Columbus closing taskforce not targeting neighborhood schools. Kids suffered due to inaction.

Carol Beckerle is a former Columbus City Schools teacher and former member its board of education.

Columbus City Schools leadership promised the community that it would reduce its facilities footprint and use levy funds to upgrade the remaining spaces during last year's campaign.

The Community Facilities Task Force is the district’s first step in honoring this commitment.  Columbus Education Association President John Coneglio recently issued an open letter resigning from the task force. His voice will be missed as members finalize their recommendations for school closures.

But his resignation should not cast doubt on those recommendations. While I cannot speak to all the details cited in his letter, I am confident, as someone who recently served on the board of education , that district leaders did not set out to target neighborhood schools, nor are they engaging in the same ‘failed practices’ of the past — which were Coneglio’s overarching criticisms.

While reducing operational costs is an important benefit of school closures, the real driver behind this consolidation is improved instruction and educational opportunities – which cannot happen in the district’s significantly under-enrolled buildings.

Chinese language and AP statistics, for example, cannot be taught in all 19 high schools, many of which may only have a handful of students in each class. World-class theater, music and athletics require a critical mass of instructors and students, and simply can’t be provided when students and staff are spread too thin.

Reconciling to this hard truth is actually a departure from the ‘failed practices of the past’ referenced by Coneglio. School closures are gut-wrenching decisions, which is why they have been resisted for far too long.

Our students have suffered because of this.  Worse than being relegated to learning spaces in various degrees of disrepair, far too many of our students have been deprived of the educational opportunities and experiences they deserve.

To its credit, district leadership has refused to allow this inaction to continue.  First, in May 2022, the board put a long overdue facilities levy on the ballot. This initiative would have funded new 21st century buildings and provided maintenance and improvement funds to address the unacceptable condition of so many of the district’s buildings.  Ultimately, the board withdrew this levy from the ballot in the face of public outrage over failed CEA negotiations and (ironically) the condition of district buildings.

Undaunted, the following May, district leadership again placed a levy on the ballot. This initiative included the same maintenance and improvement funding but substituted an operating levy instead of funding for new school buildings.  Our students’ social and emotional needs had become the more pressing priority, so district leaders decided to seek operating funds to maintain many of the counselors, social workers, family ambassadors and full-time substitutes that had previously been funded out of federal COVID funds. To our community’s tremendous credit, this levy passed.  As a result, our district is one of the few across the country that is not faced with devastating budget cuts due to COVID dollars drying up.

Building consolidation is only the first step. The much more critical work is yet to come.  Once the new district footprint is established, district leaders can begin the process of preserving and replicating successful programs, implementing and expanding career education and determining what upgrades are required.

We can't let decision paralysis — a very real ‘failed past practice’ — sideline this very first step of the process.  The task force is likely to recommend that some neighborhood schools be closed – not due to some pre-ordained objective, but because improving education dictates it.   It makes little sense to preserve neighborhood schools to the detriment of the students living there.

Our students need the district to move forward precisely because of ‘failed practices,’ that have gone on for far too long.   While there may very well be room for improvement regarding the task force process, we must not allow ‘the perfect’ to be the enemy of ‘the good.’

Carol Beckerle is a former Columbus City Schools teacher and former member its board of education.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus closing taskforce not targeting neighborhood schools. Kids suffered due to inaction.