Task force feared board would dismiss closing of schools

The co-chair of the citizens task force that worked six months on a Columbus City Schools building-closure plan that the school board dismissed Wednesday said many members of the panel were concerned from the start that might happen.

“Among the concerns that committee members raised at the outset of our work was the need to make (final) decisions and take actions,” said Pari Sabety, a senior principal at Accenture who guided the panel since last spring. “We ask (the volunteer task force members) to take positions that require them to place the interests of the district above their neighborhood.”

The school board has a fiduciary responsibility to make tough financial decisions “rather than stagnating the way we’ve always done it,” Sabety said.

In a surprise move Wednesday, the school board moved up a decision on the recommendation by two weeks and voted 5-0 to shoot down the plan to close five schools, including LindenMcKinley High School. The board accepted adjusting some school boundaries, selling some administrative assets and further studying other recommendations — with no deadline on taking action.

“If there isn’t an ongoing process, just like every business has to take, of reviewing the assets of the school district against the outcomes it wishes to achieve, (the school board is) providing additional burdens for the school administrators to carry as they’re trying to manage the district,” Sabety said.

The vote marked the second time in just over two years that the board has ignored key recommendations from a task force it appointed on facilities. Another panel in 2016 voted 26-0 to recommend rebuilding or remodeling 18 Columbus City schools for $365 million, and closing three elementary schools. The board rejected the recommendation.

But task force member Jerry Saunders Sr., chief executive officer of Africentric Personal Development Shop, said he agreed with the board in putting academics before facilities to avoid a state takeover in two years.

“I think they chose the (recommendations) that they can kind of quickly make happen, and focus on academics,” Saunders said. “I obviously don’t want (the plan) to be shelved,” but he said it was going to take a lot of energy and time to make controversial school closures happen.

Stephen Hardwick, a task force member and a district parent, said how the school board handles some of the task force’s recommendations could pit two different groups of students and parents against each other for use of the former North High School. The task force recommended Dominion Middle School and the language immersion programs be relocated to North High. But students and parents from Columbus Alternative High School and their parents have complained to the board about poor conditions at their current building, which could lead the board to look at a solution that relocates CAHS to North, he said, and that would be a mistake.

“The only thing I can say is that the task force did due diligence,” said Nana Watson, president of the Columbus branch of the NAACP and a task force member. “It was really about the common good for this community, what’s best for this community.

“I don’t think I wasted my time.”