Yellow Springs Year in Review: Village Schools
- Published: January 7, 2016
The local schools’ growing expertise with project-based learning, or PBL, was recognized in October when Yellow Springs students and teachers traveled to northern Ohio to Lakeland Community College, where they taught PBL techniques to the teachers and students of two school systems nearby. In November, Yellow Springs High School freshmen gave public presentations on their class-wide PBL project, “Food for Thought,” in which students studied food from a variety of disciplines and perspectives; and in December YSHS and McKinney students presented their semester-end PBL projects to the public.
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In other school news, the all-school musical, “West Side Story,” was presented by YSHS students in March. And in April, the district received the good news that the Yellow Springs district was one of 14 statewide to receive a waiver for state and federal testing, as long as alternative competency-based assessments were developed. While district leaders initially hoped the waiver meant that tests would decrease by 50 to 70 percent in the 2015–16 school year, the district needed to wait for federal approval before making the change. By fall 2015 that approval had yet to be given so that students continued with previous amounts of testing.
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In winter 2015 Yellow Springs High School boys basketball had a strong season with 17 wins and 5 losses, but lost in an upset to Cedarville in the first round of the sectional tourney.
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In May voters once again gave thumbs-up to public schools, approving by a wide margin a 10-year renewal of an 8.05 mill operating levy that provides 13 percent of the district’s operating budget.
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In May, Yellow Springs High School named Mollye Malone as its 2015 valedictorian and Dylan Boczar as salutatorian.
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In spring 2015 Yellow Springs High School was recognized by U.S. News and World Report as one of the state’s top high schools. The school ranked first in Greene County and first in the Miami Valley, while placing 30th in Ohio. The rankings were based on criteria including teacher/student ratios, test scores and diversity.
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The 2015 YSHS volleyball team was a “dream team,” according to Coach Christine Lockhart; the committed Lady Bulldogs won the Metro Buckeye Conference championship. However, the team fell to Houston High School in the Division IV sectional tournament at Troy High School in October.
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At a November school board meeting, Superintendent Mario Basora expressed concern that district enrollment for the 2015–16 school year was, at 713 students, below enrollment of previous years. About 13 percent of district students attend schools other than public schools or are homeschooled, Basora reported, a number that has stayed consistent in recent years. However, Basora noted that there seem to be fewer families with children in the district, so that the gaps need to be filled with open enrollment students. This year’s open enrollment total of 178 students topped previous years’ numbers.
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In December 361 Mills Lawn School students presented the all-school musical, “Seussical,” at the Central State University auditorium.
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