The Columbus Dispatch

12/30/2006

Columbus Public Schools long have enjoyed financial and technical support from business and community leaders, including expert advice on some of the district’s most pressing problems. Now, the district will have another support: a generous endowment to fuel innovation and improvement.

Limited Brands founder Leslie H. Wexner is kicking off the effort with a pledge to match up to $2 million in donations by others.

Endowment funds, to pay for extras and new approaches to education, are relatively common among suburban schools. Columbus will be only the third of Ohio’s big-city districts to establish one, and if Wexner’s pledge is met even halfway, the endowment will be far larger than those in the Canton and Toledo school districts.

Sometimes, endowments pay for the little extras that were included in tax-funded operating budgets but, in leaner times, have been cut – field trips, for example.

If Columbus’ fund, to be administered by the new Columbus Public Schools Education Foundation, takes off, it will be able to do much more. At a time when the district needs to offer innovative programs to compete with charter schools and privateschool vouchers, promising ideas, such as the single-gender schools proposed two years ago, often have to be shelved because of lack of money. A successful foundation could allow some of those ideas to blossom.

The foundation’s board, which will direct the spending, will be independent of the school board.

Although Superintendent Gene Harris will be a nonvoting member of the foundation’s board, the foundation will be free to pursue the ideas that its members deem the most worthy.

This should allow fresh thinking to flourish, unrestricted by the “conventional wisdom” that might prevail within the district.

District officials, who long have sought an endowment for the schools, are fortunate to have such generous support from the business community.

Potential donors who want the city schools to succeed but who may have been leery of working with district administrators should investigate this opportunity to make a difference

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