Tuscarawas Valley Local School superintendent provides state of the district address at January meeting.
Derek Varansky says the update gives an understanding of where the district is currently in their three-year plan.
“This plan came out this past fall. Three overarching goals – teaching and learning, well rounded opportunities, and community engagement.”
Varansky says science, reading, are a priority, along with mathematics.
“Chance are we are going to be expected to adopt a curriculum. Looking to see how that matches Ohio’s plan. We have a curriculum in place that is most likely going to fall on the list, but we have an older version of that. We want to make sure if we’re purchasing something we know we’re buying something that going to give us good results.”
He notes that at the high school level, the district is working on a course of study.
“Some of that includes career technical education, FFA programming, electives, and then finally internships. We want to put a much larger focus on our internships.”
Varansky says the overall goal is to ensure every Tusky Valley student is graduating either employed, enrolled in college, or the military.
He also notes the district spending $1.4 million to run transportation for fiscal year 2025.
“We have over 1,300 students. Our district covers about 95 square miles, 11 zip codes, we cross two counties, and with that we have 15 bus routes. We have 855 regular daily riders being transported to or from school.”
He says the community center is continually taking shape, but they still need to lease three spaces.
“This building cost about $80,000 to operate and that’s utilities. It’s about an 80,000 square foot facility. We are currently collecting about $40,000 in revenue from lease funding. Our goal is to continue to lease out the space in this building and that breaks even so it’s not costing us money to have our district offices here, to have our athletic teams, and all those programs in here.”
Since opening a clinic in August, over 1,000 individuals have visited.
Varansky says they continue to be fiscally responsible with $3.3 million in grants and donations obtained last year.
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