A few days before Christmas, the Columbus Dispatch published a story detailing how Columbus City Schools (CCS) plans to spend over half a million dollars to “evaluate conditions at its more than 100 buildings to help district officials consider which buildings might close and which ones to fix.”
It’s not a surprise that the district is considering closing schools. The topic has been coming up for years, and current superintendent Dr. Angela Chapman mentioned at a board meeting in November that district officials would discuss plans to consolidate schools.
It’s also not inherently bad news. School closures are complicated, and it’s absolutely crucial for the district to gather feedback from families and community members before they make any big decisions. But district officials also can’t keep ignoring steadily declining enrollment. Between 2017–18 and 2022–23, for example, CCS saw a 10 percent drop in enrollment, a loss of roughly 4,000 students. Right-sizing will be difficult but likely necessary, given that the district serves fewer students today. Consolidating schools could in fact help improve both the district’s finances and its ability to serve students well.
Unfortunately, the Dispatch piece doesn’t acknowledge that Dr. Chapman is right to insist on the district developing a long-term plan. The story does, however, contain a thinly veiled jab at school choice by John Coneglio, the president of the Columbus Education Association. The article notes that Coneglio has “watched a significant number of Columbus City students move to charter and private schools over the years.” Coneglio later adds, “You cannot close your way to success. Stop managing the slow decline of Columbus City Schools.”
Pairing these statements together sends a pretty clear message: The reason CCS is consolidating or closing schools is because it’s lost a significant number of students to charter and private schools. If those pesky (non-union) alternatives didn’t exist, Columbus wouldn’t be in this predicament.
According to a recent analysis from Fordham, Columbus does indeed face stiff competition from schools of choice. Among the nation’s largest school districts, Columbus ranks sixteenth—tied with the Los Angeles Unified School District in California—in terms of facing the most competition. As of 2019–20, roughly 36 percent of the district’s students, more than one-third, are enrolled in non-district schools. A closer look indicates that it’s largely charters driving the competition. The percentage of district students attending private schools slightly decreased between 2010 and 2020, while the percentage of students attending charters is significantly larger and increased over the time period.
For school choice opponents, it’s easy to point the finger at charters when the district is contemplating building closures. But blaming charters overlooks several important facts.
First, CCS has been putting off dealing with under-enrolled schools for years. A piece published by the Dispatch back in May 2018 noted that, according to district staff, many buildings were “under-enrolled, underutilized, in poor condition and unpopular among students.” Months later, a November editorial blasted the board of education’s decision to essentially ignore “all but the easiest” recommendations from a facilities taskforce charged with identifying which buildings to close. To wit: “The district has too few students in too many buildings. This isn’t a matter only of wasting money; it hurts programs, especially at the high-school level, when there aren’t enough students to justify certain classes or to field strong extracurricular programs.” These points were ignored, and the district refused to downsize its facilities footprint. Now, that lack of action has come home to roost.
Second, it’s important to recognize that no district—including Columbus City—is entitled to students. Families have every right to send their children to the school that will best meet their needs. Interestingly, the CEA has no problem with that when parents choose traditional districts. Every year, hundreds of families move out of Columbus and into surrounding cities like Dublin, Pickerington, Gahanna, and Upper Arlington. They do so for a variety of reasons, including that these districts are higher performing academically. School choice of this nature is accepted as normal, isn’t blamed for district downsizing, and is even considered a sign that parents are engaged and invested. But families who make the very same decision not to send their kids to CCS and opt for a charter or private school instead of uprooting and moving homes are villainized as the reason why the district must close buildings. It’s never the district’s fault for failing to improve or transform itself into a more attractive option. Instead, it’s the fault of charters for offering families and students what they want and need, and parents for doing what’s best for their kids.
Third, there are at least a dozen studies that have examined student-level data and found that competition from charter schools has positive or neutral-to-positive effects on traditional public school achievement. Furthermore, the most recent national analysis from CREDO indicates that students who enroll in charters benefit from a boost in achievement. Ohio-specific research has produced similar findings. Together, these studies make it clear that charters benefit both the students who attend them and those who remain enrolled in districts. If students and academic outcomes are top priorities, then increased competition from charter schools is a good thing. Charters don’t deserve blame if the impact they’re having on students is positive. If, however, the priority is protecting a system instead of people, then charters are indeed blameworthy.
By doing nothing in 2018, district officials exhibited a troubling “lack of leadership.” The CEA blaming schools of choice for CCS enrollment woes that persist in 2023—and recently insisting that right-sizing the district is the wrong move—reflects a similar lack of leadership. It’s easy to point fingers at families acting in the best interest of their children, and at other schools that are serving their students well. It’s even easier to assert that the focus couldn’t possibly be on offering every student a “world-class education” until after the district’s infrastructure received an “overdue reinvestment.” Blaming everyone and everything instead of looking in the mirror seems to be the name of the game here in the capital city. But it’s not fair. It’s not right. And it definitely doesn’t put students and families first.
