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Spectrum News 1
Ohio's New "Dyslexia Law" is Personal for Lawmaker
By Micaela Marshall Cleveland
Jan. 24, 2021
WINCHESTER, Ohio — When Alyson Tamanko was 9 years old, school became challenging.
“Hard with spelling tests, reading,” she recalled.
It was a confusing and frustrating time.
“Well, at least our school does a lot of reading out loud. That was a
big struggle for me because I didn’t want my classmates to know that it
was hard. But, I didn’t want to be, because the teachers are like, 'Oh
well, we can just go past you. It’s OK.' And I was like, no, I want to
do it,” said Tamanko.
Her father, Ohio House Rep. Brian Baldridge, said despite their family
being full of experienced educators, his daughter wasn’t diagnosed with
dyslexia until third grade.
Tamanko had a lot of support growing up from her parents, teachers, and tutors.
“Great to have that core group. But we think about children all over
our state and all over our country and world that have this challenge
and knowing that maybe there isn’t family members that have an
education background and know where to turn to,” said Baldridge.
The 25 year old is now married and is a working mom. She has a 7-month-old little girl.
Her dyslexia is something she’ll manage forever.
“We’re working through it,” said Tamanko. "Yeah, proud of her,” her dad replied.
Baldridge said he believes that he may have some form of undiagnosed
dyslexia. The neurological learning disorder is often considered
genetic.
The International Dyslexia Association says between 15% to 20% of the population may have symptoms of dyslexia.
“You know I worked through it myself a little bit and I don’t think I
had it near to her level, but I could look at that page in the book and
it was blank, you know, as you’re trying to read in class,” said
Baldridge.
Thanks in large part to Baldrige, more support is on the way to Ohio students with dyslexia.
Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 436 into law on Jan. 9.
It’s legislation Baldridge has been pushing for essentially since he took office two years ago.
The freshman lawmaker said the new law is a combination of other Senate
Bills and pilot programs that have been in the works for a while.
“You know it wasn’t, you know, totally re-creating the wheel right out
of the gate. So, there was a good base to start with,” he said.
The law creates a board of education “Ohio Dyslexia Committee”
comprised of superintendents, elementary school principals, teachers,
parents who have a child with dyslexia, and a slew of other specialists.
That committee is tasked with developing a guidebook to be distributed
to school districts regarding “best practices and methods for universal
screening, intervention and remediation for children with dyslexia.”
The screening for students begins the 2022-23 school year for students as young as Kindergarten in some cases.
Baldridge says federal grants should foot the bill.
“As we look back from the future in years to come that this is going to
actually be an equal or save money because we’re going to catch those
students that are going to struggle and we’re going to catch them
hopefully a lot earlier,” said Rep. Baldridge.
Tamanko is proud that her dad is advocating for other kids just like her.
“There are other people that didn’t have the home life that I have and
they could of had that help, and I was getting that help. So, it’s a
great, great thing that’s getting pushed through that needs to happen,"
she said.
Read this and other stories at Spectrum News 1 here
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