District News

Westerville City School District (WCSD) officials this week provided families with preliminary information about enrolling their students in the Westerville Virtual Academy (WVA) for the second semester, or in the case of those already enrolled in WVA, how to withdraw and change to the established instructional model that is based upon and determined by regional health data.

The Annehurst Elementary students living in Brookville Apartments gravitated to the complex’s playground where the teachers they had only seen on a computer screen were hosting an ice cream social. 

It was the first in-person meeting between these students — all enrolled in Westerville Virtual Academy — and their teachers, who shared treats, an Annehurst facemask and additional materials to support their learning at home.

The administrators at Heritage Middle School approached their cafeteria set up with the same considerations school leaders everywhere faced: How do you create communal spaces for students to eat and socialize while taking into account health and social distancing guidelines?

Renovated learning spaces at Pointview Elementary and Westerville North High School have been recognized for their innovative design in the Fall 2020 Learning By Design Architectural and Interior Design Awards of Excellence.

Families can add Westerville South High School as part of their Beggar’s night festivities.

The Rotary Club of Westerville recognized its October 2020 Students of the Month during a virtual meeting Oct. 1. Throughout the school year, from October through May, the Club honors four students from local high schools each month. Working with the school principals and counselors, one student each month is chosen from Westerville Central, Westerville North, Westerville South and St. Francis DeSales high schools. The students, their parents, and the school administrators are introduced and honored at the Rotary Club’s first weekly luncheon each month.

Westerville North Cheerleading is collecting pairs of gently worn, used and new shoes as part of a fundraising drive for training and equipment needs for their competition and sideline teams. The shoe drive runs through Nov. 30.

Explore new cultures and virtually travel — for now — to international destinations as part of Westerville World Wide, a new district-wide travel club organized by educators from all three high schools.

As Wilder Elementary first-grade teacher Kate Mantenieks hiked along the Appalachian Trail this summer, she thought about what it would be like for her students to be outside learning among trees. 

Turns out, it was better than she imagined.

For years, Westerville elementary students got a deep dive into soil and erosion through in-person interactive demonstrations with Linda Pettit, an environmental education specialist with the Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District.

All students enrolled in the Westerville City School District can receive free school meals through the end of the 2020-21 school year.

The update stems from a decision by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to extend the free meal program for the rest of the school year.

Due to parent-teacher conferences, classes will not be held at Westerville elementary schools or the Early Learning Center preschool on Thursday, Oct. 29 or Friday, Oct. 30. District middle schools will only be closed on Friday, Oct. 30. They will be in session on Thursday, Oct. 29. School will take place as usual at all three high schools – Westerville Central, North and South. Classes will resume on Monday, Nov. 2.

As part of the Westerville City School District’s Second Annual Parent Prep workshop series, parents can take sessions on various topics including technology, mental health, the college application process and adjusting to a changing school environment due to COVID-19.

After completing only two meetings last spring, work of the volunteer community committee tasked with developing attendance boundaries for the district’s new elementary and middle school buildings came to a halt due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Jeff Bracken, a chemistry teacher at Westerville North High School, and Mary Taylor, a retired teacher from Emerson Elementary and the founder of The Friends of Faith Pruden Foundation, were named Kindness Heroes for their service to the Westerville community and beyond at Neighbor2Neighbor Westerville’s Kindness Rally.

There’s a sense of anticipation at Westerville Central High School on Wednesdays. 

It all starts with an email from Assistant Principal Nick McIlwain, who officially kicks off the weekly Wednesday Competition with a challenge to the 120 teachers and staff members at the high school. 

It’s 7:45 a.m. on a Wednesday in Room 254 at Genoa Middle School. The classroom lights are low. Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy” is blaring from the computer speakers with the music video playing on the whiteboard. LED lights frame the board, flashing in tandem with the occasional elevated sound — laughter, a round of applause or language arts teacher Tracy Jados’ voice.

Westerville South High School has received the Purple Star designation for its commitment to serving military-connected students and their families, officials with the Ohio Department of Education announced this week.

It has been months since Cherrington Elementary Principal Andy Heck has seen fifth-grader Shu’ayb Roble, his brothers and his parents. 

The theme to Jenn Steinher’s lessons during the opening weeks of the school year is unlike any she’s taken with her Emerson Elementary second-graders.

Susannah Lee, an English teacher at WCHS, Catherine Stathulis, an English teacher at WNHS, and Lauren Sefton, a science teacher at WSHS have been named Westerville Education Foundation’s September Teachers of the Month.

The Westerville North Warriors were up by two touchdowns with several minutes left in last Friday’s game against Canal Winchester. 

Ty O’Hearn and several other seniors on the football team approached Coach Bryan Johnson on the sidelines. 

“Coach, it’s Pash’s time,” O’Hearn said. “Let’s get him in there.”

All WCSD students can receive free school meals through December 31 or until federal funding runs out — whichever comes first. The changes came from a decision by the United States Department of Agriculture to extend free meal benefits.

Given the success of last year’s inaugural Parent Prep workshop series, Westerville City School District (WCSD) officials are finalizing details for a multi-day, all-virtual Parent Prep event later this fall. 

“Although we’re not yet ready to release specific dates or sessions, we simply want families to know that another Parent Prep event is in the works,” said Tami Santa, WCSD's coordinator of student well-being and mental health. “Feedback following last year’s workshops was so positive and supportive that we’re committed to overcoming the challenges before us and providing the experience virtually this year.”

