OCTOBER 15: Columbus City School closures, Issue 9, New Women's Suffrage Monument at Statehouse

Amy, you were covering this this morning.

Yeah, so there's another joint committee meeting happening tonight.

And we've seen these happen over the course of the past few weeks.

There are joint committee meetings and then there are kind of breakout meetings between parents, community members that are welcome to come and kind of weigh in.

Joint committee meeting is happening tonight.

The school board will continue hearing from parents, other district leaders about how to cut $50 million from the budget separately, but tonight really focusing a lot on presentations surrounding student transportation and building construction, moving that around and how that can be rescheduled and whatnot.

Because the district's considering closing 10 schools now, and we've already had some closures.

Yeah,

so we've had some closures.

There are other ones that are on the chopping block.

I think what schools take the hit will kind of depend on who they are and how many students are there, obviously.

But another big conversation is transportation.

We were just talking about this before.

Right.

We've seen this in the past.

So Columbus, something that's unique to Columbus City Schools, which we don't see in other major districts across the state, is that they still bus many of their high schoolers.

You know, we're the biggest school district in the state of Ohio.

And the superintendent has cited, you know, there are large districts like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton that are not busing their students, their high school students, I should say.

They're giving them things like bus passes, their equivalent of CODA passes to get to school and to help with that.

And they say that here in Columbus, busing high schoolers is a huge, huge commitment financially and that could really make a dent in that $50 million that they already have

to cut.

And I remember doing a story about a year ago with a parent just talking to them about the possibility of one of their children getting on a Kota bus to go to high school and the other one getting on a normal bus and just kind of what that divide would look like.

And parents are kind of upset about it.

It's really a contentious topic about what they're going to do with that.

But again, $50 million, that's how much money they have to basically find to to off this budget deficit.

Amy, you were covering this this morning.

Yeah, so there's another joint committee meeting happening tonight.

And we've seen these happen over the course of the past few weeks.

There are joint committee meetings and then there are kind of breakout meetings between parents, community members that are welcome to come and kind of weigh in.

Joint committee meeting is happening tonight.

The school board will continue hearing from parents, other district leaders about how to cut $50 million from the budget separately, but tonight really focusing a lot on presentations surrounding student transportation and building construction, moving that around and how that can be rescheduled and whatnot.

Because the district's considering closing 10 schools now, and we've already had some closures.

Yeah,

so we've had some closures.

There are other ones that are on the chopping block.

I think what schools take the hit will kind of depend on who they are and how many students are there, obviously.

But another big conversation is transportation.

We were just talking about this before.

Right.

We've seen this in the past.

So Columbus, something that's unique to Columbus City Schools, which we don't see in other major districts across the state, is that they still bus many of their high schoolers.

You know, we're the biggest school district in the state of Ohio.

And the superintendent has cited, you know, there are large districts like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton that are not busing their students, their high school students, I should say.

They're giving them things like bus passes, their equivalent of CODA passes to get to school and to help with that.

And they say that here in Columbus, busing high schoolers is a huge, huge commitment financially and that could really make a dent in that $50 million that they already have

to cut.

And I remember doing a story about a year ago with a parent just talking to them about the possibility of one of their children getting on a Kota bus to go to high school and the other one getting on a normal bus and just kind of what that divide would look like.

And parents are kind of upset about it.

It's really a contentious topic about what they're going to do with that.

But again, $50 million, that's how much money they have to basically find to to off this budget deficit.