Thank you very much for sharing this article.

This has been an issue in Athens since consolidation in the late 60s. About 25 years or so ago, the school board convened a citizen committee to look into this. Several meetings with a big turnout and the same arguments were advanced against mixing the kids up earlier by the same demographic as happened in 2018. When the idea appeared to be gaining traction years ago, the Board at the time met in secret in an OU west green building only to be exposed and then the committee was disbanded.

I actually did an anecdotal study using yearbooks as a data point that showed the lack of inclusion on everything from sports teams to prom courts to who went to the high school versus who went to the vocational school. When I pointed that out at one of the meetings, a university person said that I had no idea what I was talking about. A future Dover Township Trustee stood up and said bs, that I was the only one who knew what he was talking about.

Full disclosure. Until I did home visits as part to the OWA (Occupational Work Adjustment) program that I was teaching at the time, I had no clue about the disparities that existed.

Anyway, I hope the district has some open and honest conversations about this issue once and for all.

What will be interesting is to see if the local press (that's a stretch) will pick this up and if becomes a real and meaningful conversation resulting in action and change.

Money line on that is +2023.

Despite your attempts to resist discussion with the 'poor, pity me' bookends of your message, I still will choose to respond. As a school district administrator myself, stand in awe of the Athens superintendent for making these changes and looking to be part of a solution that is ever-difficult and politically dangerous.

OCF, within your response, you list your most recent interactions with the Athens School District coming in the later years of the last century, so more than a quarter century ago, likely. This goes to the oft repeated line in our profession that 'Everybody feels they're an expert in how schools should be run because they went to one.' I doubt you would give an understanding of how the medical field should operate if your last interaction came 25+ years ago. So, yes, I do disagree with your perspective, not because I know the school or the district, but because I am going to defer to the professionals making the difficult decisions in 2023, not those using reflections from the 1960s-1990s to make the decisions.

It's very refreshing to be dissed by some new folks and not the usual suspects. It's clear that you two have no inclination to understand the complexities of this situation from any perspective other than that of the educational bureaucracy. That's fine. I think you are myopic. You think my ideas are too antiquated to be relevant to the discussion. We can agree to disagree, and I really don't care if you are disagreeable.

Exactly! It's not! And Kevin, great response.

I also don't understand the relevance here.

It seems like you're a proposing that students with similar socioeconomic backgrounds be given their own district. It seems like there are counties in Ohio where that's the case. Do they perform well? Am I missing something, or is that central to what you're proposing?

Ohio currently has over 700 school districts and 800+ high schools. Consolidation was needed, and honestly in the rural areas is needed again. Your wanting to hold onto a Plains HS, a Chauncey/Dover, etc, would be a tremendous waste of money in personell, and brick and mortor. The approach is working, but results take time.

This is a couple of years old, but the best I could find quickly: https://www.cleveland.com/data/2022/09/ranking-how-well-s...

It seems like basically all of the Appalachian school districts rank in the bottom quarter of the state. Athens seems to be the only one in the top 50% -- but I just glanced through and that's not super scientific.

There seem to be a lot of school districts that are more or less monolithic in terms of socio-economic status, and there seems to be a pretty direct correlation between that and district performance. That feels like a bit of a dead end, and basically the status quo.

Let me add my 2 cents to this discussion and perhaps also add some historical perspective...I will choose not to quote all the previous post to avoid appending a long essay to a bunch of already long posts.

I grew up in Trimble Township and graduated from Trimble Local High School in 1963, then attended Ohio University, graduating in 1967 with a BS in physics. During this time I was aware of not only the Athens/Chauncey-Dover/Plains consolidation, but also of the consolidations of other districts around Athens County, both through local news reports and through the activities of my father who was involved both with the consolidation of Chauncey-Dover with Athens and the establishment of the Tri-County Joint Vocational High School (now apparently called Tri-County Career Center, High School and Adult Education) that Alan alluded to above.

First, with regard to the use of the term "rutters" that the linked article discussed, growing up I heard that term used in the northern part of Athens County much earlier in my life than the 1965 timeframe that OCF has pinned it, probably as early as I was aware of what people were talking about around me. I did not connect its use as a pejorative with the Rutter family until some years later. Like OCF, I went to school with several Rutter children, and was personally acquainted with members of that extended family who lived nearby. I can honestly say that those that I knew were nice people, honest and hard-working, and none of them that I knew were ever involved in any criminal activities. And they certainly did not deserve the use of their name as a pejorative term for a whole class of people. I will say that I was shocked to hear the term used, many years later, in a nightclub in Fairborn, Ohio (near Dayton and WPAFB).

With regard to the current situation with the Athens City School District, I have no particular opinion because I don't live there and haven't experienced the situation. But it sounds like the school administrators there have been proactive, and hopefully their solution to the reducing the effects of socioeconomic disparity there will work out in time. At this late date, I don't see that OCF's solution of breaking up the Athens school district would solve the problem.