The testing date for the PSAT, originally slated for next month, has been delayed to Jan. 26, 2021, district officials said. 

The exam, which serves as a practice for the SAT and ACT and is the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarship program, will be administered to current high school sophomores and juniors for free.

The parents and students of Hawthorne Elementary lined up at the entrance of the Strawberry Farms subdivision, eager to welcome teachers and staff to their neighborhood as part of the school’s first-ever Back to School parade.

Several kids held signs with messages of love, support and excitement to return to school. Parents stood close by with their phones cued up to take pictures and videos. The parade hadn’t started and already Principal Ernest Clinkscale and Assistant Principal Kristen Millet were getting emotional.

“It was such a good reminder after having been away from kids for six months that they need us and we need them,” Millet said. “This is why we do what we do — to have those connections.”

With classes starting remotely this year, Genoa Middle School teacher Lee Smith was looking for ways to provide hands-on learning experiences for his engineering students from home.

His counterparts at the district’s other middle schools were doing the same. So they decided to work together, taking a cohesive approach to curriculum for all middle school engineering students for the first time.

“We can’t do what we’ve done before,” Smith said. 

These middle school engineering classes give students a foundation on the problem-solving and critical-  and creative-thinking skills needed to thrive in engineering programs in high school and beyond. By shifting from in-person to remote learning, the engineering teachers have had to put into practice what they preach: think outside of the box to find innovative solutions for real-world problems.

Dylan Woodruff is eager to meet the group of sixth-graders he’s been paired to support and mentor at Blendon Middle School this school year.

Woodruff, one of Blendon’s 40 eighth-grade student leaders in the Where Everybody Belongs (WEB) program, recalls how helpful his WEB leaders were when he first came to middle school.

“The WEB leaders were my inspiration and who I looked up to,” he said. “They said I would be perfect for it so I’ve been wanting to do this since sixth grade.”

The Westerville City School District’s Board of Education is seeking applicants for two open positions on its audit committee, which serves as a professional link between the Board and external auditors.

A new broadband access pilot will provide refurbished computers and internet hotspots with a year’s worth of prepaid unlimited internet service, to low-income households with students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The Westerville City School District launched a new dashboard in response to a state mandate requiring all Ohio school districts to report cases of COVID-19 among its school populations.

It wasn’t long into Principles of Biomedical Science at Westerville Central High School (WCHS) when Kendel Seabury knew she was all in on the district’s health pathway program. 

She was fascinated by lessons on how the body works and considered applying her interest in science to becoming a teacher. But the more classes she took — including Diana Arko’s Medical Interventions course — the more she realized that nursing better aligned with her interests in health care and working with people.

Westerville City Schools had previously announced Sep. 24, Nov. 12, Jan. 28, and March 11 as early release dates. Under traditional school year operations, students would be released from school one hour earlier than normal dismissal times to allow for staff professional development.

Seven Westerville seniors are semifinalists in the 66th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, according to a recent announcement by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC).

When Westerville Central High School social studies teacher Matt Rees stumbled onto an article outlining how videos with copyrighted music are taken down, he immediately thought of his peers who are creating videos for their classes and students. 

He said teaching is considered “fair use” and an exception for copyright protection but the software that catches it and the companies that take it down don't check that. 

Rees, a singer/songwriter away from the classroom, is offering a resource he hopes can be useful to fellow educators: instrumental versions of his original music.

Students from Genoa, Heritage and Walnut Springs middle schools were recognized for their essays about perseverance, humility and compassion as part of the 2020 Laws of Life essay contest organized by the Better Business Bureau’s Center for Character Ethics.

To help connect Westerville students and families to social-emotional support services this year, the district’s counseling team set up virtual offices that aim to engage students while maintaining a semblance of a school environment.

This year, Westerville’s high schools launched new courses that approach topics such as Black history and culture and social justice in a way that has never been done before in the district. 

This year, a dozen of the 47 new educators are returning to the site that inspired them to pursue a career in education. They were athletes, student council leaders, class representatives, choir, and band members. 

They left a Westerville graduate. Now, they are a Westerville teacher. 

Meet some of the Westerville alumni who’ve returned to the district as an educator this year.

Westerville City School District (WCSD) officials today announced the release of the district’s 2020-2021 local testing calendar for students, along with an acknowledgment that the testing schedule remains subject to change.

Due to recent decisions by the United States Department of Agriculture, Westerville families must opt-in for a school breakfast and/or lunch during virtual and/or blended instruction in the 2020-21 school year.

The students in Westerville Central High School’s (WCHS) All 4 One group wanted to know why they were reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” 

The book, which includes racial slurs and profanity, has long been a source of controversy since being the subject of classroom study as early as 1963. Many black students at Central, including those part of the All 4 One group, have harbored concerns about the Harper Lee novel and how it marked their first encounter with “the N-word” in a classroom setting. They said there was little to no discussion about the racial epithet, its history and how it has been used.

Marlena “Lena” Smith never saw herself as an American Sign Language interpreter. 

She loved the language as a student at Westerville South High School but worried her learning disability would affect her ability to listen, process and interpret the language fast enough in a live setting. 

Westerville City School District Board of Education members approved the following 2020 meeting calendar during their January 13, 2020, organizational meeting: