Original Research by School Decision on Eagle Charter Schools of Ohio Dba the Shepard School
Eagle Charter Schools of Ohio, operating as the Shepard School, served elementary students in kindergarten through fifth grade in Franklin County. The school's operational life has now ended: it did not resume classes in January 2025, leaving families to find placements elsewhere on short notice. The building on Walcutt Avenue has since been taken over by a different charter operator, Performance Academies, which now runs Columbus Performance Academy Shepard at that address under a K-8 model.
For any parent or resident reading about the Shepard School itself, the core facts: the school had a small enrollment of about eighty students spread across the primary grades, with the largest cohorts in kindergarten and first grade and smaller numbers in the upper elementary years. The student body was predominantly Black, with a small handful of students identifying as multiracial or white and one student identifying as Hispanic. The data did not include measures of free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education rates, or English learner counts, which are typical for small charter schools and often reflect operational constraints on data reporting at that scale.
The Shepard School reported no state assessment results in the available records, which is consistent with the grade band it served; Ohio does not assess students in kindergarten through second grade, and results for grades three through five were not available in this data set. Without that window, it is not possible to characterize the school's academic standing directly. The school's per-pupil spending was in the lower range among Franklin County's districts, and its chronic absenteeism rate was notably high, placing it in the bottom quartile of the county. A parent may want to look into the school's attendance climate and what drove those figures, though the school's closure makes that inquiry moot.
The decisive fact for anyone in the neighborhood or considering the location: the school is no longer operating under its original charter and management. Families with children were instructed to enroll elsewhere. The building now houses a different school with a different operator, grade span, instructional model, and school day structure, meaning the Shepard School as it existed is not a current option for enrollment.
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