Leaked' "control the narrative" document would have furthered silenced CCS parents

Anna Gawboy is a parent of a student attending Siebert Elementary School.

The leaked memo drafted by Columbus Board of Education Member Brandon Simmons is a detailed plan to “dominate the boardroom” and “control the narrative” around the work of the Superintendent’s Community Facilities Task Force, which proposed the closure of up to 20 schools across the district earlier this month.

While the board was attempting to control optics and limit the expression of opposing viewpoints, families were anxiously waiting for Columbus City Schools leadership to provide them with plans for what will happen to their children if schools are merged or closed.

Columbus City Schools leadership originally scheduled 16 community engagement meetings between May 15 and June 1 in order to gather feedback and answer questions about proposed school closures.

As a parent of a CCS student, I attended two of these meetings.

In both, school representatives were unable to answer basic questions from community members.

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While task force co-chair Jim Negron has stated that the process so far has been completely data-driven, task force representatives present at the meetings were unprepared to present data that drove decision-making around any specific school.

Why are high-performing school being targeted?

Parents have asked why high-performing, healthily-enrolled schools with few behavior issues would be closed, and nearby under-enrolled schools with less-than-stellar test scores and frequent discipline problems would remain open. They have asked for specific figures on cost savings for each proposed closure scenario.

Parents queried school leadership about the continuation of programs that serve a range of student needs, including pre-kindergarten, English-language learners (ELL), gifted and talented, special education, arts, athletics, and career-technical preparation.

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Columbus City Schools officials have repeatedly promised that such details would be worked out at a later date.

Where will our children go?

But families whose children will be displaced by the proposed mergers and closures deserve timely answers to their legitimate concerns.

I have received texts from other Siebert parents asking where we will send our son if the school closes. The answer is always, “I don’t know.”

None of us can plan for our children’s future when we don’t know how the remaining schools will accommodate us. We are unsure that Siebert’s inclusive, safe, and caring culture will be replicated at another school.

Siebert is also the only school on the South Side that offers an ELL program. If Siebert is closed alongside two other nearby elementary schools, how will remaining schools on the South Side serve the needs of area ELL students?

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There is no place to serve displaced students

The leaked document that circulated among board members blamed the Columbus Education Association for undermining public trust in the task force.

However, parents and community members can see for themselves that the task force’s recommendations were based on a very narrow set of data and that district leadership does not yet have a plan to serve displaced students in the wake of these closures.

Their questions should be answered publicly by task force members and school leaders prior to the school board’s vote on closure scenarios. How can the school board possibly make informed decisions when it cannot yet provide this basic information to the community?

The leaked document outlines a series of political strategies aimed to silence the Columbus Education Association’s criticism of the Task Force’s recommendations.

These strategies would also silence families who wish to voice their concerns directly to the school board.

School leadership and the Task Force claim they want to collaborate with families in this process, but Superintendent Angela Chapman has now canceled six community engagement meetings originally scheduled for May 22 and 23 in the wake of the leaked document scandal.

The Columbus City Schools board and Task Force needs to demonstrate that they will hear the concerns of families at a time when families most need district leadership to listen.

Anna Gawboy is a parent of a student attending Siebert Elementary School.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Leaked document proof of Columbus schools' disdain for parents' voices