School-closings meeting

The Columbus district laid out the impact of each school-closing option that would affect students in the Brookhaven High School neighborhood today, but officials didn’t pitch any new options.
A school-closings committee is considering three alternatives in the Brookhaven area:

• closing Brookhaven and sending future students to Mifflin High;
• closing Brookhaven and Medina Middle and sending elementary students into other middle and high schools;
• or closing Medina, making Brookhaven a grades 7-12 school and converting nearby elementaries to K-6 buildings.

“All three of these have issues,” said Carole Olshavsky, who oversees district facilities.
Some buildings are too full to accept many more students from the Brookhaven area on the North Side. All three would affect hundreds of students.
An option on the South Side that would close Southmoor Middle, Moler and Heyl elementaries and convert South High to a 7-12 school still seems viable to district officials. Students at Moler and Heyl would be merged and housed in the Southmoor building.
That plan was the only South Side option presented after district officials advised against closing Fairwood or Siebert elementaries, which initially were targeted for closure.
District officials have not said how many schools they want to close or how much money they hope to save, but falling enrollment has spurred the effort to consolidate buildings.
The committee meets again on Monday. Community meetings are to begin in a couple of weeks.

In just a few weeks, a rainy fall could give way to a time of anxiousness for school administrators and parents alike.
It's the beginning of the winter season-and unscheduled school closings.
Belpre City Schools this year is trying out a new telephone service, which will automatically notify parents if classes in that district are cancelled.
"I would caution all families to watch the weather, in the event we make a decision to cancel or delay school," says Tony Dunn, Superintendent, Belpre City Schools. "Those chances are always out there in the wintertime. But 6:00 in the morning is generally the time when parents can expect a phone call to come, if not the night before."
Wood County Schools also tries to decide by six in the morning whether it will be in session. The latest time, says Transportation Director Richard Lance, is 6:30, which is the time buses begin to leave for their routes.
But Dunn says that back roads can be a problem in Belpre as well. An even bigger problem, he says, can be the need to send students home in the middle of the day. That's an occasion, he says, transportation employees rose to one day last winter.
"They explained to me that, last winter, we had a situation where it got snowy in the middle of the day," Dunn says, "and we actually used our Suburban to deliver some students home in our more rural areas. So, I think we're very well equipped to deliver our kids safely."
WTAP, as always, will run school cancellations at the bottom of the TV screen each morning we have them: during "Daybreak" and the "Today" show, and during other times of the day when necessary. That information will also be available on this web channel.
And throughout the winter, we ask that you NOT call us asking us whether your area school is closed.