OHIO — Columbus Downtown High School is hub for students with dreams. Monita Lohar’s goal, who’s a senior there and enrolled into the public safety program, is to become a police officer.
But public school leaders worry about the future of some of their school buildings and programs like those. Columbus City Schools told Spectrum News 1 that a provision in the governor’s budget could jeopardize about 10 of their schools if it comes to fruition.
Lohar’s family came from Nepal, and she said her father inspired her to go into law enforcement, but this program helped her with one of her biggest challenges.
“Public speaking, yes. I stutter a lot, and I get really nervous when talking,” Lohar said. “My dad talking about military, police and then it’s just when I got older, it was just like something that really sparked my interest, and I want to give back to the community that has gave me and my family an opportunity for a better life.”
Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget proposal is now causing concern for some school leaders.
There’s already a law in place that forces districts to offer to sell or lease “unused facilities” to community schools, college prep schools or STEM schools.
Maurice Woods, senior chief operating officer for Columbus City Schools, said the governor’s proposal changes the definition of an unused facility.
“The largest concern for me, and again, I’m still trying to understand all the nuances of it, but I think decisions around underutilization and underutilized facilities,” Woods said. “I think that decision should be housed in the school districts because we have buildings that are used for different purposes.”
Right now, if a district uses a building for less than 60% academic instruction it would be either sold or leased.
But the new law changes that to under 60% enrollment.
“Just focusing specifically on a percentage of enrollment probably doesn’t tell the entire story about how we’re utilizing our facility,” Woods said.
Indeed, this school has several programs. One of those is a culinary kitchen, which according to faculty, it needs a big space for its equipment. School leaders said the budget doesn’t consider what each class is used for.
From culinary to cosmetology to IT programs, Russ Brown, chief of strategy and performance of Columbus City Schools, said this school would close if the governor’s budget passes as it is.
There are fewer than 400 students at the school that was built to house about 800.
“As you walk around this facility, you’ll see there are a lot of kids here and a lot of spaces that don’t look like a traditional school building because they’ve been designed specifically to support CTE programing so that we can develop student to be able to enter the workforce,” Brown said. “You can’t just pick up a culinary kitchen set for teaching students how to cook and move it to another building inexpensively.”
Critics of the change said it should be introduced as its own bill, so there can be a thorough discussion about its potential impact.
Lohar is just one example of what this school does, and if it ceases to exist, she said it would be a big loss for the community.
“I would be devastated and because this building has changed a lot of things for me,” Lohar said. “Like become a better person that I am, like become more confident when I speak with everything, and I want other people to come here and get the same experience that I got.”