Nelsonville teachers and community members speak out against potential rezoning for a charter school
By: Haley Richardson
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Nelsonville-York public school teachers and community members pushed back against an effort to rezone part of the downtown area to make way for a charter school.
During Monday’s council meeting, local business owners and members of the teacher’s union cited concerns about effects on liquor licenses and cutting resources to the Nelsonville-York City School.
Southeast Ohio Classical Academy is a charter school based in Logan that promises students a classical, values-based education. The school was founded in 2024 and is now looking for a new location for its upper school as it works on expanding to include 9th through 12th grades.
SOCA is considering leasing the former Athens County Department of Job and Family Services building at 10 W. Washington St., which is located near Nelsonville’s public square.
Patrick Norway owns The Mine Tavern and said he is worried about how a school downtown would affect his business.
“We’ve worked really hard to get things like DORA put into place for our town, and we’re just starting to get our feet wet with that kind of experience,” Norway said. “Putting a school in the middle of that … I don’t feel it’ll mix well.”
Norway said he was concerned about the process of transferring a liquor license if he were to ever sell The Mine because being in close proximity to a school could affect the application.
Norway is also a proud graduate of the Nelsonville-York school district.
“I just don’t want kids in this area to miss out on an experience such as Nelsonville-York City Schools,” he said.
Nelsonville teachers also expressed concerns about how adding a charter school would impact funding and resources available to the city’s public schools.
In Ohio, public schools are funded through a combination of state money and local property taxes. The state’s contribution is determined by a formula implemented in 2022 that considers student/teacher ratios, actual costs and minimum staffing levels.
State funding is based on where students are taught, rather than where they live.
Casey Cox, an English teacher at Nelsonville-York High School and member of the teacher’s union, described this model as one where the money follows the student.
Under this model, losing any amount of funding would place a larger burden on the district.
“If that happens, we are essentially losing money that we could have used to … provide different curriculum or provide different opportunities like mock trial or yearbook or these cool extracurriculars we do … not to mention all of our athletics,” Cox said.
Cox also said that any cut to the city’s education funding would hurt students and teachers.
“I feel pretty strongly that just losing one student more than we already are to a building like SOCA, you know we’re going to feel those effects a lot harder than … a school like in an urban area that already has a huge population,” Cox said.
Meghan Riddle is a Nelsonville resident whose son is an eighth-grader at SOCA. She said she supports parents’ choice over which school their children attend.
“I don’t believe this should be pitting schools against each other,” Riddle said. “The school already exists; therefore, the kids are already allowed to choose to go there.”
Riddle also said putting the upper school in Nelsonville could attract more foot traffic to the businesses downtown.
As of now, SOCA has not submitted an official application for a zoning variance.
Cox said he hopes the city will consider what is in the best interest of Nelsonville students as conversations about rezoning continue.
“Our school, I think, is integrated with our city, and the health of those two things are combined,” Cox said.