Critics say the district did little to deal with the issues before deciding to close buildings

The Columbus Dispatch

1/5/2007

Bill Bush

Tempers flared at times last night as more than 125 people packed a meeting in South Linden to discuss the closing of four Columbus school buildings.

A group of residents walked out of the meeting in disgust, including Clarence Lumpkin, sometimes referred to as the “Mayor of Linden” because of his decades of community involvement.

“You never came to us and said, ‘Look, we have a problem. Let’s sit down and see what this problem is,’ ” Lumpkin said before leaving. He complained that it was impossible to have a discussion when members of the public were told they had to hold comments to no longer than two minutes.

George M. Walker Jr., chairman of the South Linden Area Commission, also left the meeting, saying the only time school-district officials want to talk to Linden residents is when they’re closing their schools or wanting their votes.

“You can bet there will never be (a tax levy) passed in Linden again,” Walker said as he left Linden-McKinley High School, where the meeting was held.

Board members didn’t respond to either Lumpkin or Walker.

Superintendent Gene Harris told the crowd that no one wants to close buildings, but the district’s falling enrollment requires it. Parents have choices to move their children to other schools, including charter schools, she said. Of the 3,318 students who live in the Linden area, fewer than half, about 47 percent, attend schools located there.

Many parents and teachers from Linden Park I.G.E. Alternative Elementary, one of the schools on the preliminary closure list, complained that the district’s lottery system hurts their school’s chance of staying open. Because Linden Park is one of the schools that gets its students from an annual districtwide lottery, some parents wanting to enroll students there are turned away after they miss lottery deadlines, they said.

If those parents were allowed in, the school would have a larger enrollment, they said.

Ted Dellesky, a teacher at Linden Park, is facing his third Columbus school closure in his six-year career, “and all of them have students from in and around the Linden area,” he said.

If the school has empty desks, it should be allowed to accept students even if they don’t go through the lottery, Dellesky said.

Greg Williams, president of the Linden Park PTO, said some students will get new buildings under the district’s rebuilding project and others will see their school closed.

“We don’t want to think that because they’re building a brand-new school that they are running us out of our little community school,” Williams said.

Wayne West, a social-studies teacher at Linden-McKinley High School, said the district plan to close Linmoor Middle School and turn Linden-McKinley High School into a 7 th-through-12 th-grade program could backfire if parents don’t like the wider age differences among students and the fact that the high school houses a program for students with discipline problems.

The district needs to get a sample of parental feelings before making the shift, “otherwise we’re going to lose those parents to other schools.”

Harris said that the four schools on the closing list would shut down at the end of this school year. The new program at Linden-McKinley would begin with the 2008-2009 school year.

Also on the closing list are Douglas Alternative Elementary on the Near East Side and Medary Elementary in the University District.

bbush@dispatch.com