City’s education director to retire

Rhonda Johnson, the city of Columbus’ education director, will retire on Aug. 2.

Johnson was appointed by Mayor Michael B. Coleman to what was a newly created cabinet-level post in June 2014, leading the city’s education efforts, including city grants to expand pre-kindergarten programs and early-childhood assessments.

“People have asked me to do things, but I need a break,” Johnson said Tuesday. “I haven’t had a break in years.”

“She has been a stalwart advocate for children, education and educators her entire professional career, and she has been critical to the City’s efforts to increase access to high-quality pre-k, and to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive birth-tofive policy agenda,” Ginther, who retained her in his administration in 2015, said in a written statement.

The work of the city’s education department, which has four employees and a $6.5 million budget, will continue, Ginther said.

“This transition represents an opportunity to continue to align the community around a bold agenda to invest in the health, wellbeing and education of our youngest residents,” he said.

Johnson is paid $161,935 a year. She served from 2004 to 2014 as president Johnson of the Columbus Education Association, the union representing Columbus City Schools teachers. She grew up in rural Alabama and began as a career-tech teacher in the Columbus district in 1978. She received her master’s degree from Ohio State University.

Johnson became a prominent voice on Coleman’s 25-member Columbus Education Commission, which he created in December 2012 to reform the city schools in the wake of a data-rigging scandal.

Even though that the commission was calling for the district to share local property-tax dollars with charter schools and cut some union workers’ salaries and benefits, Johnson became a backer.

“It may surprise some people to see business and labor working together,” Johnson wrote in September 2013 in an op-ed in The Dispatch.

“We are cooperating because we both know Columbus must have highly effective schools if we are to continue to have Ohio’s strongest economy and the best employment prospects for our children,” Johnson wrote in the op-ed.

But in November 2013, voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy backed by the commission. The next month, Johnson announced that she would retire as the CEA union’s president. Two months later, she was identified by Coleman as his pick to fill the newly created city education post.