Tom Dell
Columbus will contribute $1 million to the local school district’s workforce development programs.
Columbus City Council voted Tuesday to authorize the city’s redevelopment commission to grant this amount to Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.
The amount is broken down as follows: $330,500 for iGrad, $330,103 for STEM, $267,397 for transition planning and $72,000 for the IT Pathway at CSA New Tech with Ivy Tech Community College.
The redevelopment commission has granted the school corporation the same amount of TIF dollars — $750,000 — each school year since 2016-17. The $250,000 increase will provide additional funds for STEM programming and iGrad.
Assistant Superintendent of Financial Services Chad Phillips said the increased request will help support turning elementary school STEM labs into full specials rotations — similar to art and physical education — with certified teachers.
The school corporation requested $228,778 for STEM programming in 2020, with the $72,000 IT pathway included in the figure.
Therefore, this year’s request is an increase of about $173,000 to the $156,778 in grant funding used for elementary STEM labs in 2020.
An increase to iGrad funding — about $77,000 more than last year’s request — will allow BCSC to add two more iGrad coaches. Phillips said this will allow the program to serve approximately 120-140 additional students, bringing their total number of students served from about 570 to more than 700.
Phillips explained that the program used to have two coaches at the eighth grade level, but these were moved up to the high school level to help serve students at CSA New Tech and McDowell.
“Right now we don’t have any full-time coaches at that middle school level, serving eighth graders before they enter high school, getting them on the right track before they enter high school,” Phillips said. “So these two positions would backfill those. So we know we have the needs at those grades.”
Officials from both BCSC and Ivy Tech, which helps run the program, would likely agree that, “Our needs are infinite,” he said.
Council members approved the resolution 6-0. Councilman Jerone Wood recused himself due to being a BCSC employee. He previously served as a long-time substitute before becoming a full-time teacher at Mt. Healthy Elementary School in September.
While no members voted in opposition to the resolution, Councilman Frank Miller did express some concern about the 25% bump to last year’s request, which he called “a pretty substantial increase.”
“I do think the projects are great,” he said. “Of great service to the school corporation. We’ve done a great service to the children that we are serving with this.”
However, he added that there’s “never a lack of projects to be funded” and that the request seemed to be a “big ask.”
Councilman Tom Dell, while in support of the request, also noted that the city and BCSC need to think about the long term.
City officials said that the funds for the workforce development grant come out of the Central TIF. According to commission attorney Stan Gamso, this tax increment financing district will expire in 2035.
“So from our standpoint and the school corporation, they should be looking at finding ways in order to replace our funding before that deadline runs out,” said Dell. “I just wanted to make sure that they’re aware that there is an end to the Central TIF. That’s a natural end to the investment that the city’s made from the Central TIF. So we need to think down the road, at some point in time, to see how we’re going to fund additional monies from the standpoint — if we want these programs to continue.”
