A School Is Not a Building

Logan Elm Local Schools – August 27, 2023

Today we parked our car in the front yard of the location where the old Logan Elm High School building used to stand. It is now nothing more than a pile of rubble. In 1960 it was a state of the art building with lively colors and patterns adorning the floors and walls. It was built for an enrollment of about 300 students and it replaced several older township schools which were built just before and after World War I.  Although those township buildings were 45 years old, the district had grown, the world had changed and those old buildings were no longer suited to best providing high schoolers with the facilities needed to deliver instruction. Those township schools had replaced previous schools that had been outgrown as well.

The last new building built in the Logan Elm School district is the George D. McDowell Exchange School completed in 1971. It’s been 52 years since students in the Logan Elm community have had any new schools and 63 years since Logan Elm High School was built. To accommodate growing enrollment modular buildings were added at every LE campus except Pickaway Elementary.

I attended my junior and senior years at Logan Elm High School and enjoyed my time in this quaint little school amidst the cornfields of the Pickaway Plains built 25 years before I graduated. When I attended the school I didn’t notice that it was out of date, I didn’t really notice that it wasn’t air conditioned, and I didn’t notice how undersized the building was for the amount of students enrolled. I did begin to notice those things when I was a teacher there beginning in 1989. I really began noticing some of the deficiencies when my children attended school in elementary buildings that were 100 years old, a middle school that was impossible to secure, and a high school that was badly lacking in space, safety, and the facilities needed to educate children in the 21^st century. In particular I noticed the buildings were not adequate for students with disabilities because of the lack of proper spaces and accessibility for those with handicaps who are entitled to the least-restricted environment.

When my wife and I toured the old LEHS in the spring of this year we couldn’t believe how awful and outdated that facility was.  The hallways were narrow and poorly lit, the cafeteria was undersized, the bleachers in the gym were a death trap, and the heating, ventilation, and lack of air conditioning were deplorable. I was mad at myself for not having done more as a teacher and parent to advocate for the children and staff who attended our school. In our community the location has been such a divisive issue. Since the consolidation of the Laurelville School in 1972 there has been some bad blood about students from Hocking County being forced to attend the school in eastern Pickaway County when the Laurelville School was forced to close. In many cases residents from Hocking County have felt slighted and unfortunately those wounds have been slow to heal for some people. I wish it weren’t that way and am hopeful those wounds will heal. It will be a new experience for elementary children to ride buses to the school on Tarlton Road instead of in downtown Laurelville, but it is just not feasible for the district to maintain multiple campuses and after several failed attempts, the majority of Logan Elm’s voters finally said “It’s Our Time.”

Now, 63 years after the old high school was completed and 52 years after McDowell opened, Logan Elm kids get to go to a new school that is adequate for their needs. It is so long overdue.

I once had to make a recommendation to a board of education to tear down an old building. The building had been closed before I worked in the district and during the 8 years or so it sat vacant without a plan for its future it deteriorated significantly. The state was not going to give us any funding to renovate that school, yet there were community members who were up in arms angry with me for recommending the building’s abatement and demolition in order to secure 55% of the funding from the state to build two new elementary buildings. Additionally, we were able to do so by leveraging funds that were already being collected from a previously passed operating levy and the result was the community received two new elementary buildings without raising their taxes on campuses that were within a few blocks of one another. Although I attended the old school which was torn down, I too knew that it didn’t meet the needs or access for children in elementary grades in 2015. Knowing that the state refused to give us any assistance it really became a fairly easy, although painful decision. My job was to do what’s best for kids and provide them with the best education possible. I knew how to do that and we were fortunate the majority of voters agreed.

Those lamenting the demolition of the old building cited it as historic. Although it was 80 years old it was not historic. This building was not our community’s high school, it was our community’s building. The high school lived on. Although we can tear down buildings, we don’t tear down schools. The schools, and their memories live on in the hearts and minds of those who attended and worked there. When that 80 year old building came down, my memories of it did not go away. I still have them although that building was torn down more than seven years ago.

As I walked by that pile of rubble today on Tarlton Road, I came to the realization that Logan Elm High School wasn’t gone. The memories of attending class and teaching students in that building will live on for the rest of my life with me, and it will live on in the hearts of my students and my children too. Those memories are also preserved in the pictures and yearbooks and stories that we will tell, but the school, it’s better than ever and is located just a few feet west of the old building.

Visting the new school I saw staff who were so excited about having the opportunity to teach students tomorrow. They were proud of their school building for sure. The building is absolutely breath-taking, but the school, well that’s another story. I saw the school in the eyes of the more than a dozen of my former students who are now teachers and principals there. Logan Elm HS and all the other buildings are memorialized on the walls and in the design of the structure. The school is alive and well. You see, the “school” isn’t a building. It’s people. It’s a culture, tradition, a set of values, the teaching and learning and care for our most valuable asset, our children. Now our kids have the building they need to keep them safe, to help them learn, to ensure their well-being, health and development, but that building doesn’t do that by itself. The people do those things and the people of Logan Elm finally have the school their children deserve and I was happy to walk through it on August 27, 2023.