Olentangy's Top News

Nine Olentangy student athletes recently signed letters of intent to participate in college athletics. Congratulations to the students pictured below!

Three Olentangy Orange High School (OOHS) students have signed to play collegiate lacrosse. Whitney D. (left) and Hana A. (center) will attend Lake Erie College. Taylor S. (right) will attend Notre Dame College.

Olentangy High School (OHS) senior Olivia Z. will play basketball at Ohio Dominican University.

Five Olentangy Liberty High School (OLHS) seniors signed letters of intent together: Dylan Y., who will play baseball at Lake Erie College; Mike F., who will play baseball at Butler University; Andrea N., who will play volleyball at Georgia State University; Lucy I., who will compete in equestrian events for Auburn University; and Brooke L., who will play lacrosse for Grand Valley State University.

The Board of Education approved the name for elementary 15 during their meeting Wednesday night.  Heritage Elementary School (HES) will honor three previous elementary schools that have operated in the nearby area since the district formed in 1953.

“Involving the community is part of Olentangy’s success story,” said Olentangy Superintendent Wade Lucas, Ed.D.  “So many of the entries tied local history to the proposal.  The name Heritage Elementary allows us to honor all of these ideas.  When you combine community input and local history into the name for a new school you are starting out with a great foundation for student achievement.”

The naming process began in early October when the district asked community residents to submit suggestions as well as any applicable historical information.  Thirty-eight proposals were submitted that provided a wide range of options.

HES is intended to honor Liberty Union, Olentangy and Shanahan elementary schools.  Each school name was used at different points in time throughout the district’s history.  When Olentangy Local Schools formed in 1953, the district housed mostly high school students.  Elementary school students received educational services from four area schools (Berlin, Hyatts, Orange and Powell).  When Liberty Union opened in 1963, it was used as a junior high school for kindergarten, seventh and eighth grade students.  The Orange school closed in 1969 bringing kindergarten through 12^th grade students to the same campus for the first time.  In 1973, the Berlin, Hyatts and Powell schools also closed and the original Olentangy High School and Liberty Union schools were connected to create a single building.  That same school has been renovated a few times over the years and is known today as Olentangy Shanahan Middle School (OSMS).

Olentangy and Shanahan Elementary School are names the district has used multiple times for specific areas within OSMS that housed students who were in an overflow situation.  When HES opens next year, it will be home to many kindergarten students as well as some overflow students from other elementary schools throughout the district.  The attendance boundaries of the district’s 14 existing schools will not be adjusted for the 2011-12 school year.

In addition, Olentangy recently announced that Glen Oak Elementary School (GOES) Principal Susan Staum will serve as the principal for HES.  Staum opened GOES in 2005 as an overflow school and will draw on that previous experience as she opens HES.  Olentangy’s 15^th elementary school is located in Lewis Center between Olentangy High School and OSMS.

The Olentangy Board of Education today officially approved the logo for Olentangy Berkshire Middle School (OBMS), which will open in August of 2011. The logo was inspired by artwork from Olentangy Orange Middle School (OOMS) student Prabhat K. and incorporates a lantern and the letters O and B.

The OBMS mascot is the Sentinels, which is defined as someone who keeps watch or watches over something. The mascot was selected from a pool of community suggestions and references the area’s significance to the Underground Railroad and the military history of Colonel Moses Byxbe, who named Berkshire Township after his hometown of Berkshire, Massachusetts.  Prabhat told the Board that he chose to incorporate a lantern into his design because it would have been used by sentinels during the war and by those helping people escape to freedom along the Underground Railroad.

Third-grade students at Olentangy Meadows Elementary School (OMES) are creating care packages for soldiers serving in Afghanistan. The project was inspired by the deployment of Keegan Brintlinger, the son of an OMES teacher. The care packages will include personal hygiene items, snacks and hand-written letters from the students. Participating in service projects like this supports the social studies curriculum benchmark of taking part in civic life to promote a common good.

Eighth-grade students from Olentangy Orange Middle School (OOMS) spent the day honoring and learning from more than 65 local veterans and active service members on Friday, November 12. The annual Living History Day event began with with breakfast for the special guests and their student “buddies.”   The day also included an assembly featuring Colonel Tim Gorrell and Olentangy Superintendent Wade Lucas, Ed.D. Following the presentation, students got the chance to talk with veterans and active service members in a small-group setting about their lives and experiences.

This event allowed students to engage in several communication learning targets and to learn valuable social studies curriculum lessons such as understanding civic responsibilities and the origins of the rights Americans enjoy today.

A pair of World War II veterans shared their stories with the students of Olentangy Liberty High School (OLHS) today.  First Sergeants Dick Swisher and Bob Hershey told what it was like to go from the life of an average teenager to being a soldier on the front lines of combat. Hershey’s daughter, Bobbi Richards, also spoke to the group. She is on the board of directors for Honor Flight Columbus, a charity that helps aging World War II veterans take a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the memorial that honors their service. The OLHS DECA club is an active supporter of Honor Flight Columbus. The students raised approximately $10,000 for the charity last year and hope to do the same again this year.

COSI on Wheels brought its Launch into Space presentation to Cheshire Elementary School (CES) this week. The traveling outreach program from the Center of Science Industry (COSI) will visit several Olentangy elementary schools during the next several months. Each school will see one of the program’s six different presentations, including Launch into Space, It’s Simple Chemistry and The Incredible Human Machine. COSI staff members provide a dynamic assembly followed by a wide array of hands-on activities for students that support several benchmarks in the elementary science curriculum.

There’s a little more school spirit floating around Olentangy Liberty High School (OLHS) thanks to a new mural in the athletic training room. Senior Brandon K. spent four weekends painting the six-and-a-half foot long design.

Senior Brandon K. was asked by the OLHS athletic department to paint this mural. Brandon is planning to pursue a career in graphic design.

Sociology students at Olentangy Liberty High School (OLHS) gained insight on the culture of crime during a special panel discussion this week. The students spent an afternoon talking with parole officers, a prison warden, a common pleas court judge, sheriff’s deputies and a man who is working hard to get his life back on track after a felony drug conviction.

According to the most recent data from the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), the Olentangy Local School District gained 973 students between the 2008-09 and the 2009-10 school years. This significant increase means that Olentangy is now the eighth largest district in Ohio and has been the state’s fastest growing school district for eight consecutive years. [Read more…]