From private school vouchers for all to the elimination of diversity and inclusion requirements to classroom censorship and targeted attacks on LGBTQ students, some of Ohio’s education laws and bills reflect the goals outlined in Project 2025 for a second Trump administration.
Project 2025 is a presidential transition project written by the Heritage Foundation that describes the first 180 days in office of the next right-wing administration.
Although former President Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025, former Trump administration officials helped produce the nearly 900-page policy book, Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise, which draws heavily on the values of Christian nationalism.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, is the author of a foreword to a forthcoming book about Project 2025 by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation. That book’s release has been delayed until after the 2024 election. The book, now called Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, was originally titled Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to Save America.
Christina Collins, executive director of Honesty for Ohio Education, told the Capital Journal that it was as if the Ohio General Assembly had already implemented many of the measures outlined in Project 2025 in the Buckeye State.
“It’s almost as if Ohio knew what Project 2025 was trying to do and our legislators said, ‘Let’s just move forward. Let’s just start implementing it,'” Collins said.
Honesty for Ohio Education has one Document explaining how the 2025 project would impact education and how it aligns with what is happening in Ohio.
“What is embedded in Project 2025 with these Christian nationalist values is a form of education for children,” Collins said. “It is restrictive. It prevents freedom of knowledge. It prevents freedom of learning. It is not inclusive and it is not honest education.”
Project 2025 would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Head Start, meaning that Head Start child care programs, which served about 833,000 low-income children in fiscal year 2022, would have to be closed.
“It’s almost like they’re just throwing anything that’s based on research out the window,” Collins said. “We know we should be advocating for universal preschool.”
Ohio State Representative Phil Robinson, Democrat of Solon, introduced a Draft law on general pre-school education in May.
How it happens in Ohio
Project 2025 is intended to create universal school vouchers, as Ohio passed in its state budget last year.
“Ohio is a pioneer in the adoption of universal coupons,” Collins said. “Ohio is the Wild West when it comes to universal coupons.”
Project 2025 would then go a step further by expanding education savings accounts – something Ohio is also trying to do. Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickeryintroduced Bill 339 last year, which unlisted education savings account program.
The Education Savings Account program was launched in Arizona in August 2011 and has grown in popularity over the past few years as more states adopt universal education vouchers. ESAs give families access to per-pupil public funds that can be used for private school tuition, among other things. Arizona’s budget faced collapse this summer due to excessive spending on private charter schools, leading to hundreds of millions in budget cuts to key state programs and projects.
Project 2025 would require school personnel to out LGBTQ students to their parents, similar to Ohio House Bill 8.
Representatives DJ Swearingen (R-Huron) and Sara Carruthers (R-Hamilton) introduced HB 8 last year and it passed in the House of RepresentativesThe bill requires educators to inform parents of “any desire by a student to identify with a gender that does not correspond with his or her biological sex.”
“Inherited in Project 25, in what Ohio has done over the last two years, is this heavy emphasis on anti-LGBTQ families, households and students,” Collins said. “Project 2025, Ohio’s efforts have worked really hard to try to not acknowledge that LGBTQ people — particularly transgender students recently — exist, to try to not acknowledge that they exist, and to try to dehumanize people in those communities, and that exacerbates these efforts to continue to do that.”
Parts of the controversial Senate Bill 83 bill on higher education in Ohio are scattered throughout Project 2025.
Ohio Senator Jerry Cirino Senate Bill 83 would prohibit mandatory DEI training unless it is required to comply with state and federal laws. Project 2025 would eliminate DEI requirements.
SB 83 would define controversial beliefs or policies as “any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversy, including on issues such as climate policy, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equality and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage and abortion.”
The bill would allow students to “draw their own conclusions about any controversial beliefs or political views and not attempt to impose any social, political or religious views on them.”
Project 2025 calls for the “deletion” of terms such as “sexual orientation and gender identity,” “diversity, equality and inclusion programs,” and “reproductive rights.”
way of life
The Heritage Foundation also appears to have ties to Based in Ohio LifeWise Academy religious education programJoel Penton, founder of LifeWise, has appeared on The Heritage Foundation’s podcast “The Daily Signal” and on the podcast of the Family Research Council, a partner of Project 2025.
“We see these groups partnering, supporting each other, all working toward the common goal of bringing their values throughout the public education system,” Collins said.
LifeWise is a program that teaches students the Bible outside of school grounds during the school day with parental permission, provided that the law requires that they be excused for religious instruction. Last year, nearly 30,000 students participated in more than 12 states and more than 170 school districts in Ohio.
Ohio House Bill 445 would require school districts to to develop a regulation that would enable pupils to be excused from school in order to attend religious education classes.
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