Parents who attended two forums with Reynoldsburg school officials in March and April were overwhelmingly in favor of music and art as elective choices for their children, Superintendent Tina Thomas-Manning said.
Families from every school building attended the forums, which the district calls gallery input sessions.
"About 80 families attended the sessions and about one-third of those families attended both sessions," Thomas-Manning said. "They provided us good information to help us plan curriculum for next year."
Todd Hutchins, director of communications, said the fact that nearly a third of the 80 families attended both sessions "may have impacted the input we received from the community."
"An organized effort by a group of parents dominated the input and may have skewed the data for more music/band," he said.
Several members of the parent group Raider Strong We Care, who discuss school issues at monthly meetings and on the Raider Strong and Families For Teachers Facebook pages, attended the sessions. They have been asking school board members and administrators to restore some of the music, band and art classes that were eliminated, either as a result of past levy failures or to make way for more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses.
The gallery input sessions were designed to gather ideas on how to increase elective opportunities for students while maintaining adequate time for core subjects, Thomas-Manning said.
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Gallery Input Summary