Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther is passionately outspoken about Columbus City Schools. He is an alumnus of the district, and his first experience as an elected official came as a member of its board of education. He has regularly praised Columbus City Schools and publicly bemoaned those who have spoken negatively about them. "I was tired of listening to people talk poorly about Columbus schools," Ginther said in a 2011 interview with ThisWeek Community News, explaining why he initially ran for school board. "As a matter of fact, I had a great experience in Columbus City Schools."
So strong is his belief in the district that Ginther is a major proponent of the levy this November that would authorize a 18 percent tax increase on residents to provide an influx of cash to Columbus City Schools.
However, when facing the decision of where to send his own daughter for kindergarten, Ginther chose a different path than the one he acclaims for the rest of the city's children. It is Ginther’s long-term support of Columbus City Schools that made last week’s announcement both surprising and noteworthy. The family’s assigned district school is a shining star that has been ranked as one of the best public elementary schools in the state; it’s a feeder, in fact, for the very high school from which the mayor himself graduated. Yet instead of “going public,” Ginther has decided to pay $20,175 a year for his daughter to attend an elite suburban private school.
Let me be clear: I support Mayor Ginther’s personal decision on how to best educate his child. As he explained in a statement to Columbus Monthly, “Every family must make decisions on what is best for their children to help them learn and grow.” Others can debate the optics of the decision in regard to the district’s levy request, but this is one of the core principles of the school choice movement: the ability of parents to send their children to the school that will serve them best.
His predecessor, Mayor Michael Coleman, established the Office of Education and worked with the Columbus City Schools to offer district-run charter alternatives within the public school system. A member of Columbus City Council at the time, Ginther broadly backed then-Mayor Coleman’s efforts to improve education in the city. Since becoming mayor himself, however, Ginther has been curiously silent on school choice and district alternatives—yet he is now electing to utilize just such an alternative for his own family. If Ginther recognizes the inherent value of school choice by sending his daughter to a prestigious private institution, the least he can do is fight for other families to have options too.
Moving forward, I hope that Mayor Ginther will use his platform to be a strong advocate for school choice so that all parents in the city of Columbus are able to enjoy the same freedom for their children that he has exercised. Anything less than this would be complete hypocrisy.
