off the table. That school just has to close, and those students go somewhere else."

DiMauro said this legislation is another version of the state coming in and dictating the school board rather than providing the district resources they need to serve all students.

"A root cause of the failure of the Academic Distress Commission and CEO model in Youngstown was the fact that the community lost control of its own schools," he said,  "We don't want to see that happen."

"What this legislation would do is systematically undermine public schools and require more and more schools be closed and essentially privatize the system, taking power away from local communities and families," he said, "And not do what we need to do to ensure that every single kid, regardless of their background, has what they need to succeed."

Both said they have concerns over the bill being "rushed."

"There's nothing in the bill that would ensure transparency, that would ensure accountability and oversight," he added. 

"This is something that we're seeing rush through at the last minute without running a full process," Cropper said, "We would like to be involved in having deeper conversations about what really would help children, rather than these solutions that make good headlines, but really don't make progress with our students."

"This kind of punitive, top-down approach has never worked in the past, and there's no reason to think that it's going to work moving forward when you set an arbitrary cut score based on standardized test scores and require a school district to close down buildings or turn public schools into charter schools, or fire the principal and fire half the staff," DiMauro said, "None of that is getting at the root causes of the problem."

He said leaders need to collaborate and recognize the "real issue" is poverty.

"We're talking about schools that have very high concentrations of students who come from poverty," he added,  "who are having a difficult time learning because maybe their nutrition or their mental health or their health care needs aren't being met."

DiMauro and Cropper said there are eight charter schools and three public schools in Ohio that currently fall into this category and meet the poor performance criteria, but the legislative change would be based on 2024-2027 report cards and going forward.

No local schools are currently included in the poor-performing category, but it's to be determined what schools could be affected by 2027 or 2028.