DELAWARE — Buckeye Valley Local Schools covers 206 square miles, and Superintendent Ric Stranges wasn’t about to let anyone forget it Thursday.
Stranges jokingly returned to the district’s sprawling geographic footprint throughout the Delaware Area Chamber of Commerce’s third annual State of the Schools event.
But this will be his last school year overseeing those 206 square miles.
After 48 years in education and two battles with cancer, Stranges said he plans to retire as Buckeye Valley’s superintendent next summer.
Stranges has led Buckeye Valley since January 2024 after previously spending 10 years as principal of Delaware Hayes High School.
His retirement was one piece of a broader conversation about what’s ahead for Delaware County schools as districts navigate student population growth, school safety, funding and workforce preparation.
Superintendents from Buckeye Valley, Delaware City Schools, Big Walnut Local Schools and the Delaware Area Career Center participated in Thursday’s luncheon at Brookshire Event Venue in Delaware.
Olentangy Schools Deputy Superintendent Jack Fette represented the district in place of Superintendent Todd Meyer. Olentangy Chief Communications Officer Krista Davis moderated the discussion.
THE DISTRICTS GET THEIR STATE REPORT CARDS:
Growth reshapes schools across Delaware County
Olentangy:
Student growth looks different across Delaware County’s school districts, but each leader said changing enrollment is influencing how their district plans for the future.
For the last 20 years or so, Deputy Superintendent Jack Fette said the Olentangy School District has grown by about 500 students per year — but he said the district is finally starting to see a slowdown in student growth.
“I would not say that we’re at a place where we would have stability yet, but we’re much closer to stability now than we were at the start of the 2000s or even at the 2020s,” Fette said.
Enrollment is closer to flat this school year than it has been in years, he said, although legislative changes and changes to kindergarten enrollment dates have also affected the numbers.
Fette said the district will need another year of data before officials have a firm understanding of whether the slowdown represents a longer-term trend.
However with the growth the district has already experienced, Olentangy Local Schools are in the process of building their fifth high school and 18th elementary school, Deer Haven.
Additionally, to balance enrollment, Olentangy is redistricting its boundaries again and plans to unveil those changes by the end of the calendar year.
Big Walnut:
Big Walnut Local Schools, meanwhile, has grown from about 3,600 students in 2017 to more than 4,400 today, Superintendent Ryan McLane said.
“Our growth has an average of a little over 2%, about 84 kids per year. Not nearly what Olentangy is experiencing, but it’s still an impact and it allows us to plan for that,” McLane added.
The district has already shifted grade levels between buildings to accommodate that growth, giving its elementary schools additional space.
“That’s given us some breathing room,” McLane said. “[But] we’re starting to see the squeeze at the intermediate level and at the middle school, so we’re having conversations now about what we want that to look like.”
Big Walnut’s middle school can hold about 1,200 students, but McLane said district officials are discussing whether filling the building to capacity is the best option.
Building another middle school would present its own challenges, including what McLane jokingly called “the dreaded R-word” — redistricting.
Buckeye Valley:
Buckeye Valley’s enrollment had remained relatively flat for about a decade before the district added nearly 200 students this school year, Stranges said. The district now serves about 2,500 students.
A growing number of new homes is something the district is keeping an eye on as a sign of growth for the coming years.
Stranges said 123 homes will be built within the district by next year, with about 400 projected over the next several years.
Buckeye Valley is also shifting grade levels between buildings to create more room at the elementary level.
“We also self-funded, without asking for a bond, a $20 million addition to our middle school to house those kids,” Stranges said. “We’re in the middle of that project, we’re trying to do some creative things.”
Delaware:
With Delaware City Schools more landlocked than the other districts, student growth can be a slight challenge.
But Superintendent Keith Pomeroy said the district expects its enrollment to grow by another 627 students over the next 10 years.
The district plans to update its enrollment projections each fall while closely watching new housing development and its effect on student enrollment.
