Suburban News Publication

11/22/2006

Garth Bishop

As the committee studying Columbus Public Schools’ Facilities Master Plan considers new buildings and innovative programs, the spectre of school closings looms over the proceedings.

The district has lost almost 3,500 students during the past year, and more losses are expected this year.

Last year, Columbus closed 12 school buildings to save money because of declining enrollment and other factors. Though the committee studying the Facilities Master Plan’s first priority is on 21st century schools and assigning appropriate academic programs to the school buildings that have to be constructed, somewhere down the line, the committee will examine the possibility of closing more schools.

District leaders have drafted a template that can be applied to schools to determine whether it might be a good idea to close them. It is similar to the template used last year, but unlike last year, the success of buildings’ academic programs will be taken into consideration.

The template has eight essential criteria that each examined school must meet before being considered for closing. These include low enrollment — under 400 for elementary schools, under 600 for middle schools and under 800 for high schools — as well as declining enrollment during the past three years and expected further declines.

The district must put a building through the template process before saying definitively that any school must close.

“We’re going to use that template … and start making some decisions about (whether) we have the right capacity of buildings available and (whether) we should be looking at consolidating some buildings,” said John Stanford, special assistant to the superintendent for board services and governmental affairs.

“We just want to make sure that we’ve got the right mix of buildings for the population that we have.”

It’s important that the district maintain a presence in each community throughout the district and retain high-quality academic programs, Stanford said.

“The template is constructed in such a fashion that it’s more of a weighing process than (a system of) looking at specific enrollment numbers,” said Stanford.

Enrollment is just a piece of the whole picture, he said.

“One school might have low enrollment, but … if we just add some more educational programming to that particular building, we may not want to close (it) — we may just want to redesign the program offerings,” Stanford said.

The district has at least one additional consideration this year if the committee decides that more schools must be closed: The larger-than-expected drop in enrollment this school year has been attributed in part to the school closings.

In some cases, parents of students whose home schools were closed elected to simply leave the district or send their children to charter schools instead of moving to a new school.

“We’ll go out to the community and talk about some of the process and decision-making,” said district Chief Communications Officer Michael Fulwider.

“When we did close schools (last year) … we did significant work with parents in the community.”

Once the committee studying the Facilities Master Plan has tentative recommendations, the district will take those recommendations to the community for feedback, Fulwider said.

Before that happens, the committee will keep to its main charge: Making sure 21st century schools are offered to all students as the district prepares to enter Segment 3 of the Facilities Master Plan.

“With every project in Segment 2 either in design, about to start construction or in construction already, it’s a natural time for us to be thinking about what Segment 3 is going to look like,” Stanford said.

Segments 1 and 2 are expected to be finished by December 2008, and the district will need to pass a bond issue to pay for Segment 3. That bond issue could appear on the ballot as early as fall 2006 or as late as fall 2008.

The district has a number of academic programs to assign once it begins adding new school buildings.

“When we renovate or build a new school … we want to open that school with new, innovative programs that will be attractive to the parents of this community,” said Stanford.

Possibilities include expansions of the district’s autism and single-gender programs, as well as a new program called Global Technology, which is for middle and high schools and focuses on the global marketplace and the changing technological environment of the world.

“Even though we would still have the standard curriculum … this Global Technology curriculum would be put on top of that to offer a sort of specialization, if you will,” Stanford said.