🚨 STATEMENT ON HB 57 🚨

What began as a bipartisan, life-saving bill to let schools carry overdose-reversal medication was hijacked in the Ohio Senate by lawmakers who quietly slipped in a gift to released-time religious programs.

Instead of debating it in the open, they buried an amendment that lets districts expand how much class time students can miss for outside religious instruction — undoing limits that were put in place just three months ago.

Let that sink in:
➡️ A public-health bill meant to save kids from fatal overdoses was used as a back-door vehicle to give more school-day hours to religious programs like LifeWise.
➡️ No hearings, no transparency — just a last-minute power move catering to a handful of districts that wanted daily Mass or catechism during the school day.
➡️ It’s a textbook example of why we say accountability isn’t optional.

Public schools exist to serve all children and protect their instructional hours — not to be carved up by legislators doing favors for religious lobbies.

🚨🚨🔎 This is not just an Ohio problem. The same tactic — using unrelated or “feel-good” bills to sneak in religious-priority amendments — is spreading across states. SEA exists to protect the secular integrity of public education nationwide.🚨🚨

SEA will continue to call out these tactics in Ohio and in every state where lawmakers try to sneak religious priorities into unrelated bills. Our kids deserve better.

#ProtectPublicEducation #PublicSchoolsAreNotPulpits

https://www.cleveland.com/open/2025/10/legislature-passes-schools-bill-allowing-for-use-of-overdose-meds-and-more-religious-released-time.html

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