Four schools are being built, but many of the students who will use them probably aren’t even enrolled in the Olentangy district yet.
But officials know children will come, just as they have by the hundreds each year for a decade. Enrollment has more than tripled from about 3,500 students in 1995-96.
“It’s unbelievable what happens when you add 1,200 students in a year,” said Andy Kerr, director of facilities for the Delaware County district.
Olentangy is the secondfastest growing school district in the area, but it has plenty of company in adding students.
Led by New Albany-Plain, more than two-thirds of central Ohio’s 49 school districts have grown since 1995-96, and four have at least doubled through the past school year. The rising tide has put 11.8 percent more students in public school districts in the region, which includes Delaware, Fairfield, Franklin, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union counties.
At the same time, districts are becoming more diverse. All central Ohio districts have increased the proportion of students of color to whites in the past 10 years, enrolling greater numbers of black, Latino, multiracial and Asian children. Only Columbus Public Schools have had an increase in their racial majority; 63 percent of students were black last school year, compared with 54 percent in 1995-96.
When Paulette Devor joined the Pickerington district 12 years ago, the vast majority of students were white. As of last school year, more than 15 percent of students there were black, about 3 percent were Asian and 1.6 percent were Latino.
“Cultural diversity is definitely here,” said Devor, a teacher at the new Lakeview Junior High.
School leaders say they don’t expect any slowdown in the diversity trend.
Columbus schools are gaining Latino students. In 1995-96, less than 1 percent of the district’s roughly 60,000 students were Latino. Last year, 4.7 percent were.
The influx of Latino students, as well as the steady increase in Somali students, has stretched Columbus’ resources, said Ken Woodard, director of the district’s English-as-a-secondlanguage program. But ethnic and racial diversity are a good thing, he said.
“I think it’s helped to make Columbus a more cosmopolitan kind of city,” he said. “For youngsters to learn to deal with different cultures and different religions and that everyone in the system doesn’t look alike (is good).”
Rapid growth in the larger community comes with challenges, too, school officials say.
“We’ve had growing pains,” said Ernest Husarik, superintendent of Licking Heights schools, the third-fastest growing district in central Ohio. Enrollment in the Licking County district has grown from about 1,000 students in 1995-96 to roughly 2,300 last school year.
Space has been tight for the past several years as the district built new schools, two of which opened this year, Husarik said. Hallways and other unusual spaces sometimes were used for classrooms, he said.
“It’s been kind of a mixed bag when you think what faculty and staff and parents and students have had to go through,” he said.
A relatively healthy local economy is keeping most school districts in growth mode, said Thomas Ash, director of governmental relations for the Buckeye Association of School Administrators.
“If the central Ohio economy stays strong, we will have definite increases in enrollments,” Ash said, “except in those communities where there is not sufficient housing stock for people to purchase.”
The lack of available housing, in part, likely led to a steady enrollment decline in the Worthington schools, where enrollment has shrunk 13.5 percent since 1995-96.
The district closed an elementary school, which it converted to a preschool. Something must be done about the middle- and high-school levels next, although closing a school won’t be an option, Assistant Superintendent Paul Cynkar said.
Meanwhile, in the rapidly growing districts, officials must contend with hiring enough staff members for dozens or hundreds of new students this year. And then there are buses, books and school lunches to consider, said Olentangy’s Kerr.
“(Growth) touches everything,” he said. jsmithrichards@dispatch.com
Source: Columbus Dispatch, Sept 5, 2006
