The Columbus Dispatch

10/9/2005

Students are leaving by the thousands, but you wouldn’t know it at these schools

By Bill Bush

Liberty Elementary School belies the image that many have of Columbus Public Schools. Although the district’s enrollment is down sharply because of defections to charter schools, the school near Reynoldsburg faces a different problem – far too many students.

Designed for 350 students, the school has 515 this year, Principal Cheryl Conway said. Lockers and file cabinets, where teachers store classroom materials, line the hallways.

About 100 students spend most of their day in two “modular classrooms,” doublewide trailers in a field behind the building.

“Our building has grown a lot in four or five years,” Conway said. “I think it’s pretty popular. (Parents) enjoy the staff. They feel the school is safe.”

As an eight-person task force begins to evaluate how to “right-size” the district by closing schools, about a third of the district’s 140 schools have more students than they were designed to hold.

The district has been bringing trailers to overcrowded schools instead of redrawing attendance lines to distribute the student population more evenly. Other buildings are at half their capacity.

A crowded school means that parents, who have other options, are satisfied with that school, said Superintendent Gene Harris, and, “We want parents to like the schools where the children are in.”

The district – which has lost 1,900 students since last year, largely to charter schools – doesn’t want to upset the apple cart by limiting enrollment at popular schools, Harris said.

“We want to accommodate them,” she said.

The district used 135 modular classrooms last year, although no one in the office thinks they are a long-term solution to overcrowding.

The task force, made up of Columbus business, labor and community leaders, is charged with comparing enrollments with building capacities. It will make recommendations about how many schools the district should operate, Harris said.

“They’re going to ask the question about some of the schools that are crowded,” Harris predicted, adding that they might recommend rebalancing attendance zones.

But solving the overcrowding problem could create another problem – angry parents armed with options, said Mark Real, director of KidsOhio.org, a nonprofit organization that aims to improve the health and education of Ohio’s children. The group has conducted research on charter schools for the district.

“You risk giving kids a second-rate education in an overcrowded school, or you risk alienating people,” Real said.

“The world has changed. Now you’ve got charter schools, and you’re about to have vouchers.”

Charter schools, like other public schools, are free. Starting next school year, parents at struggling traditional schools will be eligible for vouchers to help pay private-school tuition.

Despite the overcrowding, Michelle Huffman wouldn’t want her son transferred out of Liberty.

“It would upset me,” said Huffman, whose son, Josh, is a kindergartner there. “I trust this school. This is my neighborhood school. It’s getting more and more popular.”

At Valleyview Elementary on the West Side, 424 students last school year crammed into a building designed for 200. Seven trailers are helping to ease the strain.

Toni Bergunzi moved out of the attendance zone for Valley view and into Franklinton, but she drives her son, Damon, 3 miles to the school each day. Under a district policy to reduce student mobility, Damon is allowed to remain at the school he started in rather than transfer to his new school, Avondale Elementary.

“I like (Valleyview), personally,” Bergunzi said. “I don’t think a lot of people come in here and fool around because they have a sheriff (substation) right down the street. I just like this area better.”

Popular schools aren’t always earning high passing rates on state tests; both Liberty and Valleyview are in “academic watch,” the equivalent of a D on the state rating scale. Liberty met two and Valleyview one of nine state standards for elementaries.

The district needs to conduct market research to find out what makes some schools popular, and what would make parents feel better about their child switching schools, Real said.

“When you no longer have a monopoly, you’ve got to constantly survey your customers to see what they want.

“One of the goals of the panel could be to more evenly spread out the population, but you have to do that in a way that people perceive that they are going to get something better. There is a problem in Columbus that there are some schools that are widely perceived as undesirable.”

bbush@dispatch.com

Copyright © 2005, The Columbus Dispatch