About 300 people went to school Wednesday night for a crash course in how little say a school district has in managing housing development – and how much the Granville community can do to help plan to manage significant school enrollment growth.

The meeting at Granville High School on Jan. 15 was part of a long-term strategic planning process that has taken on more urgency since the Granville Exempted Village School District learned specific details in December about a proposed 600-home subdivision in Heath that could bring an additional 960 students to Granville Schools.

Superintendent Jeff Brown, Granville schools Treasurer Brittany Treolo, local members of a strategic planning task force and two consultants who are helping guide the community in developing a master plan for Granville schools facilities spoke during the 90-minute school board meeting.

| Read more: Heath subdivision could add an estimated 960 students to Granville schools

Brown, who has experience in managing rapid growth from leadership positions in the Olentangy Local School District, encouraged the crowd to stay engaged in the Granville planning process, show up for Heath public meetings on the development proposed by M/I Homes of Columbus, and lobby state elected officials to provide funding to Granville schools.

The audience was invited to use their phones to submit questions online, and about 40 people asked about issues such as school funding, annexation laws and why Heath residents wouldn’t go to Heath schools. Presentation slides and a recording of the meeting are available on the school district website under a master planning tab. Two more public meetings focused on developing a long-range master plan for the district are planned for Feb. 25 and April 15. 

| Read more: Report says Granville schools’ enrollment could double by 2050 because of Intel-related growth

Granville schools Superintendent Jeff Brown, sharing the stage with the school board and five members of a 40-person strategic planning task force, discusses the challenges the district faces because school district boundaries fall in portions of five townships and three municipalities. And he said it’s virtually impossible to move district boundaries. Credit: Alan Miller

Brown said that Ohio elected officials who helped bring Intel’s $28 billion computer-chip manufacturing campus to Licking County, in part with about $2 billion in Ohio taxpayer incentives, should also help a nearby school district that is facing rapid growth because of the Intel project and related development.

Brown urged the audience to join him and the school board – which has hired a lobbyist – to press state elected officials to help the district. He also urged Granville school district residents to join him in attending Heath City Council and Planning Commission meetings to make sure they are regularly reminded of Granville schools’ interests. The council meets at 7:30 p.m. on the first and third Mondays of each month, and the planning commission meets next at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23. 

Wednesday’s informational meeting at Granville High School was 90 minutes of drinking facts from a firehose. Here are highlights:

Granville-school-district-boundaries

School district boundaries, enrollment and funding

  • School districts have little say in how development happens within their district. State and local laws do not require that they be included in the planning process. Brown said he regularly attends public meetings and contacts local elected officials and developers to inject himself – and the district – into those conversations and to gain information that will help the district plan.
  • School district boundaries don’t follow municipal boundaries, and “redistricting,” or changing those boundaries to say, place all Heath homes in Heath City Schools, is virtually impossible under state law, Brown said. Such an act would require approval of the land owner, the school district and the state board of education, and it virtually never happens, Brown said.
  • While some of the Granville district is in Granville and Granville Township, portions of the Granville district also are in Heath, McKean Township, Newark, Newark Township, St. Albans Township and Union Township.
  • Zoning regulations in Newark and Heath allow for many more homes per acre than Granville and Granville Township, and Union Township, which means the likelihood of more students per development in those cities. The Grand Pointe subdivision, in Union Township next door to the proposed Heath development, has one house for every two acres. Heath allows 5-6 homes per acre.
  • Projections indicate the Granville school district enrollment of about 2,600 could more than double in the next 30 years. It will need more schools – an elementary school soon and, perhaps, a new middle school in the future, Brown said, so that the entire current high-school and middle-school complex could be used as a high school. A 14.5-acre school site is included in preliminary plans for the M/I Homes development, which has donated land for schools in other developments. There is no formal agreement to transfer the land to the school district at this point.
  • The Granville Elementary and Intermediate schools are at about 95% capacity. Those buildings could be over capacity with the build-out of the 67-home Willow Bend subdivision on River Road next to Park Trails. At that point, the district might need to bring in modular classrooms or consider using space at the middle school-high school complex, where enrollment is a little over 80% of capacity. 
  • Additional facilities will require more staffing, and all of that will require funding – a bond issue to pay for construction and a new levy and renewal of the income tax by 2028.
  • Under current state law, Granville would not receive any state funding to pay for school construction, Brown said. And state funding to the school district will not increase with enrollment. Brown noted that Granville public schools receive $2,200 per pupil in state funding while the private Granville Christian Academy receives about $8,000 per student. “I’m not saying anything bad about Granville Christian Academy,” he said, indicating that the disparity is stark and unfair.
  • Granville public schools’ cost per pupil is about $14,400. District treasurer Treolo said the district’s five-year financial projection completed in November shows that the district will be looking at a deficit of $6.3 million in five years.
  • Residents of new subdivisions pay the same property and income taxes to the school district that all other property owners pay. But those taxes don’t necessarily cover the costs of educating the children from those subdivisions. Granville estimates that the new subdivision will produce $3.3 million in property and income tax revenue and create an operating expense of $12 million a year. That is based on these assumptions: 373 homes selling in the $500,000 to $600,000 range, 153 homes in the $600,000 to $800,000 range, an average household income of $200,000 and that homes would yield 1.6 students per home. 
  • A special assessment being paid to Granville schools by homeowners in the Park Trails subdivision, which is in Newark, sunsets 20 years after each home was first occupied, so that assessment is nearing its end.
  • A special assessment on top of local property and income taxes has been discussed for the M/I Homes development in Heath, Brown said, but he said all of it would go to Heath for infrastructure such as roads, and water and sewer lines. He said he would ask the developer and Heath to send some of that money to Granville schools.


