Issue 7 of 12
Nobody at the county runs your schools. County decisions still fill the classrooms.
Thirteen school districts, each with its own elected board, teach this county's kids. The county government runs none of them. What it does control is the growth that becomes enrollment: every subdivision its sewer lines and plat approvals make possible shows up a few years later as kindergartners. Olentangy alone has grown from 16,766 students to 23,998 since 2011. Ryan's promise is simple: no district should ever be surprised by a subdivision again.
See the growth curve ↓13
School districts with territory on the county's tax rolls, from four homegrown districts and the career center to eight crossing the borders. Worthington, despite the folklore, is not one of them.
Ohio DTE515 tax report via the county Auditor, Tax year 202523,998
Students in Olentangy schools this fall, Ohio's fourth-largest district, up from 16,766 in 2011. Its own projection reaches 27,563 by 2035-36.
Olentangy enrollment report, September 2, 2026$1,574
State funding per Olentangy student in 2024-25. The district's audit says the state will pay about 10 percent of the formula's base cost by 2026-27. The rest rides on your property taxes.
Olentangy FY2025 audited statements, June 30, 2025The data
The growth curve every levy vote sits on.
School districts plan buildings a decade ahead. The county makes growth decisions on the same horizon. Today the two rarely read the same table. Here is what the districts' own numbers show.
Olentangy enrollment, the district's own September counts
The pace has eased from the 2010s, but the direction has not: the district's Woolpert projection reaches 27,563 by the 2035-36 school year. Hover for any year.
The county's home districts, by enrollment
District report, September 2026
District enrollment page, 2025-26
District site, approximate
Ohio DEW headcount, October 2025
Ohio DEW headcount, October 2025
Eight more districts cross the county's edges: Westerville, Dublin, Centerburg, Highland, Johnstown-Monroe, North Union, Northridge, and Elgin.
Why the load rides on local levies
$1,574
State funding per Olentangy student, 2024-25, per the district's audit.
≈10%
The share of the funding formula's base cost the state will pay by 2026-27, in the district's own words.
74.6¢
The share of every county property tax dollar that goes to schools and the career center.
Straight answers
What people ask at the door.
Who is actually in charge of the schools?
Thirteen separately elected school boards, one per district, plus the state of Ohio, which writes the funding formula and the academic standards. No county commissioner hires a teacher, sets a curriculum, or votes a school budget. What the county does control sits upstream: the sewer, platting, and incentive decisions that determine how many students arrive, the machinery that collects the 74.6 cents of every property tax dollar that schools receive, and the sheriff's school resource officer partnerships, which live in a budget the commissioners write.
Which schools serve Delaware County?
Thirteen districts have territory on the county's tax rolls. Four are homegrown: Olentangy, Delaware City, Big Walnut, and Buckeye Valley, joined by the Delaware Area Career Center, whose levy runs across those four. Westerville and Dublin reach in from the south, and six more cross the county's edges: Centerburg, Highland (the Morrow County one), Johnstown-Monroe, North Union, Northridge (the Licking County one), and Elgin. And one piece of folklore to retire: Worthington schools do not touch Delaware County at all.
How fast is Olentangy actually growing?
From 16,766 students in fall 2011 to 23,998 this fall, by the district's own monthly counts, making it Ohio's fourth-largest district. The pace has eased lately, a few hundred students a year instead of six or seven hundred, but the district's own projection still reaches 27,563 by the 2035-36 school year. The bond voters passed in November 2025 is building for it: an 18th elementary school on Bean-Oller Road opening in 2027, and a fifth high school on Bunty Station Road opening in 2028.
Why do my school taxes keep rising if there is a state formula?
Because the formula sends very little here. Olentangy's audited financial statements put state funding at $1,574 per pupil in 2024-25 and state plainly that by the 2026-27 biennium the state will pay only about 10 percent of the formula's base cost per student. Statewide, property taxes make up roughly 95 percent of what districts raise locally for operations. When a wealthy county's formula share shrinks and enrollment climbs, the difference lands on local levies. The Taxes page on this site walks through exactly how that math reaches your bill.
