Every Ohio school building would be required to designate a foster family navigator under a bill moving through the state legislature, but the measure comes with no new money attached to pay for it. Substitute House Bill 25, also known as the Fostering School Success Act, would require every Ohio school district, community school and STEM school to name a foster care education liaison, while also mandating a building-level navigator to work directly with students in foster care.
The bill, sponsored by state Reps. Dontavius Jarrells and Sharon Ray, passed the Ohio House of Representatives in March and is now sitting in the Senate Education Committee, according to Cleveland.com. It has received two Senate Education Committee hearings so far and no opponent testimony, the outlet reports. Ohio public schools served more than 14,000 students in foster care during the 2024-25 school year, and state education data separately counted 14,455 foster students enrolled statewide that year, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
What the Navigators and Liaisons Would Actually Do
Under the bill, foster family navigators would connect students with academic and nonacademic resources and check in with each student in foster care at least once per semester, per Cleveland.com's reporting. For older students, navigators would help with college aid applications and planning for college, job training or the workforce. Foster care education liaisons, meanwhile, would coordinate enrollment, records, transportation and school-of-origin decisions, and would handle disputes over school placement and transportation costs, while also helping train school staff.
Liaisons and navigators would receive annual training developed by the Department of Education and Workforce in collaboration with the departments of children and youth, higher education, and job and family services, the outlet notes. Foster agencies would also be required to conduct life-skills assessments and help prepare young people for independent living, which the bill defines as including career preparation, financial management, housing skills and postsecondary support.
A Federal Mandate That Existed Only on Paper
Federal law already requires schools and child welfare agencies to work together to protect educational stability for children in foster care, and under Title I of the Every Student Succeeds Act, Ohio districts have been required since 2016 to designate a district-level foster care liaison. But the law left building-level support structures to state and local discretion, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.
That gap mattered in practice. Statewide youth advocacy group Foster Action Ohio has reported that existing district liaisons often exist on paper but not consistently in practice, and foster youth testified in late 2022 that they had zero awareness of, or proactive outreach from, their assigned district contacts. HB 25's building-level navigator requirement is aimed squarely at that failure.
The Money That Disappeared
House Bill 25 was originally proposed as a $15 million college scholarship program that would have set aside funding for scholarships and provided four full-time navigators for qualifying students who had been in foster or certain kinship care after turning 13, per Cleveland.com. The substitute version removed the scholarship, the dedicated college navigators and the monetary appropriation entirely, instead adding the district liaisons, building navigators and independent-living provisions that now make up the bill.
House Bill 25 contains no extra pay for liaisons or navigators, meaning school districts would absorb the new administrative duties without new state funding. The Legislative Service Commission found that state agencies themselves would face minimal to no administrative costs, but also found the proposal could create additional work for districts that do not already provide similar services, according to Cleveland.com's review of the fiscal analysis.
Rep. Jarrells said the bill moved away from a single program to build something stronger and more lasting, per the outlet's reporting. Sharon Ray's office said HB 25 liaisons will help foster-care youth access and apply to eligible grants and scholarships, and Ray herself said the liaisons will connect foster-care youth with existing resources in job training programs, career-technical schools and colleges.
Scholarship Money Moves to a Separate Bill
The $15 million scholarship program didn't disappear from the legislature entirely — it was dropped from HB 25 and shifted into a companion measure, Senate Bill 13, introduced by Sen. Michele Reynolds. SB 13 retains the foster-to-college scholarship program and its appropriation, which would make available $7.5 million in each of two fiscal years to fund what Adoption Network Cleveland describes as a $7.5 million annual last-dollar scholarship covering full tuition, room and board for up to 1,000 foster youth attending Ohio colleges or trade schools.
SB 13 received its first and only hearing in February, and the foster-to-college scholarship program was left out of the final Ohio budget enacted in June 2025, according to Cleveland.com. That split creates a fragmented approach in which K-12 structural support and postsecondary financial aid now move through entirely separate legislative tracks, with no guarantee either reaches the governor's desk.
A History of Stalling in the Senate
This isn't the first time Ohio lawmakers have tried this. Substitute House Bill 25 is a reintroduction of House Bill 164 from 2024, which passed the Ohio House by an 85-5 vote in June 2024 but died in the Senate Finance Committee at the end of that legislative session, according to Adoption Network Cleveland. Lawmakers reintroduced the measure in early 2025 after the earlier bipartisan bill expired without a Senate vote.
The stakes for getting it right are steep. A 2023 report by the Children's Defense Fund-Ohio found that Ohio ranks in the bottom 10% of U.S. states on key indicators measured by the National Youth in Transition Database, with former foster youth experiencing higher rates of unemployment and justice-system involvement alongside lower high school completion rates than their national peers. A September 2025 systematic research review from the University of Connecticut, cited by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, found that 69% to 85% of foster youth nationwide complete a high school diploma or GED, compared with 95% of young adults overall, while only 8% to 12% earn a postsecondary degree by their mid- to late 20s.
Local Programs Show What's Possible
Cleveland.com's reporting points to existing local models that show what dedicated support can look like. Hamilton County's Kids in School Rule! program completed 922 reviews of whether students should remain at their current school during the 2024-25 year and served nearly 600 students across three school systems. Cincinnati Public Schools participating seniors graduated at a 97% rate that year. In Cleveland, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District served about 290 students in foster care during the same period.
Central Ohio has also seen private efforts try to fill the gap. The planned Masters Preparatory Academy in Columbus has partnered with Franklin County Children Services to reserve roughly 30% of its enrollment slots for foster youth starting in 2028, part of a broader single-gender boarding school plan that would integrate wraparound social services with academic support. Whether HB 25 becomes law may determine if similar structured support becomes standard across all 88 Ohio counties, rather than dependent on local initiative and philanthropy.
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