At least six will be shut at the end of this school year to make good on a promise the Columbus Board of Education made during its 2008 levy campaign. An outside committee consisting of many of the same members who made school-closing recommendations four years ago met yesterday to see the whittled-down list of possibilities.

The committee started with 75 elementary schools and 22 middle schools from which to pick. Those schools were put through a review that removes a building from the potential closings list if it has high or growing enrollment, recently has been renovated, does well academically or if its students would have no nearby alternative.

The list will narrow again next week when the committee meets to discuss the merits of each school on the list.

"Everything we look at is tentative. This is not the final stage in the process," said Floyd V. Jones, co-chairman of the committee. "It now gets into shades of gray."

The elementary schools on the list are: Deshler, Heyl, Moler, Literature Based Alternative at Hubbard, Douglas Alternative, Fair and Parkmoor. Of Deshler, Heyl and Moler, only one will survive the final cut because they all are in the same region.

The middle schools are: Clinton, Medina, Beery, Buckeye, Eastmoor, Johnson Park, Sherwood, Indianola, Franklin Alternative and Monroe Alternative. Only one will be chosen to close from each of the following groupings: Clinton and Medina; Beery and Buckeye; and Eastmoor, Johnson Park and Sherwood.

Middle schools are a trouble spot in the district and where enrollment declines are greatest. Steve Tankovich, the district's executive director of accountability systems, said the district lost about 380 students in grades six, seven and eight from last school year to this one.

The process is made more complex because the district also is trying to regroup schools into zones, allowing students to attend elementary, middle and high school in the same region.

Columbus' realignment, coupled with the closings, will mean students in schools that aren't closing still could be reassigned. The district has said that 25 percent of middle-school students, 11 percent of high-school students and 6 percent of elementary kids could be moved.

The district closed 12 schools four years ago using a similar process.

"When I started (as superintendent) eight years ago, we had 93 elementary schools," Superintendent Gene Harris said.

Some of the schools on the potential closings list are specialty schools that admit students through a lottery process. Douglas and the literature program at Hubbard at the elementary-school level and Franklin and Monroe at the middle-school level have low enrollment, even though other specialty programs turn away students each year.

Harris said an internal group will try to explain to the external committee next week why some specialty schools are thriving when the ones on the potential closing list aren't. Last week, Harris announced that the district would open two new single-gender specialty schools. Those could be converted from existing schools.

A series of community forums will be scheduled by next week. In the past, parents made impassioned pleas to keep their schools open. In some cases, the committee and school-board members changed their minds about which schools should be shut based on parents' feedback.

jsmithrichards@ dispatch.com