COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The newly-passed state budget will make significant changes in the state's schools and affect the daily lives of Ohioans.
The budget approved by the Ohio General Assembly more than two weeks past its constitutional deadline includes a requirement that schools have licensed health professionals on staff to administer students' prescription drugs.
"We will be working with our Ohio Department of Education to develop those rules and to actually implement the legislation," says Sandy Nekoloff, spokesperson for the South-Western City Schools.
The budget also says all-day kindergarten must be offered by all districts by the 2010-2011 school year. And there is language requiring the schools to have a policy to protect students from food allergies.
The state's child-restraint law has been modified. And new license plates will be created to honor combat infantry men and support the state's nature preserves.
A new law in the budget law also bans people without a license and children without supervision from operating snow mobiles or all-purpose vehicles.
And August will now be known as Military Family Month in Ohio.
The Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging says it will take a $30 million hit in this budget.
"We're taking a huge step backwards at a very expensive cost to our older adults," says agency spokesperson Bethany Dohnal. She says the new budget will directly impact nearly 10-thousand elderly Ohioans who depend on the PASSPORT program that provides in-home nursing care. Without the Passport program, Dohnal says, many elderly patients will end up on waiting lists and, in the meantime, be sent to nursing homes.
"Sending someone to a nursing home costs three times more than providing in-home care," she notes.
Governor Ted Strickland says the newly-passed state budget does not include any unfunded mandates and fulfills his promise to reform the way Ohio funds its schools.
The governor insists that the new budget includes funding for newly-mandated all-day kindergarten and will help schools pay for the added nursing responsibilities.
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