The Lead
There’s an old newspaper saying: “Don’t bury the lead”. So here’s the lead of this essay. There’s a school bond issue on the ballot this week for our local schools. OUR schools need to build new or add-on to existing buildings, to keep up with the increasing population. Drive around the Southwest Licking Local School District. There’s new houses and apartments popping up like corn used to in those same fields. All that building means more kids, and more kids means more schools. More schools NEVER gets cheaper. So vote FOR the school bond issue, it’s the inevitable result of our current growth. It (likely) will NEVER cost less, and it just has to be done.
We can argue about state school funding, federal funding cuts, voucher programs, and whether our community deserves an athletic complex with a swimming pool. But it’s all incidental to the real issue. More kids means more desks in classrooms. More desks in classrooms means more classrooms, more buildings, and room to grow. We can’t dress our kids in the pants they wore ten years ago – they won’t fit. And neither will the number of children going into our school district. So buy new pants now – it’s the best bargain.
The Growth
I have lived in Pataskala, Ohio for over forty-seven years. When I came here to teach public school in 1978, Pataskala was just becoming a suburb. There was still a working grain elevator in town, next to the railroad tracks (the building is still there), and the seniors had “tractor day” at the High School. But the suburban growth was already here too. In a few years, many of the old corn fields were getting sewer, water, and houses. It happened on every turn of the winding, formerly dirt and gravel, soon to be paved, roads.
That development hasn’t stopped in our community. The schools did some major “growing” in the 1980’s, with a new high school in 1981, and the old high school becoming the middle school. In the next years, a “new” elementary school replaced a turn of the century (1900’s) building in Etna, and the other two elementaries were expanded. There was another expansion in 2001. I remember because we taught high school in a building “under construction”, and the school-wide television system was down. We watched, with hundreds of kids, an “old school” TV on a cart in the wrestling room, as the nation suffered the attack on 9-11.
The 2001 work added to the high school and the middle school, expanding classrooms and arts and music areas. In addition, more work was done on the elementary schools.
Recent Times
But the suburban houses kept going up, like weeds in an untended soybean field. By the mid-twenty-teens the 1955 middle school wasn’t big enough for three grades, and the 1980 high school wasn’t big enough for four. In the meantime, the elementaries were re-organized into grade level buildings – two grades in each. But that “shell game” only postponed the inevitable.
In 2017 the School leadership found a bargain. The state of Ohio would pay nearly half of the cost of a new high school, renovate the older high school (the white building), Kirkersville and Etna elementaries, and build a new (and bigger) elementary to replace another “turn of the century – 1900’s” building in Pataskala. The “cost” of their money: the state controlled the size. And while the new schools were “bigger and better”, they also were “filled” in just a decade.
The Plan
So here we are. The school district promises; a new fifth and sixth grade building, turning the current fourth and fifth grade building into another K-4 elementary, a new high school “wing”, and more, will meet all of our future needs. I’m a little skeptical about that; I’m sure the folks up in Olentangy never thought their one high school would turn into four, or the Hilliard folks would go from one to three. But Southwest Licking is making a good faith effort to fill the District’s foreseeable needs.
So deal with the inevitable. It’s going to raise property taxes. No one wants that. But we can’t put our kids in the clothes they wore a decade ago – they don’t fit. And our schools are already bulging at the seams.
Vote FOR the Bond Issue – now at the Board of Elections in Newark, or at your regular polling place on Tuesday, May 6th. It’s the best deal we will get, for something we ultimately will have to buy.