What does the county actually do for schools?
Four real things. It makes the growth decisions that become enrollment, years in advance. Its offices collect and distribute the school share of every property tax bill. Its sheriff's office runs a school resource officer program in county districts, funded through the budget the commissioners set. And when development deals shift tax value, compensation for schools can be written in: the City of Sunbury's data-center agreements with Big Walnut and the career center show that mechanism working, and county deals deserve the same discipline.
Where can I check this myself?
Olentangy posts every monthly enrollment report back to 2011 on its website, and its facilities committee publishes the projections. The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce posts statewide headcount files each October. The county Auditor's tax tables list every district that taxes property here. Every figure on this page is linked in the sources below, and the commissioners meet Monday and Thursday mornings at 9:30 in the Historic Courthouse at 91 North Sandusky Street.
Levers and limits
What a commissioner can actually do about schools.
Less than most candidates imply, and more than most voters realize. The honest split:
The board controls
The growth spigot. Sewer capacity, subdivision platting, and incentive deals decide where the next thousand homes go, and every one of those homes arrives with students attached. Enrollment is the echo of county growth votes, heard a few years later.
Its own development deals. When the county grants a TIF or reinvestment deal, whether and how schools are compensated is negotiated at that table. Sunbury's data-center agreements with Big Walnut and the career center prove the mechanism works when someone insists on it.
The sheriff's budget. The school resource officer program lives inside a budget the commissioners write. The sheriff, independently elected, directs the deputies; the board decides what the office can afford.
Publishing what it knows. The county's approval pipeline is the best early-warning system a school facilities committee could ask for, and today it is not delivered to them in any usable form. Fixing that requires no new law.
The board does not control
The thirteen school boards. Buildings, budgets, hiring, curriculum, boundaries: all of it belongs to the elected board of each district. That is where school decisions live, and school board elections are where voters reach them.
Levies. Districts decide what to ask; voters decide whether to grant it. No commissioner votes on either side of a school levy.
The state funding formula. The General Assembly wrote it, froze its cost inputs at 2022 levels, and sends this county's largest district about a tenth of its base cost. Pressure on Columbus is fair game. Control is not on the menu.
The career center. The Delaware Area Career Center answers to its own board drawn from its member districts, not to the county, even though its levy rides the county tax bill.
The plan
What Ryan will do.
Hand every district the forecast.
Olentangy pays a consultant to project enrollment a decade out. The county holds the other half of that math: every approved and pending development, by district. The 10-Year Growth Impact Forecast delivers it to all thirteen districts, in their format, every year, free.
Put school impact in the packet.
When the board votes on sewer capacity, a plat, or an incentive, the districts affected and the enrollment the decision implies belong in writing, in the same meeting, before the vote. Districts get their surprise at the planning stage, when it is cheap, instead of at the permit stage, when it is not.
Protect school revenue in county deals.
Every county tax deal that touches school revenue comes with a public accounting of what the districts give up and what compensation they receive, negotiated in daylight. Sunbury showed the model on its data centers. The county should never do worse than a village did.
If nothing improves
Districts keep discovering growth when the building permits get pulled, years after the county votes that caused it. Buildings lag students, portable classrooms appear, and levy campaigns arrive angrier each cycle because voters were never shown the pipeline that made them necessary. Everyone involved is competent. The handoff is what fails.
What better looks like
A county where the district treasurer and the county's planners read the same ten-year table, where a school board sizing its next bond can cite the county's own forecast, and where no levy campaign has to begin by explaining growth the county approved quietly. The districts keep every ounce of their independence. They just stop flying blind.
Sources
Last updated: September 2, 2026
You should not have to take a candidate's word for any of this. Every figure above traces to one of these sources, most of them the districts' own documents. Found an error? Tell the campaign and we will fix it.
Keep going.
Every classroom seat traces back to a growth decision somebody made.