Columbus City Schools' mass closing plan a danger to kids already facing high hurdles

Emily Brown is a visiting assistant clinical professor of law and director of the immigration clinic at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Her two children attend Columbus City Schools.

The Columbus City Schools Community Facilities Task Force recently released recommendations to close as many as 20 schools and relocate students from up to five others.

Many community members, parents, and teachers have raised concerns about negative effects on students when their learning environments are disrupted.

Other critics have pointed out that mass closures of neighborhood schools could lead to declines in enrollment as families flee to charter schools or use vouchers to attend private schools.

What has been largely left out of the public conversation is the plan’s impact on English Language Learners—students whose first language is not English. The task force’s recommendations contemplate closing nine of the 32 elementary schools that offer English Language Learner programs, displacing large numbers of students.

Columbus City Schools has nearly 10,000 English language learner (AKA English as a Second Language) students, about 21% of the district’s total student population.

ELL students typically spend a large portion of their day in a general education classroom with their English-proficient peers, but they also receive small-group instruction on their English language skills.

ELL students often work with one ELL teacher over multiple years, benefiting students, who build strong relationships with their teacher, as well as their families, who connect with other ELL families.

Closing schools not the answer. Columbus students are not the problem. Adults are.

Because the district has not explained where any students from most of the shuttered schools would go, we don’t know what will happen to these ELL students.

They could be consolidated into the remaining ELL programs (several of whose buildings are already at full capacity), and students will have to be bussed farther to get to them.

Or perhaps the district will open new ELL programs at other schools—but that begs the question of why we would close our high-performing programs just to start new ones while also disrupting students’ educational environment, existing school communities and relationships with teachers.

As an immigration attorney and law professor, I have represented many English Language Learners and their parents. Their sacrifices are inspiring, as they have left behind the familiarity of home to undergo an arduous journey to the United States and learn a new culture and language, all so they can provide opportunities for their children that they never had—including, and sometimes most importantly, a quality public education.

My own two children are enrolled in a CCS school, Hubbard Elementary, with a community of families who hail from neighborhoods throughout Columbus and countries all over the world.

Our school—with its topflight English Language Learner program boasting some of the best progress scores in the district—is slated for closure.

Yet the district and the task force have offered stunningly little detail on why.

They purport to have considered the condition of buildings and building enrollment. These are crude instruments in the first place, but even by those measures, the data doesn’t add up.

For example, Siebert Elementary—the only elementary school on the south side that serves ELL students—has a large ELL population and its total student enrollment is 120% of the building capacity. Two other schools on the closure list, Northtowne Elementary and Valleyview Elementary, are both neighborhood schools with building utilization rates of 96% and 89%, respectively.

All students benefit from consistency, community and a supportive environment for learning.

This ill-conceived mass closure plan provides none of that and will disproportionately harm our community’s ELL students, who face extra educational hurdles.

The district should not move forward with the closure of a single school until it provides more explanation for how it has decided which schools to close and a better plan for addressing the negative effects of doing so.

Emily Brown is a visiting assistant clinical professor of law and director of the immigration clinic at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Her two children attend Columbus City Schools.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus school district closing plan will harm vulnerable ELL students