Clintonville Go Public began as a simple question among a group of neighborhood parents, “What positive impact might we make if we all stayed in our community?” What followed were a series of long conversations around dining room tables and living rooms throughout Clintonville.

Three things quickly became clear: We loved our community, we didn’t want to leave, and we needed to get our own facts about our neighborhood public schools. What we learned convinced us to stay. It also made us realize that more parents needed to know what we did: That the neighborhood public schools are strong, diverse, and filled with educators and families who are engaged and excited.

We knew that coming together around this shared cause could bring about even greater things–for both our schools and for our neighborhoods.

Those living room gatherings gave way to strategic planning sessions, committee structuring, the formation of a nonprofit organization with a board, and community collaborations with other parent organizations similar to ours.

Since then, we’ve held numerous community information meetings, crowd sourced donations for classroom and student needs, funded field-trip scholarships, generated new marketing materials for pathway schools, and mobilized grassroots community events to fundraise more than $75,000 –all using donated time and talents from families who believe in this cause. The success of our community organizing was featured in Columbus Monthly’s article, titled To Stay in the City with Kids, Parents Band Together to Improve Columbus Schools.

In the few years that Clintonville Go Public has existed, we have expanded to build relationships with parents, teachers, and staff at all of our pathway schools, including the schools from neighborhoods surrounding Clintonville that are a part of the Whetstone pathway. The heart of our mission is to elevate the great things happening in our schools, and provide our entire community a mechanism to financially support those schools.

As we move forward and advocate for our Whetstone Pathway schools, it is our mission to nurture ongoing connections between our schools and our entire pathway community. We envision a world in which all communities support and embrace their neighborhood public schools–and both flourish as a result.