This story is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the February 9 Board of Education meeting. Start with the February 9 meeting recap.
The Worthington Board of Education will finish writing its 2026 goals at a work session folded into its April 13 regular meeting, and will push a proposed joint meeting with Worthington City Council to June or July. The board reached both decisions Feb. 9 after an exchange over whether a sit-down between the two elected bodies would change anything, given that district administrators and city staff already work closely together, and after Superintendent Trent Bowers reminded the board that only about one in four of its students lives in the City of Worthington.
The joint meeting is new ground. Council Member Amy Lloyd, who is council's liaison to the school board and a former school board president, approached board leaders about it in January, and Board President Amber Epling-Skinner said the request came from the city. "The City of Worthington reached out to us to put something like this on the calendar," she said.
Two unfinished pieces of business
The board had met in a work session the week before, on Feb. 4, to set its goals and priorities for the year alongside the district's. "We didn't get all of our work done," Epling-Skinner told the public, and a second session was needed. There is a deadline. Bowers wants the board's goals in hand before June so he can take them to building administrators for the next school year.
Board Vice President Stephanie Harless then laid out what she had in mind for the joint meeting, which she and Epling-Skinner had discussed with Lloyd. She proposed two buckets. The tactical one is small things that would stop the bodies from stepping on each other: "It would be really nice if we had a shared calendar somewhere. That's a really easy win," she said, recalling events the two bodies had scheduled on top of each other.
The strategic bucket is bigger. Both bodies write multi-year goals, and the city is in the middle of strategic planning. Harless wants each side to bring its three-to-five-year goals to the table, find where they overlap and where they might collide, "and how can we anticipate that and work through that ahead of time instead of waiting until two weeks before and everybody's on their heels". Her example was development. "Not that we would ever say, no, we want development. This table has been very supportive of development, that's not a question," she said, but questions such as whether the city is considering tax abatements, or what traffic a project will bring, are ones the board would rather hear about early. She envisioned meeting once or twice a year, and eventually inviting the other municipalities and townships the district serves, but starting small.
"What are we being pulled together to change?"
Board Member Nikki Hudson pressed on the premise. The district's leadership and the city's leadership already have "very healthy working relationships," she said, pointing to Treasurer TJ Cusick's work with the city on tax abatements, where he has protected district revenue while staying "very reasonable and understanding". If that process is healthy, she asked, what would elected officials meeting change? "What we're being pulled together to change?".
Harless agreed the staff-to-staff relationship works. "But I don't think that exists between the electeds," she said. The board makes policy and council passes ordinances, and she wants better insight into where council is heading.
Hudson said she was not opposed, but wanted the board to put its own goals first. "I would prioritize our work session over the session with the city and schedule that for later in the year," she said, because the goals have to be done in time for administrators to prepare over the summer. Epling-Skinner agreed the goals session was easy to schedule within a month and that the city side was "new" and still being organized on the city's end, so summer made sense. Harless noted council takes August off, which leaves June or July.
Board Member Sheena Costa Flowers backed the joint meeting on substance. The problems the district is trying to solve, she said, including "teacher retention, family engagement, just general accessibility, are influenced by housing, they're influenced by transportation and community design", and she wanted the board to learn whether the city is making decisions in its strategic plan that the district could still shape. Harless said she would check with the city on anything coming in the next few months.
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Who the district serves
Epling-Skinner added a point she wanted the public to hear: Worthington is one of several municipalities the district works with. "I'm not even a resident of Worthington. I'm in the school district but I'm not a resident of Worthington," she said. Harless said she wants all the municipalities at the table eventually, "but a large chunk of our buildings are in Worthington".
Bowers put numbers to it from a new enrollment-projection report the district had just posted. "Sixty percent of our students live in the City of Columbus. Only about 23% of our students live in the City of Worthington," he said. The district's legal name is Worthington City Schools, he added, but its buses say "Worthington Schools" because "we want to be inclusive to all areas of this community". Board Member Kelli Davis noted that three of the five board members live outside the city.
What the board decided
Davis suggested the board hold its goals session on a Monday it already had on the calendar rather than adding an evening, as it had done with business items at the Feb. 4 session. Bowers checked the schedule and said no presentations were booked for the April 13 or April 27 meetings. The board settled on April 13. Epling-Skinner asked members to review the shared working document beforehand and come with their long-term items, saying the board was about three bullets into five and did not want the work to spill past two sessions.
Harless said she would go back to Lloyd about dates after April. Hudson's request, on behalf of the parents at the table: "Please aim for June or July and not May", a month with two graduations.
What came next
The board held its second goals work session after the April 13 regular meeting, as planned. The joint meeting with City Council had not happened as of the board's Sept. 28, 2026 meeting, when the board was still proposing a date.
This is one of 2 Worthington Pulse stories from the February 9 Board of Education meeting recap.