Gov. Mike DeWine is revving up his plan to bring driver’s education back to public schools.
DeWine’s new two-year, $60.9 billion state budget plan includes funding for a new “Ohio Safe Driving Program.” The money would be made available to schools that either decide to set up an in-house driver’s ed program staffed by teachers or partner with an existing private driver’s ed provider to offer a school-based program, according to Dan Tierney, a spokesperson for the governor’s office.
In a news conference in Columbus on Monday, DeWine put it simply.
“Let me say very clearly, it is now time to put driver’s training back in our high schools,” DeWine said. “This needs to be done. Schools are the logical and most accessible for teens to learn how to drive.”
The initiative fits into a broader DeWine administration priority of making driver’s education mandatory for all new licensed drivers, not just those who are 16 or 17 years old. The governor believes doing so would reduce the number of fatal car crashes, based on recent state collision data and a 2022 state-funded study that found 18-year-old drivers were more likely to get into crashes than younger drivers who had completed driver training.
Advocates, industry sources and state officials say the existing, largely private driver’s education system is inadequate, with limited enrollment slots, high prices and slim profit margins for operators. Access is worse in poorer urban areas, where driver’s ed is unaffordable, and in rural areas, which may not have nearby driver training options.
So, the DeWine administration has pushed to close the gap, via a $4.5 million grant program in 2024 and a $3 million scholarship program to help put 5,500 poorer students through driver’s training.
The new DeWine budget plan calls for ramping up that spending, setting aside $50 million for school-based driver’s ed programs over the next two years. It does not, however, include a law change requiring new drivers 18 and up to go through driver’s ed.
“The governor intends to discuss that with the General Assembly,” Tierney said.
The governor’s office has not released an estimate of how many schools the $50 million might reach.
But a school-based program featured in a Signal Statewide article last week used a $1 million state grant to bring driver’s ed to 18 additional schools within a year of receiving it. That could mean, based on back-of-the-napkin math around the fundamentals of that program, $50 million would more than fund driver’s ed in all of Ohio’s roughly 700 school districts. (This projection assumes the per-district costs wouldn’t increase as the program expands.)
On Tuesday, DeWine visited a high school in Zanesville, where that program is based, to launch a road show promoting his budget plan. Tierney said the governor picked the location because he views the Zanesville program, run by the the Muskingum Ohio Valley Educational Service Center Driving School, as a potential model.
The governor’s budget plan is just a plan, and releasing it is just the first step of a long, winding process that is supposed to end with the legislature approving the budget by June 30. Legislators in the Republican-controlled House and Senate likely will make major changes between now and then.