Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has shown a willingness to use his veto power when the need arises. He’s not shy about that. It seems as though legislators quietly handed him another opportunity last month, as they passed Senate Bill 276, which includes new requirements for public school districts to teach the incredibly flawed “success sequence.”

Most public school students grow up being taught they can dream big, be anything they want to be, work hard and aim high … you remember the schpiel. But counteracting that, unless DeWine acts, will be a requirement that students also be told they should — in this order — obtain a high school degree, find a full-time job, get married and only then have children. In doing so, according to the language of the bill, they will be following a “success sequence” that makes them “overwhelmingly less likely to live in poverty in adulthood.”

According to WCMH, the Center for Christian Virtue has called it an important step for supporting students. And here’s the thing, you don’t have to disagree that such a sequence is good strategy to understand making it a requirement to indoctrinate all public school students with such an order of operations is an enormous mistake.

Mind-bogglingly, this is tacked on to provisions that will help Ohio public schools find more employable school psychologists.

One wonders how teachers will be guided to answer the questions from the impressionable young students who perhaps see their parents’ own life paths labeled as outside the success sequence. What damage will it do to young adults whose own paths deviate from the sequence, but who still have the ability and will to succeed, except for the nagging memory that they were taught years ago they’re not doing it right?

Drilling a success sequence into young people’s minds stigmatizes many family structures, ignores a range of differences that have led to inequity, tarnishes “success” that was achieves by a different path, and is incredibly reductive when it comes to discussing poverty.

(You have to wonder how much thought lawmakers gave to their own role in supporting — or not — those who would dearly love to find a full-time job, for example.)

This isn’t what kids need in our public schools. In fact, it would be wonderful if lawmakers did more to ensure Buckeye State public schools were properly supported and had the resources to prepare students to forge their own paths to success. Instead, they’ve required one more measure guaranteed to make some students feel less sure that is possible. Shame on them.