This story is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the August 10 Board of Education meeting. Start with the August 10 meeting recap.
Worthington Schools opened applications this week for a roughly 50-member community task force that will spend the next two years deciding what the district should do with its eleven elementary schools and Sutter Park Preschool. About a dozen of those seats are reserved for residents chosen through an open application and a blind selection process. The work is scheduled to end in a recommendation to the Board of Education in spring 2028, most likely followed by a request for money on the ballot.
The board spent most of its August 10 meeting on the launch, and much of that time pushing back on how the district plans to describe the work to residents. Members questioned the name "phase three," the word "sounding board," and whether one district-wide conversation can fairly hold twelve buildings in very different condition.
What Phase 3 covers
The district is working from a master facilities plan the board accepted in 2015 as a three-phase program. Phase one, funded by the 2018 bond issue, renovated all four middle schools, moved the district to a grade 6 through 8 middle school configuration, and paid for a district-wide technology update. Phase two, funded by the 2022 bond issue, renovated both high schools and improved athletics and recreation facilities. That work is nearing completion.
Phase three turns to the elementary schools. "Tonight, we begin the next chapter in phase three," Assistant Superintendent for Operations Jeffrey Maddox told the board, after thanking residents for the two bond issues that paid for the first two phases. "The investment our community has made in our schools, our students, and our staff has been unbelievable."
The district hired planning NEXT, a Columbus planning firm, to run the engagement — the same firm that led Worthington Together, the city's recently completed comprehensive plan. Director Sarah Bongiorno presented the plan and will facilitate the committees. Three things feed the process: updated building assessments that have already been completed, a recent space usage study of how the buildings are actually used, and the community engagement now getting under way.
Superintendent Trent Bowers clarified one point about those assessments. The architects who evaluated the elementary buildings are deliberately not the architects the district used to build in phases one and two, and not necessarily the ones who would design any future work. The district wanted a third party with no stake in future work to say whether a building should be renovated or replaced and what each option costs per square foot. Designing and building anything would go out to bid later, after a funding question is settled.
How a resident gets a seat
The task force will be assembled two ways. Bowers is sending invitations to community organizations across the district, each of which can nominate a representative. That list was built with the district's communications office from the rosters used in the earlier phases. Alongside it, an open application is now live for about 12 resident seats.
Those 12 are chosen blind. Applicants' names are not reviewed, only their attributes, matched against a demographic and geographic matrix intended to make the group representative of the district as a whole. The boundary that matters is the school district, not individual school attendance areas, so the selection is designed to avoid drawing all 12 residents from one part of town.
"A good problem to have is to have 50 people apply for 12," Bongiorno said, adding that applicants who aren't seated will be routed into focus groups and stakeholder meetings instead.
The application asks for basic demographic information, a person's connection to the district, their interests, and their current or former occupation. Bongiorno estimated it takes five to ten minutes. One seat is set aside for someone 15 to 19 years old, a recent or current student who remembers being in an elementary building. An architect from the assessment team will also sit on the task force in a limited advisory role, there to keep the group's expectations in line with what construction actually costs.
This is not meant to be a light commitment. "They're gonna roll up their sleeves. We're gonna put them to work," Bongiorno said. "This is not sort of a blue ribbon committee." After the first meeting, the task force will nominate five to six co-chairs who join district administrators on a smaller advisory committee that meets on its own schedule between task force sessions.
Applications and building information are posted at togetherweplanphase3.com, the project's website, which also carries an overview of each elementary building and a form for questions and comments.
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The engagement calendar
Broad public engagement runs in two rounds, using several formats at once. Round one launches in January 2027 and ramps up through February and March.
The centerpiece is what the consultants call a School Hop: tours and open houses at every elementary school and the preschool building, aimed particularly at residents who have never been inside them or haven't been in years. Each stop pairs the tour with displays about the district, about that specific building, and about what comparable districts in the region have done, plus activities asking what residents value. Those events are currently scheduled for February and March 2027.
Alongside the tours, the consultants will run small focus groups with stakeholders including PTA groups, future parents, teachers and staff, and youth, plus one-on-one interviews with each board member. They will also set up drop-in engagement hubs at accessible gathering places around the district, designed to be self-guided but staffed at busy hours by task force members. Locations aren't set; Bongiorno said she wants the task force to help pick them. Everything will have an online counterpart running throughout each round for residents who can't or won't attend in person.
Round two follows in fall 2027, after the first round's input goes back to the task force and advisory committee for interpretation. The consultant team then writes through January 2028, aiming at a recommendation in spring 2028. The board gets two formal updates, one after each engagement round.
Bongiorno said all input will be published: every comment, verbatim, whether it came from an online survey, a sticky note on a display board, or a comment card. Participants will also be asked three quick questions about themselves, voluntarily and anonymously, so the results can be matched against census data for the district. That check is meant to reveal, while outreach is still running, whether an area of the district, an age group, or a racial group is being missed.
Vice President Stephanie Harless asked that engagement materials be translated or translatable. Bongiorno said the website already carries translation and an accessibility widget and that the point would carry through to the hubs.
The argument over "phase three"
Much of the discussion returned to expectations. Harless said calling this "phase three" risks telling residents that one plan, one ask, and one construction cycle will finish the job.
