COLUMBUS, Ohio — As the final bell rang earlier Thursday afternoon for summer, the deadline for Columbus City Schools to decide on school closures still looms.
“I see this as a big challenge and concern, I feel like it's a very difficult thing what they are trying to do,” said Jonathan Moody, a parent in the district.
For some students, come the 2025-2026 school year, hallways will look a lot different.
“The board is in a very hard place. I understand their long-term vision but short term, I don't know how you do that without devastating a lot of kids' lives,” said district parent Jennifer Lawson.
Phase two for the district's task force continues around the community, with posterboards lining rooms with school closure scenarios.
Chief of Strategy and Performance for Columbus City Schools, Dr. Russell Brown, said there might be some confusion about the role of the task force.
“The task force is charged with coming up with a list for buildings of closure, they weren’t charged with all the logistics on that. That would fall on the administration and the board to work through that,” said Brown.
“I've asked a lot of questions to the superintendent, the board of directors, the task force. Nobody seems to be able to answer the questions,” said Lawson.
The school board will vote on the school closures at the end of June, but some parents said the timeframe is too short for the magnitude of the decisions.
“Pushing it down the road, further delaying some implementation of it means we can’t be as wise in investing the permanent improvement dollars as we would like to be,” said Brown.
Brown said that the district is not expecting layoffs for teachers from the closures and concerns were raised about how this would impact class size.
“No, redesign does not mean larger class size. We have the same numbers of students, we anticipate the same amount of students moving building to building,” said Brown.
According to Brown, two enrollment projections were done that showed enrollment for Columbus City Schools will decline by one or two percent for the foreseeable future.
There are still a handful of opportunities to give feedback to the task force ahead of the school board’s final decision.