After a brief presentation outlining four possible options for managing growth of the Granville Exempted Village School District, Superintendent Jeff Brown asked the more than 60 people in the high school commons on April 15 to pause in silence for two minutes to contemplate what they had just heard before sharing what they might see as the pros and cons of each.
The room was not silent for a second. Faint whispers quickly grew into full-volume chatter, and then into lively discussions and furrowed brows as district residents, young and old, grouped around posters describing each option, waiting to write their thoughts on big sheets of paper.
“It’s hard to like any of them,” said Mark Pinkerton. “I grew up in Granville, and all the kids were together.”
Elementary students currently attend two different buildings, with kindergarten through third grades in the oldest building in the district, at Granger and Sunrise streets, and at the Intermediate School on New Burg Street, which is for grades four through six. One reason for that structure is to keep all students in each grade “banded together,” rather than designating two or more buildings for grades K through six, as some communities do.
The thought of a third building for elementary grades, as is proposed in one of the options, “feels very foreign,” Pinkerton said. “If I had to choose tonight, I would probably stick with grade-banding because that’s what feels traditional to Granville.”
Pinkerton’s daughter, Ellie, a Granville fifth-grader, was similarly disheartened.
“I really don’t like any of the options, but I think it would be really weird to have three elementary schools and to have K-6 all in one school,” she said.
The workshop was the third in a series of three public planning meetings held by the district since January. The first laid out the issues facing the district, such as enrollment growth, academic programming, staffing, building capacity and age, busing, and the cost for all of that. The second meeting, in February, was a workshop to hear the priorities for the district going forward. Those priorities were used by the district’s Strategic Planning Task Force to develop the four options presented on April 15.
And that workshop was designed to allow residents to share their thoughts – pros and cons – about each of the four options.
The task force has been gathering information for planning purposes since 2022, when Intel announced plans to build a $28 billion computer-chip manufacturing campus – and bring as many as 3,000 full-time jobs to Licking County. The planning process took on greater urgency when M/I Homes of Columbus proposed building a 600-home subdivision in the City of Heath, but in the Granville school district, potentially adding an estimated 960 more students to the 2,600-student district.
The task force will use the feedback from the April 15 meeting to develop a final recommendation for the school board to consider in May. Details about the planning process and recordings of the planning meetings are available on the district’s website.
The four options developed by the task force assume 275 students per grade and all-day kindergarten. This is a step up from the current numbers, as according to Brown, the district graduates between 190 and 235 students. Right now, none of the options laid out include operating costs.
Option One: Keep all students in each grade together in the same building
Option one is based on “grade bands,” meaning all students in a particular grade would attend the same facility. This was a priority mentioned by district residents, because it is how the district has been structured for many years. It also reduces the opportunity for cross-town rivalries. The plan includes a new facility for grades six through eight, with a location to be determined; an addition to the Intermediate School for grades three to five; and renovations to the existing elementary, intermediate, middle- and high-school buildings. The existing elementary school would house kindergarten and grades one and two. Phase one of this option – the construction of a new building – would cost $44,516,876, with additions costing $7,754,348 and renovations costing $11,415,330. Total estimated cost is $63,686,554.
Option Two: A campus concept
Option two is a campus concept, which prioritizes the school buildings’ proximity to each other. This plan is financially identical to option one, but it has a set location for the new sixth to eighth grade facility, next to the existing intermediate school. Notably, this option would not involve grade banding.
Option Three: A new K-6 elementary in Heath (Union Township)
Option three is a long-range plan wherein current buildings would remain as they are, with renovations, and a new building housing kindergarten to sixth grades would be built in the new M/I Homes subdivision on land that the district hopes to acquire through donation. On top of this, GIS and GES would house kindergarten to sixth grade as well. This option, which also would not involve grade-banding, would cost a total of $83,987,261.
Option Four: A new K-6 elementary on the east side of Granville Village
Option four proposes a new elementary school building on the east side of Granville on the Munson Springs property, which is land the district would have to purchase from the village of Granville. (The village has been considering options to develop a park on the 57-acre parcel on the north side of Newark Granville Road.) The only difference between options three and four is the location of the new building for grades K through six, with option four being somewhat closer to the district’s existing buildings, all of which are north of the Rt. 37 freeway. The estimated cost of this option is $83,987,261.
Some of those in attendance on April 15 worried about the social and financial differences that some of the options could create.
“I came from Mount Lebanon and Pittsburgh, where the schools were walkable schools, and there were seven different elementary schools, which was great, except that there were [some] neighborhoods with richer houses. It just wasn’t quite equitable,” said Halley Bowman, who added that Granville can avoid that with grade-banding.
Some parents wrote about the “con” they would face – the logistics for families who have several children in different grade levels, all going to school in different buildings.
“Having three kids and having to go to three different buildings for different activities and pick-ups – and getting three different building emails every week – is exhausting as a parent,” said Kelly Van-Buskirk. “It’s much easier to just build a community in one building.”
Van-Buskirk is against options one and two specifically, but in favor of option 3 for its flexibility.
District resident Bryn Bird – who is also a Granville Township trustee – agreed.
“I do think that the long-range one has a lot of flexibility or a lot of options,” Bird said. “I have three kids in school, and I do know that staying together and being with their classmates is really important.”
Suki Lucier was also in favor of flexibility but saw it most prominently in option four.
“What I like about four is that I think it has flexibility and scalability, and some of the other options don’t,” she said. “Considering the current economic forecast and uncertainty that’s going along with all that, particularly the housing market and all of that, it seems like the best option.”
Beyond location, age dynamics were a concern for other parents as well.
“I feel the 6th graders are a bit older and have different needs,” said Ashwin Lell. “Mixing them in with the fourth and fifth graders doesn’t sound like the right fit to me.”
As the discussions quieted and residents filtered out of the building, they left their comments in Crayola colors on eight large sheets of paper, a pro and con sheet for each option.
Option one had the best pro/con ratio, with eight pros and 12 cons, followed by option three with eight pros and 17 cons. Option four had four pros and 12 cons, and option two had five pros and 17 cons.
Next steps: Develop a final plan and present it to the school board
“This feedback will go back to the 40 task force members,” Brown said at the April 15 meeting. “They’ve been doing this work for almost two years, so they have a little bit of a different perspective than most. They’ll take the pros and cons and they’ll try and synthesize it for the board to understand the different feedback that they receive.”
Further planning will emerge in June or July of this year, but Brown stressed that this will all be “written in pencil,” and subject to changes based on public reaction and district needs. As that plays out, Brown is eager to engage with the public, listen to feedback and correct course if necessary.
“I think there might be some options with so many cons related to the feasibility that we can drop them,” Brown said. “There might be like a short-term plan, potentially long-term in the phasing that we have articulated that could be a fifth alternative that comes from this process.”
Noah Fishman 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.