That being said, during the early 1960's there were 2 things going on within the Athens County educational systems that bear on the subject of the linked article.

1. In the early part of the 1960's the Ohio Department of Education was hell bent on forcing small rural school districts, statewide, to consolidate, but particularly in SE Ohio. Their reasoning was well intentioned in that consolidation of smaller districts would improve the cost efficiency of smaller school districts and increase the amount of resources available for instruction. What they did not consider were the effects these consolidations would have on rural communities in which the local schools were often the heart and soul of those communities.

The year that I graduated from high school (1963), there were 13 school districts in Athens County. Ten of these, not including Athens, Nelsonville, and Glouster (which were independent), reported up to the Athens County School District. Within the next few years, multiple consolidations occurred among the county schools, and the number of school districts within the county was reduced to 5 by the end of the decade. As has been noted, Chauncey-Dover and The Plains were consolidated with the Athens City School District around 1965 or so (I'm sure OCF has a better date). Trimble Local School District absorbed the Glouster schools in 1964. I'm not sure of the dates but Ames-Bern, Carthage-Troy, and Rome-Canaan districts were consolidated to form the Federal Hocking District; Nelsonville and Buchtel-York districts consolidated to form the Nelsonville-York District; and Albany, Shade, and Waterloo districts consolidated to form the Alexander district. All of the neighboring counties surrounding Athens County experienced similar consolidations among their schools.

Getting back to the Athens/Chauncey/Plains consolidation, this did not occur without opposition from parents, concerned citizens, and some school administrators on all sides. One of the concerns, as can be inferred from the linked article, was the socioeconomic status of the Chauncey-Dover students compared to the Athens students. (I don't remember any discussion at the time about The Plains students.) Another concern was the emphasis that Athens HS placed on college preparatory classes versus the needs of the Chauncey-Dover students that tended toward vocational classes.

There was a concerted effort at this time to convince the Chauncey-Dover School Board to consolidate with Trimble Local School district. My father (Sam Johnson) was involved in this effort. Many in both Trimble Township and Dover Township believed that this would be best for students in both districts given their similar demographics and socioeconomic status. Whether the decision to consolidate with Athens was made by the Chauncey-Dover board or dictated by the Ohio Department of Education is not known (to me), but the rest is history.

2. During approximately the same period of time, a number of parents, concerned citizens, and school administrators in Athens County, Hocking County, and Perry County came to the realization that the students in their rural districts were not being well served by the curricula available to them at their home schools. Very few of those students were college bound, and the available vocational classes that were available to them were severely limited due to costs and instructor availability. An ad hoc committee was set up, headed by then Athens County School District Superintendent Thomas C. Porter, to write a mission statement and start the application process for a vocational high school that would serve the three counties. In 1965, the Ohio Department of Education approved the establishment of the vocational high school, and the Tri-County Joint Vocational High School was born. (As stated above it is now called Tri-County Career Center.) The vocational school is open to 11th and 12th grade students from all high schools in Athens, Hocking and Perry Counties.

Jeff, thank you for your very thoughtful and detailed post. You provided much insight into the whole consolidation process. I found it interesting that you had heard the term "rutter" used much earlier up in the northern part of the county than I had in the Athens City District. It would have been laughed at as pejorative in my class because, as I said, one of the Rutter boys was very wealthy. Both Rutters in my class went to college.

I'd like to comment specifically on one quote from your article:
"There was a concerted effort at this time to convince the Chauncey-Dover School Board to consolidate with Trimble Local School district. My father (Sam Johnson) was involved in this effort. Many in both Trimble Township and Dover Township believed that this would be best for students in both districts given their similar demographics and socioeconomic status. Whether the decision to consolidate with Athens was made by the Chauncey-Dover board or dictated by the Ohio Department of Education is not known (to me), but the rest is history."

I did not know about all of these efforts, but I applaud your father for what he tried to do. It is my understanding that the final decision was made at the state level and not locally. I'm fairly certain that at that time if a plebiscite had been held among the citizens of the Chauncey-Dover Exempted Village School District that an overwhelming number would have voted in favor of merging with Trimble rather than Athens City. The Chauncey-Dover School Board must have been aware of the general sentiment of the people they were serving.

As we both said, it's water over the dam now, but I do think it's useful for people to know the history behind our current predicament. You provided a lot of interesting detail that puts the situation in the proper context. I really appreciate that.

Though I won't quibble over it, I do think that reconfiguration of the districts a few years ago was doable and would have been greatly preferable to the solution that was arrived at that ended the concept of neighborhood schools in the Athens City District. We differ on this point, and that's OK. The Rubicon has now been crossed and there's no turning back.

I graduated in '63 from Trimble, so I probably know (or knew) your mother.