The Columbus (Ohio) district is looking at possibly closing 20 of its schools.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that recommendations from the Superintendent's Community Facilities Task Force spell out nine scenarios that call for shutter as many as 20 of the school system's 113 buildings.
The scenarios suggest a number of ways students could be moved to other schools, either by relocating programs, consolidating area schools or closing buildings.
Superintendent Angela Chapman says the scenarios are initial recommendations. Feedback from the community will inform any final approvals to be made in June.
"These are initial recommendations that have been submitted to begin the conversation about where we go from here," Chapman says.
Columbus City Schools is Ohio's largest school district with about 46,000 students, but it numbers have plummeted since peaking at 110,173 in 1971-72.
The Superintendent's Community Facilities Task Force presented nine scenarios to the board that included which schools might close or consolidate.
Russell Brown, the district's chief of strategy and performance, said the biggest factors considered by the task force were building capacity and utilization.
Although the district has 113 school buildings, not all of them are uniformly occupied. Some schools have utilization below 25% of their capacity, and enrollment at others is as much as 120% of capacity.