"I don't wanna engage in this process and have people think that we will go through this two-year plan, come up with a plan, present the plan, ask for one thing, and then away we go in four years or whatever, because this is gonna take quite some time," she said.
Board member Kelli Davis suggested calling it "phase three and beyond", so residents enter the conversation expecting renovations before reconstructions, or one group of schools before another, if the work can't happen all at once.
Bowers gave the history. The 2015 plan was framed as three phases, and by that count this is the third. Where costs are today, he said, more phases will likely be needed, "but this technically still would be number three." Bongiorno agreed to revisit the project's frequently asked questions to manage that expectation up front.
Treasurer Thomas (TJ) Cusick drew the same distinction from the finance side. "In my mind, phase three is about the plan for elementary schools. Then we will take that plan and determine how we're going to fund it," he said. That funding could be a bond issue, a permanent improvement levy, or an income tax, and it could be broken into multiple pieces over time.
Twelve buildings, one conversation
Board President Amber Epling-Skinner raised a question about the scope of the whole exercise. The elementary buildings are all different ages and in different condition. Someone appointed from a building constructed in 1990, with comparatively modest needs in the assessment, will sit alongside someone from a building that has used modular classrooms for two decades.
"Is it too big of a conversation?" she asked. She then described the risk she sees: the district could spend two years gathering engagement from individual school communities that then see no results in their own building.
Maddox argued for starting broad anyway. A task force member represents a building, he said, but also represents something larger.
"You're also representing the concept of what a district can stomach," he said. The process has to ask both what should happen to each building over time and what the community can collectively support.
Davis pointed out that phase one began the same way, as a whole-district question about what to do and where to start, and that the answer to it is what produced phases one and two.
Harless had made a related point earlier. The case for the high schools was easier because some conditions there rose to potential health concerns. The elementary buildings aren't at that level, but several haven't been touched in years and "we have kids in modulars." The messaging, she said, has to convey that this is about need rather than about building the next brightest thing.
Davis wanted the same reasoning on the website and in front of applicants. The district isn't doing this "just to have these pretty shiny buildings", she said, but because of class sizes, academic space, and what the district expects a student's experience to be.
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The decision framework that doesn't exist yet
Board member Sheena Costa Flowers pressed on what will actually be used to choose between options.
"What's the actual decision-making criteria?" she asked, noting that the presentation covered how people will be engaged but not the framework for evaluating what comes out of it.
Bongiorno said the criteria are meant to come out of the first round rather than be set in advance. "I don't know the answer to that yet," she said, and said she expects them to take shape from what residents say they value, becoming the working framework by round two.
Costa Flowers also asked how internal stakeholders such as transportation, custodians, facilities, and maintenance will be weighed; whether therapists, psychologists, and other professionals could speak to how children learn and how spaces should be designed for that; and whether the application is readable at a third-grade reading level. Bongiorno said the application should be plainly written and would be fixed if it isn't, and that the stakeholder list is still being built with the district's core team. Costa Flowers asked that cafeteria space and nutrition be part of the conversation, and Bongiorno agreed.
What the board's own role will be
The consultants asked the board to seat one member on the task force and to sit for individual interviews during round one. No vote was needed, but the board used the discussion to work out its own approach.
Bowers described what happened in 2016. One or two board members served on that task force, but often all five turned up, and once a majority is in the room none of them can participate.
"It's really hard for board members when you're in the room and people ask you questions not to participate," he said. The recommendation eventually comes back to the Board of Education for a vote, he noted, which is why members in the room have to stay out of shaping it.
Davis proposed a point person plus an alternate, so there is always someone present and someone tracking how the conversation evolves. Harless agreed on the second set of ears but drew a hard line on voice.
"I feel pretty strongly that only one person should verbally participate," she said, "because I don't want that to turn into like even perception that the board is trying to direct anything."
Epling-Skinner asked whether task force meetings would be open to the public or live-streamed. Bongiorno said other communities run them as public meetings with a viewing area where residents can watch but not participate, and that she would want to be careful the task force still feels free to speak candidly. No representative was named. The board will settle it before the group is seated.
Also raised
Both Harless and Epling-Skinner said the project website's Worthington Schools branding sits too low on the page. The logo appears in the footer, and both members said it should be visible at the top so residents recognize the site as the district's.
"People need to realize that it's not like a spoof website," Epling-Skinner said, adding that she has no objection to the initiative having its own visual identity. She also asked for a link back to the district's record of the phase two process, and for building assessment information to be posted for residents who want the detail. Bongiorno said the site's building profiles are a starting point and will grow.
What's next
- The task force application is live now at togetherweplanphase3.com. No closing date has been posted.
- Invitations to community organizations go out from the superintendent's office.
- The task force and advisory committee are to be seated this fall.
- Round one of public engagement launches in January 2027 and runs through March, with the School Hop tours in February and March.
- Round two runs in fall 2027, and the recommendation is due to the board in spring 2028.
If the recommendation leads to a ballot question in November 2028, Cusick laid out the calendar. August 9, 2028 is the filing deadline with the Board of Elections for the November 7 ballot, but a bond issue requires multiple resolutions, which makes July 10, 2028 the practical deadline for the first one. Historically, he said, the board has made that decision in the spring before school lets out.
This story comes from the August 10 Board of Education meeting recap.