Ohio sues Columbus City Schools over busing of charter and private students

COLUMBUS, Ohio ( WCMH ) — Ohio is suing its largest public school district, Columbus City Schools, over its updated bus policy for charter and private students, with the district asserting it’s done nothing wrong.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday afternoon, according to the office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. The state asking the Ohio Supreme Court to make CCS transport the affected students until a mediation process can unfold.

Yost said the district failed to provide the legally required notice to many affected families of their right to request mediation and sent the notices too late. According to Yost’s legal complaint, the last day CCS could have made decisions on who would not receive transportation was July 22, but many of the students did not learn they would not receive transportation until on or after Aug. 6.

According to Yost, roughly 1,380 students have been declared transportation impractical, per new resolutions passed by the CCS Board of Education in August, and therefore are not receiving busing to school.

Yost said he received “crickets” after sending CCS a cease-and-desist letter two days prior.

What did arrive before Yost sent out his complaint Thursday was a response to Yost from CCS’ attorney, as well as a second announcement from Superintendent Angela Chapman. In her letter to the district’s families, she said there’s no going back.

“If I learned weeks before the first day of school that the bus I was expecting to transport my child wasn’t coming, I would be upset and I would want answers. In hindsight, our outreach could have been more intentional, and our tone could have better reflected the gravity of the decision,” Chapman said. “Our new practice, which is consistent with Ohio law, is to serve these students the same way we serve Columbus City Schools students who choose to go to a different school than the one assigned to them.”

In his warning to the district on Tuesday, the attorney general specifically took issue with CCS’ decision to mark some private and charter school students as “transportation impractical,” shirking bus transportation for them. The district’s board of education rolled out a resolution Aug. 27 with six metrics to decide which students fall into the new category.

“Ohio law requires notice 30 days before the start of the school year for most students,” Yost previously wrote. “It appears that the district has chosen to ignore its legal obligations to transport thousands of students, perhaps calculating that the district is better off paying future non-compliance fines than meeting its current legal obligations.”

Parents and staff at the private education facilities only received a warning about the change at the beginning of August. For charter school manager United Schools Network, it’s quickly created a problem. CEO Andy Boy told NBC4 that more than 60 of his students don’t have a reliable way to get to school after being marked “impractical.”

At Arts and College Preparatory Academy, attendance and transportation director Sarah Silver said only 98 students received a bus route this year, a sharp decrease from the roughly 240 who used these busing services last year.

“Probably up to 20 kids so far have withdrawn because they’re not being able to be transported here. We had seven routes last year and this year we have two,” Anthony Gatto, the superintendent of Arts and College Preparatory Academy, said.

Families are allowed to request mediation from CCS, and at that point, the district said it will either have to transport the student if it has the means or it’ll pay families since it did not provide bussing. Parents can also challenge the “impractical” marking, making the district prove whether the student meets five of its six conditions.

“These are kids that have been enrolled with us, haven’t moved, their families haven’t moved and we haven’t moved so we’re not sure why all of a sudden last year it was fine and this year it’s not,” said Ed Ingman, the co-superintendent of The Graham Family of Schools.

Chapman said Friday as a parent herself, she understands the frustration but wants people to know CCS felt cuts were necessary.

“But all families, our entire community needs to be thinking about the burden that it placed on the system organization,” Champan said. “When we are choosing a school that’s a significant distance away from their home and away from their home neighborhood, there’s a cost to that.”

Read Yost’s filed complaint below:

Read Columbus City Schools’ response to Yost’s cease-and-desist letter below:

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