Growth and strategies to manage it

During a special Granville Board of Education meeting on Jan. 15, Superintendent Jeff Brown explains the five topic areas explored by a strategic planning task force since Intel announced two years ago that it would build a $28 billion computer-chip manufacturing campus in Licking County. Those topics are enrollment, housing, fiscal impact, facilities and programming. Credit: Alan Miller
  • Historically, Brown said, the Granville district has grown at about 20 homes per year. He expects that the M/I Homes project will go through the Heath planning approval process during the first quarter of 2025 and that, after site preparation, it will take five to eight years to build out the subdivision at a pace of 67-100 homes per year.
  • A bright spot that drew applause from the audience: Union Township Roger Start said Union Township recently negotiated a Joint Economic Development agreement with the City of Heath that limits Heath’s ability to annex land in Union Township for the next 50 years, which reduces the potential for more big subdivisions in that area affecting Granville schools.
  • Local leaders have said they understand the need to be more aggressive in recruiting businesses to the school district so that they pick up some of the tax burden currently being shouldered by homeowners, said Granville Vice Mayor Jeremy Johnson. That is why Granville Village and Granville Township, with the school district and the Granville Chamber of Commerce, created the Granville Area Community Improvement Corporation, said Eric Smith, the school district representative on the community improvement corporation board. And it’s why Granville Village and Granville Township created a Joint Economic Development District last year to focus on business development.
  • Two other tools the village and township are using to manage growth are the Green Space program, which Township Trustee Bryn Bird said has ensured that more than 2,000 acres will remain undeveloped, and a regional utility coalition with Alexandria and Johnstown. Village Manager Herb Koehler said the Municipal Utility Coalition of Licking County is an alternative to the fast-growing Licking Regional Water District, formerly known as Southwest Licking Community Water and Sewer District.
  • About 50% of the Granville school district is still agricultural land, and that means that it is a potential target for development – especially any of that land where water and sewer lines are available. It’s also why it’s so important to do long-range planning beyond the M/I Homes development, Brown said.

“I know some people think Jeff Brown has a plan – and I do,” Brown told the audience. “That’s what you pay me to do.”

But ultimately, he said, the community will drive the long-range master-planning process, and the school board will decide what options to pursue.

“This is planning, not building” at this point, he said.

Jenn Fuller, an architect and project executive with Fanning Howey, a Columbus architectural firm that specializes in school facilities, and Emmy Beeson, a former school superintendent who is now a consultant with Partnerships for Authentic Learning & Leadership, of Columbus, explained to the audience Wednesday their process of meeting with school employees, students and community residents to get input to develop a master plan for the district.

That process is underway and will take about a year to complete. After the school board approves a plan, the consultants estimate about four months to explain details of the plan to the community and secure financing for proposed construction. The building design process would take another year to 14 months, and construction would take about two years.

That adds up to about five and a half years to completion – about the time students would be arriving at Granville schools from the M/I Homes development in Heath.

Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.

Alan Miller

Alan Miller teaches journalism and writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University's Journalism Program. He is the former executive editor of The Columbus Dispatch and former Regional Editor for Gannett's 21-newsroom USAToday Network Ohio.