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Over the past two years I have gathered points of view on Wooster’s school situation from hundreds of conversations with members of the community.
This month I want to share what I have gathered specifically from those that support the schools financially, the taxpayers.
Disclaimer: These are my impressions, not statements of fact.
I will be presenting the most common and most vocal views I encountered.
None of these come from a single person and I will use no quotes.
The current situation for taxpayers: A Sharp Financial Pain
In the last 5 years we have had the depths of covid, a sharp inflation in the cost of living, and a sudden increase of property valuations.
This has put enormous stress on the tax-payers.
The whole community has been under strain
Those on fixed incomes because of retirement or disability are particularly hard hit.
These community members are a growing portion of the community and are seeing their finances squeezed from all directions.
Those that rent are not spared either because the cost of living inflation combined with difficulty finding available units and the passed along property tax increases have taken a great toll on them as well.
The relationship with the school administration: A History of Distrust
Something I heard a lot from people is the idea that the school administration will do what it wants.
That everything is already decided, either by committees or behind closed doors or by elite groups of influential clubs.
That there is no reason to talk with, or even at, the school district because it doesn’t listen.
That voting against levies is now the community’s only outlet for their frustration.
This frustration comes from a list of bed experiences going back decades
People point to actions the school district has taken over the last 30 years.
In the 1990’s it lied about getting rid of the old high school to those that thought the building was unsafe, because it is now Cornerstone.
For those that wanted to save the building the district lied about the old high school being unsafe for students, because it was fine to put younger students in when the district had no further choice.
It slowly closed down the neighborhood elementary schools starting in the 2000’s, damaging community neighborhoods.
In the 2010’s it insisted that it needed a levy to pass or it would need to close 2 schools.
After that levy passed it closed them anyway, then it gave administrators raises.
In the 2020’s the school district offered a levy and building plan so out of touch with the community that it failed 22% for to 78% against.
It failed despite a 5+ year effort and having been advised by a 20-30 member committee of community members that were supposed to advise the schools on what the community wanted.
I heard many say that they wanted to support the schools but they didn’t trust the district.
These stories were fewer in number than those with damaged trust but their pain was more tragic.
The stress the taxpayers have felt financially has made it too painful for some to support the schools with more funding.
I talked to several people that were sad and conflicted about not supporting the most recent school levies.
They had always supported the levies before, no matter what.
Now they are in such financial pain that they are confronting the possibility of choosing between their family home or paying for all their medications.
They faced a terrible choice and had to take care of themselves rather than commit more to the schools.
I think many people are frustrated that the district keeps breaking their trust even though the people running it are different in each decade.
This frustration makes the distrust worse because people can’t understand why they can’t seem to fix the district’s behavior by just replacing their representatives on the school board.
The relationship with the educators: Sympathy but Doubt
In general, the people I talked to were very sympathetic to educators.
There is an understanding that they genuinely care for the children.
It is understood that teaching is a difficult and a unique challenge at all different child ages.
I often heard that teachers weren’t paid enough and that not enough of the taxpayer support went directly to the educators.
However, people doubted the wisdom of other changes.
There was a fairly widespread doubt that the educators needed more in other ways.
There was doubt that new buildings are justified in balance with the pain it would cause.
I often heard serious doubts about the wisdom of the educator’s apparent request to gather elementary children into single grade buildings and abandon neighborhood style schools.
There was also general frustration that when these doubts were raised they were dismissed.
Many felt they were told that educators know best and the community just needs to accept that and pay up.
People often praised and cherished individual teachers.
But they did not trust the educators as a general group.
Many of the older members of the community cite the many educational fads that they have seen promoted over their lives as the next great step in education.
A common example was the classroom walls of Cornerstone being a shared and retractable screen wall.
These walls were the educational fad of the time in the 1990’s that were supposed to allow for classroom collaboration, so they were built into the school at extra expense.
The reality was they made for terrible sound isolation between classrooms and the collaboration never worked as it was promised.
To this day students at Cornerstone have to deal with distractions from their neighboring classroom.
Experiences like these have made tax-payers doubtful of certain educator proposed changes.
Only to see these things turn out to be actively detrimental to education and needing to be reversed later.
The last thing I heard a lot of was a reluctance to pay more when performance has been going down.
This view was more unusual but they pointed out that neighboring school systems pay less per student and seem to get better results.
These community members tended to care deeply about education, having taken the extra time to do research on neighboring school outcomes.
Many mentioned covid being part of the problem but most also felt this did not explain everything.
For these people, the prevailing thought seemed to be that the educators needed to do more with what they had.
Instead they see the educators requesting more resources to solve a problem that was solved just fine in the past with fewer resources.
This relationship is very different depending on whether it is between individual educators or our local educators as a groups or perceptions of the educator profession as a whole.
The more personal the contact, the more positive the relationship seems.
The more generalized contact, the more doubt creeps into the relationship.
The relationship with the parents: Sympathy and Empathy
The relationship between the tax-payer community and parents seems to be quite good.
I did not encounter any broad complaints against parents and the job they are doing as a whole.
In fact, I often encountered a feeling that the community wanted to see more parents and more children.
The tax-payers generally seem to want to support the parent’s children with good schools to the point that some feel guilty that they cannot.
Many of the older generation feel that raising a child today is harder than it was in their time.
Author notes:
My own opinion on the situation:
I think the relationship between the tax-paying community and the administration is very damaged and needs major repairs.
I think the relationship between the tax-payers and the educators is good for individual educators but in general is teetering on an edge and needs to be bridged before it becomes damaged.
I think the relationship between the tax-payers and the parents is good and healthy.
[This article was originally published June 30th, 2025]
This is only one side of the public school situation in Wooster.
In July I will be presenting the view from the parents.
In August, the view from the educators.
In September, the view from the district administration.
I want to present every side.
Political Statement:
As I am now a candidate for the Wooster city school board this article blurs the line between what is campaign material and what is community report.
So, because I have paid my time into it and because it may sway opinions for the election I now state:
Paid for by Why the Hill not
This is my election committee name.
Though this might be considered a campaign post, my personal hope is that this article helps bridge understanding in the community.
That has been the goal of this 4 month project all along.
Wooster Interpreter 
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