Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Sadly...

the decision just made has firmed up our decision to homeschool so you have been even more decisive than you realize. This decision has confirmed for me that even this small town America schoolboard can be affected by social engineering and other pc ideas(something we hoped to escape after too many years in some of the bigger cities of this country). I think this type of influence will extend, if it hasn't already, into curriculum and what is tolerated and not in your public school system and that causes great concern for me. While I will work for change personally, I would feel remiss to put my children in a system that I do not feel is looking out for thier best interest.
Ahh, well, not my problem anymore. While other Ptown kids are getting shuffled from school to school, away from friends, we plan to keep consistant learning, growing, and friendship happening in our own home. Thank you board for concreting our decision to homeschool!
Good luck parents! I feel for you and wish you all had the means and/or felt empowered enough to make the same choice. This is truly the ONLY way school boards will listen and start doing what parents want. It will have to hit hard enough in the wallet with decreased enrollment before they will listen to you.

the fat lady sang

I can only hope the school board will realize what a dreadful decision they made. you sold out to the highest bidder. what makes you different than city council? you reap what you sow. rich kid school poor kid school. you drew the line in this community.

Concensus on School Board

Our Board, with an enormous amount of public input, reached a 5-0 consensus on the boundaries for our junior and senior high schools. We as a community must now unite to support ALL OF OUR schools and continue to provide outstanding and equal educational opportunities for students at both junior and senior high schools.

As junior and senior high school parents, we also must help our children cope with being separated from some of their best friends, and look for creative activities to continue to nourish their friendships while attending different facilities.

Our school board should be applauded in the manner in which they reached such an important decision. The board formed a committee, which was open to all residents. The 90 citizens on the boundary committee and worked hard to develop nine different plans. The committee leaders reported to the board all nine plans, the number of votes each plan received, and specifically offered in detail the top two voted plans. Unfortunately, due to the enormous task, we on the boundary committee failed to reach a consensus on one plan.

The board held numerous public meetings in which they listened carefully to all who spoke. And,the board had a public work session in which they took the best elements of all nine plans and developed one boundary plan to best serve all of us.

The board decision-making process on this difficult issue is one of the best examples of democracy at work. We should be proud of all board members and the manner in which they are working together to best serve all citizens in the school district.

Our board achieved a consensus on one plan WITHOUT BLOODSHED ... something that we failed to do as a boundary committee. Bravo to ALL 5 board members! Bravo! Bravo!

We made the right choice

I am sorry that some of you are so displeased with the school board's recent decision concerning our high school/junior high school enrollment boundaries. I am convinced that the board made the right decision, for the right reasons. Let me explain.

The new boundaries are identical with our current elementary school boundaries, save for the division of the Tussing area. Thus the boundaries will keep kids together who started out in school together, more than any of the other options that we considered.

The Tussing area had to be divided for two reasons: First, it is impossible to place five elementary enrollment districts into two high school/junior high school districts without dividing at least one of them. Second, we do need to avoid isolating the portion of our school district that is in the City of Columbus, and also to avoid isolating our minority residents, most of whom live in that portion of our school district.

The plan we chose is simple and straightforward. It generally sends kids to the closest school. And it will accommodate growth. PHS Central will have significantly lower initial enrollment because we anticipate that most of the school district's growth will occur in the southern half of the school district. The boundaries also do not reinforce other lines of division in our community, such as township/city.

Regrettably we cannot conform our middle school enrollment boundaries to this pattern, because we do not have the same excess classroom space at the middle school level that we will soon have at grades 7-12. Dividing the middle schools along the same lines would badly overcrowd Harmon MS, while leaving Diley MS under-enrolled.

As a safety valve, we will soon approve an open enrollment plan under which, space permitting and on a first come/first served basis, any rising seventh grader can choose either junior high school without penalty. This choice, however, will be binding on any such seventh grader through the end of high school. Thus a seventh grader who chooses PJHS Lakeview will be committed to PHS North, and vice versa.

We tried to make the best decision for our community, based on as much input from the community as we could get. We invited public comments on the subject at four successive board meetings, and I invited your comments here. The comments that I received in this forum were extremely important in helping me reach the conclusion that I ultimately did.

Although we listened to everyone, our decision reflects our own best judgments. Each of us came honestly and independently to the conclusion that Board Plan 5 best served our concerns. Given how differently Larry Sigman and I generally approach board matters, this is strong testimony for this plan. We were not pressured, and we did not cater to any interest.

The work of the boundary committee was vital to our deliberations, and I remain extremely grateful to the 90 people who served on that committee. Although we chose not to adopt either of the committee's final two recommendations as proposed, we were guided by the same principles and objectives, and the plan we ultimately chose combines several of the plans proposed by that committee.

Please continue to participate in the school district. We have some extremely difficult decisions to make in the coming year, and we need all the guidance and advice that we can get. I will try to share these issues with you here, and hope that you will respond honestly and openly. I value your advice.

By Bruce Rigelman