South-Western City Schools, Franklin County, Ohio

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South-Western City Schools is a public school district headquartered southwest of Columbus, Ohio in Grove City, Ohio. It is home to 21,000 students, and services a 126-square-mile (330 km²) area. South-Western City Schools serves most of the southwestern quadrant of Franklin County, including Galloway, Georgesville, Grove City, Urbancrest, and all of Franklin, Jackson, Pleasant, and Prairie townships with a small portion of Columbus. It is the 6th largest school district in Ohio.

[edit] High Schools

[edit] Funding

SWCS has recently had issues with funding. While they passed a property-tax school levy on their third try in may of 2005, a drop in funding from the state as well as other factors such as a spike in gas prices force the school to make over 14 million dollars in cuts after passing the levy. In November of 2006 they attempted to pass another levy, a 1% income tax, it was handily defeated. Fortunately, due to a relatively warm winter and several other items, they have announced they will only need to cut one million dollars out of the next year's budget. They decided not to try to pass a levy in May of 2007 in hopes that the state budget, set to be re-done in summer of 2007, will provide more funding.

As an interesting side note: School funding in the State of Ohio has been declared unconstitutional four separate times, and a group calling themselves "Getting it Right!" [1] has begun circulating a petition for adding an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that will make a stronger case for educational funding.

The School Board members are:

Amy Baker
Cathy Johnson
Gary Leasure
Jim Lester
Greg McCarty

Gary Leasure and Jim Lester have announced their retirement

Randy Reisling[2] and Melinda Garverick have announced their candidacy for school board. The election is 11/6/2007