The Columbus Dispatch

11/30/2006

Bill Bush

Columbus Public Schools proposed yesterday a reshuffling of its priorities concerning which schools to fix up or rebuild next as part of its $1.6 billion construction plan, citing changing enrollment and more pressing needs.

Twelve schools would get knocked off the next segment to make room for eight new projects – including a new school to serve growing Northeast Side subdivisions.

The list revising the 2002 plan was presented to a community task force that also will help decide what schools should close because of the district’s falling enrollment. Yesterday, the task force identified nine schools that could close before next school year, but that is sure to change.

Any proposals for closing schools and rebuild- ing others are to be delivered to the school board by early January.

Superintendent Gene Harris said the new school, which would serve a booming area of Columbus near New Albany, is needed.

“It’s really making the strategic decision based on where our population growth is and trying to accommodate our families and children,” Harris said. “Closing schools is not something that we relish doing.”

The area that the new school would serve is separated from the core district by Westerville schools, which serve part of Columbus. Such outlying islands were agreed to in 1986 in the so-called “win-win” pact.

While the central school district has been losing students to charter schools by the thousands in recent years, the outer areas continue to grow. Students there now are bused to schools in the original central district.

Developers and city officials have pressed the district for years to build new schools in growing outlying areas, but Columbus Board of Education President Terry Boyd said yesterday that any decision to do so wouldn’t be forced by “political winds.”

In September 2005, a city development official told the board that a developer would donate 10 acres for a Northeast Side school, prompting Boyd to respond: “We can’t be closing schools in the inner city and building schools in the outer areas.”

But Boyd said yesterday that no inner-city schools would close if they were needed.

“We have to do whatever makes sense,” he said.

District officials stressed yesterday that the new list for the next construction segment is still a draft.

Aside from the new school, other schools were moved up on the construction schedule because their conditions have deteriorated, they are overcrowded or they are in areas of the district where there are too few school-renovation projects, said Carole Olshavsky. She is the district’s senior executive in charge of the rebuilding project.

Voters would need to approve of the next phase of construction and could be asked to pass a bond levy next November. In 2002, voters approved a $392 million bond issue that is paying for 35 school projects in the first two segments.

Also yesterday, the task force came up with a preliminary list of nine schools that could close before next school year, including Linden Park and Douglas elementaries – which narrowly avoided closing after last school year. The task force sorted schools by applying a “template” test based on their enrollment, whether the number of students was increasing or decreasing, whether the school was being rebuilt or renovated under the first two segments of the district’s long-term facilities plan and whether surrounding schools could absorb students in the event of a closing.

Officials said the work of the task force is far from complete, and it will meet again next week to tinker with the criteria and consider other factors, such as special programs offered at certain buildings.

The panel’s co-chairman, Floyd Jones – a senior vice president of The Dispatch Printing Company, publisher of The Dispatch – said the committee probably won’t second guess the merits of Harris’ priorities for construction, except as it relates to which schools should close.

“Before you invest that money, you need to know is their enrollment declining,” Jones said.

The district says community forums will be held in December to hear feedback on closing schools and future rebuilding segments.

bbush@dispatch.com