COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost officially sued Columbus City Schools on Thursday evening. But the threat of a lawsuit had been on the horizon since earlier this week.
On Tuesday, Yost released a video message to CCS that said in part :
"Ohio law requires Public School Systems to transport kids within their District to the school that they choose to go to within certain limits Columbus City Schools has decided not to comply with state law you don't get to do that," said Yost.
And he followed up with a cease-and-desist.
Then on Thursday afternoon, Yost posted on X that it had been "crickets" from the district, adding that he would be filing a lawsuit in the coming hours.
This legal battle is all connected to school buses—after CCS determined that some of the routes they used to transport charter school students were "impractical."
10TV has been asking CCS for comment on the issue for days. On Thursday morning, hours before Yost's post, we asked Superintendent Dr. Angela Chapman about it.
Alleyne: "Can we just get a reaction from you on his request?"
Dr. Chapman: "Well, our legal team will be preparing an official response. Certainly, we wanna make sure that our legal team has the opportunity to respond to that matter. I'm not an attorney. I am an educator and so when we receive requests such as that from attorneys, we want to make sure that we send that through the proper channels, and we'll provide a statement later today."
Alleyne: "I just to expound upon that though, I mean, at this point, do we have any inkling as to whether or not busing will resume or is that just still in the matter of, you know, waiting on an attorney to respond?"
Dr. Chapman: "Well, I can't speak to that right now. I know that as a district, we provide transportation to all of the students that we are legally obligated to provide transportation to. That's over 30,000 students in CCS and over 9,000 students, students in charter, nonpublic. And we'll continue to provide those services."
Alleyne: "I guess the pushback on that though is that some parents are saying that there are kids who are legally obligated..."
Before 10TV could finish asking the question, we were cut off by a district spokesperson who told us legally Dr. Chapman couldn't talk about this.
Education rights attorney Mark Weiker said according to state law, both the district and AG Yost have a point.
Districts are legally allowed to stop busing students that they deem to be "impractical" to pick up, but they have to make that decision at least 30 days before the start of the school year.
"The first resolution the school board of education adopted was on August 6 and then classes started on the 21st. So, it appears that the resolution may not have been adopted in time for parents to receive the proper notice that they needed," he said.
In the meantime, late Thursday afternoon, CCS released two lengthy statements on the matter.
The first was directed at Yost and the second statement came from Chapman and was aimed at parents:
10TV has contacted the Ohio Attorney General's office for more information about the lawsuit it promised to file and we are still waiting to hear back.