Four and a half miles from mainland Ohio, just miles from the Canadian border, sits a school unlike any other in the country.
Their school “buses” are 8-person golf carts.
Their “gym” class sometimes is riding bicycles around the island they call home. They all know how to swim, an important skill when living on an island.
Some of the teachers take a ferry or a plane over Lake Erie every day to go to school. It’s one of the most unique schools in Ohio, all of whom proudly call themselves the Kelleys Island School Green Devils.
Superintendent Ben Ohlemacher is in his third school year at Kelleys, commuting daily by the Kelleys Island Ferry or by small plane from the airport in Port Clinton to the island.
Kelleys Island School has three core teachers who teach a standard curriculum.
There are art, health and physical education, music teachers, as well as an adult art teacher for island residents.
Students are currently learning how to play the guitar and have learned piano and brass instruments.
They have a very personalized education, with the student to teacher ratio at 1:1 or 1:2.
“Two students in a class is a big deal,” Ohlemacher says. “It means they have a peer.”
Ohlemacher has a personal relationship with the students’ guardians, texting them for information and updating them on what’s going on daily at the school.
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Jessica DentonFive students attend Kelleys Island School, an island with a year-round population at around 250 people.The building itself serves as a community hub – residents, family members of islanders and registered voters on Kelleys can access the gymnasium for activities and the building is ready to go as an emergency shelter in times of crisis.
The Kelleys Island Field Station, led by Director Jackie Taylor, provides STEM and wildlife-based conservation and environmental education that fosters responsible actions toward wildlife and related natural resources.
Every summer, students and educators from around the state travel to the Field Station to learn about general ecology, geology, entomology, herpetology, ornithology, limnology, and dendrology.
It involves programming for other schools, and Taylor does a lot of outreach, Ohlemacher says. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources named Kelleys the first Erie County “Wild School.”
“We take a lot of pride in educating the ‘Kelleys Island kids’, not just our students,” Ohlemacher says.
A small but robust branch of the Sandusky Library is also in the addition to the building, open to residents in search of a good book or resource.
“It’s truly a community school,” Ohlemacher says.
Beth Haig, President of the Kelleys Island School Board of Education, is a fourth-generation resident to live on the island.
Though she didn’t attend the Kelleys Island School, she said she and the board take a lot of pride in the school, its teachers and its students.
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Jessica DentonKelleys Island School math teacher Carolyn Willinger teaches common factors to the two sixth-grade students at the small island school. "It’s a phenomenal opportunity to be here,” she says of the school. “If only those halls could talk.”
Island History: Quarry Boom, and Bust
Beginning in 1830, Kelleys Island was quarried for Columbus Limestone, producing at various times dimension stone, lime, and crushed stone. Kelleys Island reached its peak population in 1900 when it began a steady decline.
About 318 acres of the island’s surface were quarried until the end of quarrying operations about 15 years ago.
The KIL&T Co. closed its Island operations in 1940, selling and donating much of its land holdings to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in 1955. Kellstone purchased the quarry in 1963 and closed it in 1972. Capital Control bought the property in 1989 and leased it to LaFarge in 2004. It ceased operations in 2008.
The Estes School building, built in 1901, sits at 528 Division St. in the heart of the four-square mile island.
The school building was named Estes School after James Estes, who left $10,000 in his will for the construction of a new school building.
The brick, three-story Estes school expanded in 2000 with an addition.
In the more than 15 years since the quarries closed, Kelleys Island has had a devastating drop-off in enrollment.
School pictures of each year line the hallways, dwindling numbers every year as families picked up and moved off the island in search of employment.
Today there are five students: three boys and two girls.
But Ohlemacher says their small numbers don’t deter them from providing the best education possible for those five students.
They each get their name on the message board outside the school for their birthday. A student named Josie celebrated her birthday recently, and math teacher Carolyn Willinger took her photo in front of the board to send to her parents.
The classrooms feel like homes, especially Lori Hoffman’s, a teacher at Kelleys for the last six years.
As an educator for many years, she started tutoring at Kelleys and then became a full-time teacher to the handful of students. This year she’s teaching the two second grade pupils.
“Because you have the same kids every year, you can jump right into the school year,” Hoffman says. “You know what they are like, what their strengths are, what they need help with.”
The students also know their teachers well and pick up when things are out-of-the-norm, she notes.
“They keep us on track, we have a good routine," Hoffman says. "They’re very smart."
Each week students look forward to getting prizes from the “Treasure Drawer” in the superintendent’s office when they do something extraordinary.
They do a weekly rotation of saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning over the PA.
Every day the five students and nearly a dozen educators eat breakfast and lunch together.
“It’s nice to do things differently like they do here,” Hoffman says of the uniqueness and small size. “The one-on-one with the kids, it’s good.”