** IF YOU ARE NOT THE OWNER, PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO THEM TODAY. **

This is not a customer inquiry or a sales email. It concerns the future of your school and needs to reach whoever makes decisions for your company before September 30. Thank you.

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In 2024 Ohio driving schools issued 73,018 behind-the-wheel certificates. In 2025 it was 95,753. This year we're on pace for nearly 120,000.

That growth didn't come from better marketing. It came from a law — the requirement that 18, 19 and 20-year-olds complete driver training before testing. That law didn't happen by accident. ODSA worked to put it there.

What Columbus gave us, Columbus can take away. And right now, it's trying.

HB 463 would direct the Department of Public Safety to approve "driver's education apps" and let a qualified adult provide behind-the-wheel guidance using one — and it says the Director cannot unreasonably withhold approval. The in-car hours you charge for are the part being opened up.

Reduced hours is step one. Step two is full parent-taught driver education, which is already law in other states. Once a parent with a phone counts as an instructor for part of the training, there's no line stopping it from counting for all of it.

SB 419 passed the Senate 33-0 in June and is in the House right now. On its face it just moves the permit age to 15 and extends the permit period to a year. But a bill that has already cleared one chamber is a moving vehicle — and moving vehicles are what other people's language gets attached to. It could carry HB 463's provisions straight to the Governor's desk.

At the same time, the state is putting tens of millions of dollars into bringing driver's ed back into public high schools. You can already see it in the state's own certificate data: ESCs and career centers went from almost nothing in 2022 to thousands of certificates a year.

Put those together and ask a simple question: what does a private driving school look like in Ohio five years from now?

I don't think the answer has to be a bad one. There is a window right now — while SB 419 is still in the House — to shape what happens next, and even to bring new laws of our own that protect professional training and make Ohio roads safer. We've done it before.

We'll lay out exactly how on the call, and you'll hear directly from ODSA's lobbyist, Bobby Ina, on what's moving in Columbus and what it means for your school.

ODSA Membership Meeting

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 — 1:00 PM Eastern

Virtual — Microsoft Teams meeting

P.S. If this landed in a customer service inbox: please forward it to the owner of your school today.