This Week News12/27/2007David J. Cross
ThisWeek Staff Writer A name change, new board members and an improved state report card rating topped the headlines for the Columbus school district during the past 12 months. In August, Superintendent Gene Harris announced Columbus City Schools moved up a notch in the state’s rating system to “Continuous Improvement,” the equivalent of a C average. It was an achievement, Harris and other officials pointed to for the remainder of the year. Prior to this year, the district had been rated in “Academic Watch,” or a D rating, for four years running. The state uses a five-tier scale — excellent, effective, continuous improvement, academic watch and academic emergency — to rank districts based on test scores, graduation rate and attendance. The district reached continuous improvement by earning a performance index of 80.5 on a scale of 120, and by meeting all 42 adequate yearly progress measurements. The performance index score increases when a greater percentage of students score at the advanced, accelerated and proficient levels. The federally mandated AYP measures how well students in 10 demographic groups perform on reading and math tests, and on graduation and attendance rates. Nonetheless, Harris stressed there is still room for improvement. For the 2006-07 school year the district meet only five of 30 state standards. At the time Harris pointed out the district improved on 20 standards, declined in five and five others were new. Election seasonThe year brought a changing of the guard to the Columbus Board of Education, as one member joined its ranks and another was voted out of office. In January, board members appointed W. Shawna Gibbs, a public relations manager for Girl Scouts Seal of Ohio Council, to office after considering 32 applicants. Eleven months later, Jeff Cabot, then the board’s longest serving member, was narrowly voted out of office. Next month, he will be replaced by Gary Baker, a Hilltop area resident and local activist. In between, Columbus residents saw an energetic election season. Questions surrounding whether the district needed a primary election first circulated in March when five of the 12 people who filed petitions for four open seats were disqualified, including eventual top-vote getter, Gibbs. A primary is needed if there are more than twice as many candidates as open seats. Two of the disqualified candidates — Gibbs and Joy Marshall — protested the Franklin County Board of Election’s decision. If successfully reinstated there would have been nine candidates, enough for a primary. In Gibbs case, she was not certified because the name on her candidate petitions did not match her voter registration records. Her candidate petitions listed her as W. Shawna Gibbs, the name she normally goes by, while she is registered to vote as Weirdella L. Gibbs. Her given name, as listed on her birth certificate, is Weirdella LaRay Shawna Maria Gibbs. For Marshall, 191 of the 417 signatures she collected were invalid, which left her short of the 300 signatures required for a petition. Gibbs eventually won her appeal, while Marshall did not. When the dust settled, eight candidates vied for four-year terms, and two others competed to fill an unexpired term. The 10 candidates included five incumbents, though it was the first election for three of them. Stephanie Groce, Gibbs and Carol Perkins were appointed to their positions within the past two years, to replace board members who resigned. Only incumbents Jeff Cabot and Board President Terry Boyd were voted into office. Voters were asked to choose from among Cabot, Boyd, Groce, Gibbs and challengers Baker, Bill Buckel, Jarrod Weiss and Mike Wiles. In a separate race, Perkins faced Michael King to fulfill an unexpired term, which ends Dec. 31, 2009. When the final votes were tallied, Baker, Boyd, Gibbs, Groce and Perkins were elected to office. Cabot, a lawyer who had been on the board since 2001, was out. Program strives to help at-risk studentsIn September, Columbus Public Schools kicked off an ambitious mentoring program to support at-risk middle school students, particularly eighth-graders, and help the district reach a 90 percent graduation rate by 2012. Project Mentor, which was announced in July, is a collaboration between Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio and the district, with the Nationwide Foundation as the lead sponsor. The ultimate goal is to have 10,000 mentors working with the district with in three to five years. Thirty local companies, including Nationwide, committed to the program, and Big Brothers Big Sisters is continuing to look for more. Twenty-seven mentoring programs were expected to be launched this year at district middle schools. Test hurdle too high for someThere was heartbreak for some of Columbus‘ seniors in 2007. About 13 percent of the district’s 2,722 seniors — 346 students — didn’t receive diplomas this year because they did not pass one or more sections of the Ohio Graduation Test, while 67 didn’t because they didn’t pass the old Ninth-Grade Proficiency Test. The class of 2007 was the first to have to pass the more difficult Ohio Graduation Test, as opposed to the Ninth-Grade Proficiency Test. The OGT is more rigorous, especially in science and math, and the format now requires students to write and explain answers. The first time students take the OGT is their sophomore year. They have six tries to pass it before graduation and can take it again the summer after their senior year. For the ninth-grade test, a student could take it up to 13 times until they passed it. A district by any other name …This year the Columbus school district shed its former name, Columbus Public Schools, and replaced it with another three word moniker — Columbus City Schools. In August, the district announced it would use its legal name for all purposes and change its more than 50-year-old red apple logo. “We are a city school district under the department of education,” Jeff Warner, district spokesman, said at the time. “You don’t have public school districts, and everything from a legal standpoint, even our buses, has ‘Columbus City Schools’ printed on it.” The new name and logo were expected to be rolled out gradually throughout the school year.