“In Delaware County, average yield used to mean corn, but now it means houses and it means the number of students that we’re going to see,” Pomeroy said.
Delaware currently projects an average yield of 0.51 students for each new single-family home, compared with about 0.78 in Olentangy, Pomeroy said.
He said district officials will be watching whether Delaware’s rate begins moving closer to Olentangy’s as more housing is built.
“I can tell you that I know of two housing developments that are coming,” Pomeroy said. “If I look at one of those, they’ve said to me to expect 500 homes.”
At Delaware’s current average yield, 500 homes would generate about 255 additional students on top of the 627 already projected over the next decade.
“So if I have two that have anywhere close to that, I’m going to know very quickly that those numbers will increase,” Pomeroy said. “Certainly not to the level of Olentangy, but these are things we have to plan for and be prepared.”
The DACC:
The Delaware Area Career Center is facing a different kind of enrollment pressure.
The career center is approaching 1,500 students in its on-campus programs, Superintendent Jay Poroda said, as demand for career-technical education continues to grow.
Poroda said when the DACC consolidated its campuses in 2019, the career center was expected to hit capacity in 2026.
It reached capacity three years early.
“Last year, we had a waitlist of nearly 300 students wanting to get into our programs that we promised our communities we would give to our students,” Poroda said. “We’ve tried to think very creatively on ways that we can provide those opportunities for students.”
One response has been the DACC’s Flow Program, which allows seniors to attend the career center for three hours after their regular school day for career-technical programming.
The DACC is also adding 50,000 square feet to its building and renovating another 50,000 square feet.
The facility improvements will allow the career center to double the size of its cosmetology and medical assisting programs while adding programs in electrical trades, teaching and nursing and expanding other health technology offerings.
School safety depends on relationships
School leaders also pointed to relationships across Delaware County as critical to responding to threats and keeping students safe.
The superintendents specifically discussed “swatting” calls — false reports of violence intended to trigger an emergency law enforcement response.
Although such threats may ultimately prove to be hoaxes, the school leaders said districts and law enforcement must treat each one as legitimate until they know otherwise.
They pointed to relationships among the county’s school districts, school resource officers, local law enforcement agencies, students and staff as critical to that response.
McLane pointed to a swatting call at Big Walnut High School on the third day of classes this year as an example.
Teachers and staff had undergone safety training several weeks before classes began, he said, while district secretaries received specific training on handling threatening phone calls just a week before the incident.
Law enforcement ultimately determined the August threat was a hoax, but McLane said the district did not take the situation lightly.
“I don’t feel bad if and when these people are caught, they deserve the most severe punishment that’s absolutely possible because it’s not a joke, it’s not funny,” McLane said.
“It’s taking up a lot of resources. Those law enforcement folks could have been doing a lot more important things for legitimate purposes, but they were doing what they needed to do in case this wasn’t a joke.”
MORE ON THE BIG WALNUT SWATTING HOAX:
Superintendents call for changes to school funding
School funding emerged as another shared concern, with superintendents calling for changes to the balance between state funding and local tax revenue.
Fette and Pomeroy specifically argued that the state should shoulder a larger share of education costs to reduce districts’ reliance on local property taxes.
“We need a fully-funded formula for schools from the state,” Fette said. “We really need a fully-funded formula for schools. Every dollar we get from the state is a dollar we don’t need from our local taxpayers.”
Fette said Olentangy’s 27 schools have been paid for by local residents and operate primarily on revenue generated by property taxes.
“We need the state to support us in our efforts to support our kids,” he said.
Pomeroy similarly argued that the balance between state and local funding has shifted over the past two decades.
“Twenty years ago there was more balance in the state in terms of what was being provided by the state and what was being provided by the local taxpayer,” Pomeroy said.
“We think there should be a balance restored and we think there should be a funding formula in an approach that restores that balance to take some of that stress off.”
