Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Dear Friends and Neighbors:

Our School Board will soon begin its deliberations on where to draw the enrollment boundaries for our junior and senior high schools. As a Board Member, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the subject.

Here are the conclusions I have reached so far:

Our most important concern, I think, should be to draw these lines in a way that unites, and does not divide, our community.

This means, above all, making absolutely certain that all of our schools offer the same educational opportunities. If one school is perceived as ''better'' than another, parents will start fighting to assure that their children attend the ''good'' school. Once that begins, we are lost. Unfortunately, I have seen traces of such thinking in the public comments at recent School Board meetings.

It also means not having, at any level, a township school and a city school, a rich school and a poor school, or a black school and a white school. We should try to make every parent, every student and the residents of every neighborhood feel, at all times, that they are part of a single school community.

Next in importance, I think, is drawing these lines to anticipate growth, so that we do not have to redraw them any time soon. This means, at minimum, not assigning all of the fully developed neighborhoods -- such as Summerfield, Glenshire, Woodsfield, Cherry Hill, Mingo, Melrose, etc. -- to one school.

I think it also is important to keep neighborhoods together. However, I do not believe we can keep the children who attend each elementary school together as they proceed through the school system. We have five elementary schools feeding into two middle/junior/senior high schools. At least one elementary school cohort must be split between them. Neither of the plans proposed by the Boundary Committee would keep all elementary school cohorts together.

Trying to do this will only become more difficult as we add a sixth elementary and a third middle school, as I believe our community's runaway growth will require us to do in the next 2-3 years. Indeed, at the rate we are going, we likely will need a seventh elementary, a third junior high, and a third high school within the decade. I do not know how we will be able to afford them.

I see some value in mixing enrollment as our children proceed from one level to another. This can enhance our children's social skills, expand their circles of friends, deter the formation of cliques, and make our children feel like they are all part of one community. This can also help ensure that all of our schools offer the same educational opportunities, by giving all of us a stake in all of them. We want to avoid, I think, creating of two separate school systems within our school district.

Since our community is geographically small, and our two junior and senior high schools will be so close together, transportation costs seem to me a secondary concern. This is doubly so, since most high school students provide their own transportation. I will insist that we price, as best we can, the alternatives that we consider. I doubt, however, that transportation costs will differ significantly from one alternative to another.

These, to me, seem to be the parameters that should frame our discussions. I have barely begun trying to apply them, however. I would appreciate your advice as I start to do so.

Very truly yours,

Bruce Rigelman


By Bruce Rigelman

You knew I'd be first, right?

Dr. Rigelman,

As you can probably discern from the numerous postings I have made on this subject, I appreciate you speaking out in this forum on this subject. Having made as many contributions as I could in the Committee process, I can sympathize with the monumental task you have ahead of you.

My suggestion to you sounds simple, but would turn out to be complex enough that you would be building the third high school before you set boundaries for these. Given the information that we had surmised during the process and you confirmed in your post, there are more schools coming. The questions that need to be answered now are how many, what grade(s), when and where. The City has a build out plan for all of PLSD. Doug Parker has said so and no one in the City government has disputed it. I think they should be obligated to disclose this plan. In spite of growing citizen indignity and involvement, the City is successful at marching forward towards the build out. Therefore, PLSD has to be much more aggressive in seeking information from the City to effectively plan for the future.

PLSD has to be privy to where the growth will occur, in what numbers and in what timeframe (Mr. Parker said 10 years). PLSD needs to be afforded the opportunity to purchase land as soon as possible both for the economic implications and the locations of the new schools is paramount to planning. Once the build out plan is disclosed and prospective locations are selected for the schools, then the district can start to come up with a ?“big plan?” for the final product. The ?“big plan?” can then be implemented in phases to reach the goal. Then you can stop this madness of the same extremely costly facilitators working with the same costly superintendent and the same concerned and dedicated citizens to come up with the same recommendations leaving you in the same quandary.

A flow has to be created for students in geographic areas to navigate the school system. It is a fact of life that you are never going to reach consensus on demographic and socioeconomic balance in the schools when you have to react to demographic and socioeconomic imbalances in the planning processes of the City. The City is in a first come-first served, sold to the highest bidder mode of development. What evidence is there of any of the aforementioned balances in their planning? None is the answer.

