Two of 5 Columbus City schools tapped for closure to shutter after 2025-2026 school year
The CCS board voted in December 2024 to close Broadleigh Elementary, Buckeye Middle School, Moler Elementary and the building that houses Columbus Alternative High School.
The board also voted to close West Broad Elementary — under the condition that the board can secure funding to replace the school building on the site — and to close the Downtown board office building at 270 E. State St.
On June 3, Superintendent Angela Chapman said the board now has a better understanding of all the moving pieces and parts of how the district plans to close schools.
"This work does not happen overnight, and it certainly doesn't happen in a vacuum," Chapman said.
At the meeting, Chapman highlighted a multi-phased plan where two of the schools the five schools the district has set for closure — Broadleigh Elementary and Moler Elementary —could close in the first phase after the 2025-2026 school year.
Students at Broadleigh Elementary will be divided among Eastgate, East Columbus and Farimoor elementary schools, said Russell Brown, chief of strategy and performance for the district. The district will work with families who receive special education English Language Learning services to ensure students still receive those services.
Moler Elementary students will be relocated to Livingston and Lincoln Park Elementary schools.
Both Broadleigh and Moler Elementary schools will have engagement opportunities with families and send-offs and commemorations for the buildings before they are closed. Chapman said these are "big decisions for our school communities."
"So we want to make sure we are being very thoughtful and very intentional as it relates to the planning, but we also want to make sure that we have lots of opportunity to engage with the families so they know what's next for them," Chapman said.
Students in the two schools slated for closure will have access to a preferential lottery system if they want to explore other options in the district.
In the second and third phases of the plan, Buckeye Middle School and the McGuffey Road facility that houses Columbus Alternative High School will have additional community interaction during the 2025-26 school year, when determinations will be made about how to close the buildings, Brown said.
The initial proposal for Buckeye Middle School was moving students to Marion-Franklin High School, but Brown said the Marion-Franklin site would still be "significantly underutilized" and would create another problem of creating a grades 6-12 education site.
Brown said that the 2025-2026 school year will be used to explore long-term options that would support "standardization" of the grades at South High School and Marion-Franklin High to the grade levels served at other CCS high schools.
Both Downtown High School and East High School were proposed as future sites for Columbus Alternative, but long-term planning suggests that East High School's population could expand as a result of an increasing number of students from its feeder schools, which would limit the ability of the building to host another program on the site, Brown said.
The fourth phase would be implemented once funding is identified to replace West Broad Elementary. The district has repeatedly emphasized that it will not plan for a transition for that school until a funding source to replace it has been identified.
Once a funding source has been identified, it could take up to three years to complete the replacement, Brown said.
Cole Behrens covers K-12 education and school districts in central Ohio. Have a tip? Contact Cole at cbehrens@dispatch.com or connect with him on X at @Colebehr_report
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Two Columbus City schools set to close after 2025-2026 school year
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