Brookwood Community Learning Center

COURT HEARS OPPOSITION TO CHURCH CHARTER SCHOOL; STATE, PRESBYTERIAN CENTER SPAR OVER 'EDUCATIONAL' VS. 'RELIGIOUS' ORIENTATION, June 9, 2010, The Columbus Dispatch (OH)

A Columbus church doesn't have the right to sponsor a public charter school because it was "exclusively organized and operated for religious purposes" rather than educational ones, a state lawyer told the Ohio Supreme Court today…

[Elizabeth A. Long, an attorney for the Ohio Department of Education] suggested that Brookwood, a long-established East Side church, likewise could get into the charter-school business if it creates a separate nonprofit to distance the school from the church's religious mission.

But state rules require such a nonprofit to be in business five years before being considered for a charter. Brookwood officials say it's unfair to make them wait.

The Brookwood Community Learning Center has operated since 2002 and educated 64 children with various learning disabilities in the most recent academic year. Brookwood already is affiliated with a recognized charter-school operator, so the Supreme Court case doesn't threaten its existence. School officials want their own charter so they can export parts of their program to other schools.

Brookwood's lawyer, Donell R. Grubbs, told Supreme Court justices that documents indicating that the church was "exclusively organized and operated for religious purposes" related only to its tax status…

The court is expected to rule in several months.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am a former student of Brookwood Community Learning Center, and I am not at all pleased.

I left there, and am now enrolled in a different school, in the 2012-2013 school year. Here is what I experienced.

What they did was lock you, in a room, with kids you don't get along with. You were allowed to socialize very rarely, and you could not recreate in any way unless given time to do so. You just sat there, and do work using outdated information from 2005. In the Humanities II unit on that program, I could very easily make corrections out of the religion portion of it.

You are not allowed to switch classes, unless you have a serious problem with someone. If you did something wrong, even if you were a good student, you'd get a detention slapped on you. I received many threats of a detention when standing up for myself when I was bullied! What in all of this hell of a school would do THIS?!

Problems were never appropriately solved. All the staff would do was slap a detention on you. No problem would be solved THIS way. The students never learned their lesson by getting detentions. Even when a student brought a GUN! Nothing was done during the aftermath.

In my personal opinion, Brookwood should be shut down. For good.

Anonymous said...

Im sad to here this i improved alot from this school

Indigo Gael said...

I was severely emotionally abused at this school and still to this day suffer at times. I was bullied and kicked around (mostly for the crime of being female) and the teacher did nothing to stop it. If another student would upset or frustrate him, instead of disciplining them, he'd take it out on me. My last few months there were unacceptable-the classroom was out of control, I was transferring to a new school after the first of the year and needed to get a good amount of work done for the new school-you COULDN'T get anything done in there (a student yelled "we don't give a **** if Kerry's trying to work"). At the time I lacked the social skills to stand up for myself, plus I had an extremely heavy Christian upbringing. I now have PTSD (there are a couple of words that are triggers for me,) as well as nightmares and flashbacks about those last few months, and they have interfered with everything-my college courses, my firefighting and search and rescue, my relationship with my family and with my partner, etc. I am however a strong woman now and am ready to move past it. I'm using my real name, because I'm not embarrassed to say who I am.