Another issue that needs to be put to rest is something that Ms. Sanders brought up at one of the Committee meetings. She said a mitigating factor in populating the new high schools was maintaining Division 1 status for both schools. Is this a requirement of the Board, the Administration, the Boosters, the students, parents or a combination of all or some? What role does or should athletics, music and all have in making boundary determinations as compared to your concerns over rich school/poor school, white school/black school?

As I see I am running out of space to continue this hypothesis, I will close with saying that you have a long way to go and you will never please everybody in light of Pickerington?’s Monday Morning Quarterback reputation. All I can say is that when you repeat this process in the future, please set up some more solid ground rules when you convene the Committee. Please implore the City to divulge more of their development plans. Take whatever measures are feasible to require that they divulge their build out plan. Try to strategically purchase land for new schools as soon as you can while the getting is good. Also, please plan to seek reelection when it is your time, as we will continue to needs leaders like you in the future.


By Maverick

You're on the Right Track

Dear Maverick:

Thanks for your thoughts. I share your concerns. The difficulties we face in drawing school boundaries mirror the larger problems of our community and, until we tackle those problems, any boundaries we draw will be temporary and makeshift. Those larger problems can be summed up in two words -- runaway growth.

In a better world, our leaders would tackle these problems by involving this entire community in a continuing effort to articulate a clear vision of how we want our community to be when, as they say, it is fully ''built out.'' We should not let developers and land-owners dictate our future.

In articulating this common vision, we would decide on the optimal mix of residential and commercial development, on what land to set aside for parks and green space, on how many schools we eventually will need and where they should be located, and on the roads, utilities and other social infrastructure we ultimately will need. We also would try to determine the optimal pace of development, and the measures necessary to assure that no component gets ahead or behind.

This vision would inform every decision that our leaders made. It would determine our zoning codes, the number of building permits and sewer/water taps we issued each year, the impact fees we imposed on developments, the subdivision plats we approved, when and where we built schools, and so forth.

Unfortunately, I do not see this happening with our current leadership. Although the township's Board of Trustees has made significant progress in this direction, their plan is too indefinite, and is rapidly becoming outdated. Also, the plan provides only for the township, and not for the city, and the Board of Trustee's efforts to adhere to this plan are continually undercut, in my judgment, by the City Council.

Regrettably, there is no solution to this problem but new leadership. These old tigers will not change their stripes, nor can they be confined by charters, lawsuits and ordinances.

There is hope, however. I am beginning to see potential new leaders emerging, in this forum and elsewhere. You folks need to line up and come forward. It will take a massive effort to put you in office. But I believe that, if we get started now, and with a lot of hard work and good will, this is not beyond our reach. I'm certainly willing to pitch in.

By Bruce Rigelman

Planning is Needed


Dear Bruce:

First, i would like to congratulate you on your desire to seek citizen input and your desire to see the the community is not divided into ''rich'' and ''poor'' schools. All of the children of this community are to be congratulated on thier fine academic, athletic and artistic endeavors. I too have been dismayed by comments that I have overheard from people that thier children may have to go to school with ''Columbus'' children and ''apartment'' children and I am never quite sure what people mean by these epitaphs. What does enourage me, however, is that the children do not seem to share these concerns. What we all need to remember is that all of these children are the praiseworthy kids who presently attend Jr. and Sr. High together and that all of these schools are, in the grand scheme of things, new schools.
My primary concern, however, is that the debate will likely be moot as I have no doubt that we will need a third Jr. High and High School, as well as middle schools and elementary schools, in the very near future should growth continue at the present pace. I am also concerned that our taxpayers may not be able to afford the consequences flowing from the rapid,uncontrolled growth of the community. Such growth will not only result in increased pressures on the schools, but on our roads, sewers and safety services. I believe that we do need to engage qualified planners to develop a vision for our entire community, township, city and school district. Until we have a plan in place, I believe that there should be a moratorium on new residential housing permits. I believe the moratorium can be of short duration (I was thinking one year, but would welcome input on either duration or suggestions as to limitations on permits rather than a complete moratorium). I would certainly welcome the input of any citizens who have any alternative suggestion.
I,for one, would encourage you and other school board members to attend the next council meeting and express your views. The heart of this community is the school system and both the township and the city need to hear what you have to say.

By David Shaver