EDUCATION
A-to-Z Guide to Greater Cincinnati:
"Best Place to Live in North America"
to be quiet in the hallway
Large variety of schools, choices
BY CHRISTINE WOLFFThe Cincinnati Enquirer Finding a Tristate school for little Mary and Johnny offers enough choices to make parents crave a timeout.
Public, private, parochial, magnet, college prep, classical Latin, Christian, Jewish and African. There's a school emphasizing foreign languages, another focusing on singing, dancing, theater and music, and the nation's only privately funded school teaching deaf students from birth through high school.
In Hamilton County alone, there are 22 school districts. In outlying counties, Butler County and Clermont County each have nine districts, and Warren County has eight.
Looming largest is Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS), the state's third largest district, with about 50,000 students in 79 schools - some of them the most culturally diverse in Ohio.
Cincinnati Public Schools
Cincinnati Public is best known for its magnet schools, which offer specialized programs for 20,000 students. Magnet programs include Montessori curriculums - with an emphasis on individualized learning - and schools that have adopted Paideia teaching methods - with children learning using Socratic logic.
Cincinnati Public's crown jewel is Walnut Hills High School, which, for 100 years, has offered a classical education with required Latin classes and heavy emphasis on literature, mathematics and the sciences.
Other Cincinnati Public stand outs:
* The School for Creative and Performing Arts (SPCA) and Schiel Primary School for Arts Enrichment - public schools emphasizing training in art, dance, theater and music as a basic part of the curriculum. SCPA students - about 1,700 fourth- through 12th-graders - perform in dozens of shows annually on local stages. Hundreds of SPCA students have gone on to careers on Broadway and in Hollywood.
* The Academy of World Languages, a magnet school, may be the only place in Greater Cincinnati where students born in America, China, Russia, Japan, Israel, India and Russia study together. It offers elementary children the opportunity to study many languages, as well as providing English lessons to foreign-born children.
* Many popular programs are located outside the magnet program, based instead in neighborhood schools - such as Hyde Park Elementary, where the emphasis is on multiage instruction.
Another is at Crest Hills Year-Round School, one of the few yearlong programs available in Ohio. Students have the opportunity to move ahead of peers attending classes in traditional ninth-
month programs.
A second year-round program is scheduled to begin at Woodward High School in the fall of 1997.
Around the Tristate
Education in the suburbs runs the size gamut. There are three-school districts such as Madeira and Reading, and mega districts such as West Clermont Local schools - with 12 schools and about 8,800 students - and Northwest Local schools - with 14 schools and more than 10,000 students.
Two of the state's fastest growing school districts are Butler County's Lakota Local schools, which gained 513 children in 1996 and are expecting 500-550 new ones by next fall; and Warren County's Mason City schools, which grew by 413 students in 1996 and expect another 400-450 next year.
In Kentucky, there are 14 public school districts in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties. They, too, range in size from a district with over 20 schools to one with a few hundred students in two school buildings.
The 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) has made great strides in helping the state's public schools financially and in the areas of technology.
Suburban highlights:
Four suburban schools were recognized among 266 nationally as 1996 Blue Ribbon Schools - the highest national recognition from the U.S. Department of Education.
Earning a Blue Ribbon: Anderson High School, Anderson Township; Madeira Junior-Senior High School, Madeira; and Mason Middle School, Mason - among seven Blue Ribbon schools picked in Ohio - and Notre Dame Academy, in Park Hills, Ky.
Madeira High, Indian Hill High School and Wyoming High School consistently are the state's top scorers on the Ohio Ninth Grade Proficiency Test.
The new Mason Middle School, in Warren County, won a major architectural award in 1996, for its design featuring classroom wings for each grade coming off a central core.
Catholic schools
Parents seeking a Catholic education for their youngsters also have choices - from parish schools to high schools run by the archdiocese to private academies.
The 19-county Archdiocese of Cincinnati operates the nation's 10th largest Catholic school system. In Greater Cincinnati, that includes 77 Catholic elementary schools enrolling 28,471 students, and 16 secondary Catholic schools with 11,615 students.
* All-girls Catholic schools: McAuley, Mount Notre Dame, Seton, Ursuline Academy, Mother of Mercy and St. Ursula Academy.
* All-boys Catholic schools: St. Xavier, Elder, Moeller and LaSalle.
* Co-educational Catholic schools: Badin, McNicholas, Purcell Marian, Fenwick and Roger Bacon.
In addition, there is Summit Country Day School, an independent Catholic school for preschool through 12th grade. Foreign language classes are offered at all grade levels, and the school boasts two computer centers as well as computers in classrooms.
The Catholic Diocese of Covington, Ky., supervises nine Catholic high schools serving 3,500 students and 32 elementary schools serving 7,800 students.
Covington Latin School, a private Catholic school founded in 1923, began enrolling girls in 1991 in its renowned accelerated classical college prep programs.
Other specialized schools
St. Rita School for the Deaf is the nation's only privately funded school for the deaf offering programs from birth through high school.
Cincinnati Country Day School and The Seven Hills School are nonsectarian private schools offering programs for all students.
The Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy graduated its first class in 1995 and has been one of the fastest growing in the area.
The Springer School, which specializes in teaching children with learning disabilities, focuses on helping return students to a traditional classroom.
The Regional Institute for Torah and Secular Studies is the only Jewish all-girls school in Southwest Ohio.
Universities and colleges
Selecting a local college offers about as many choices.
In the Tristate, there are eight colleges and universities:
The University of Cincinnati, Miami University, Northern Kentucky University and Cincinnati State Technical and Community College are state schools.
Xavier University, Thomas More College and The College of Mount St. Joseph are private Catholic schools.
Wilmington College is a private Quaker school.
The University of Cincinnati, established in 1870 and now the second largest school in the Ohio university system - behind Ohio State - boasts 34,086 students studying in 17 colleges. A major research university, UC is ranked among the top 75 U.S. institutions in terms of money devoted to research.
Did you know?
Cincinnati was home to the first public Montessori school.
Cincinnati Public Schools has a state-created Pilot Mini District, 10 schools where experimental teaching methods are tried and the results shared with other schools.
The new Mariemont Junior High School, which opened in Fall 1996, is taking the unusual step of requiring its eighth-graders to take Latin.
Finneytown High School, Springfield Township, gives foreign language credit to students taking American Sign Language.
The New School, a private Montessori school, is located in a 19th Century building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Cooperative education - students alternating semesters of classroom work with paid employment - originated in at the University of Cincinnati.
The first carnival to benefit the schools - held in 1922 - raised $243.44; in 1995, Mayfete raised over $35,000.
Each fall Winton Woods High School is host to what is believed to be the largest international festival in the Tristate. The festival began in 1991, when Winton Woods opened after the merger of Forest Park and Greenhills high schools.
Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts is located in the original Woodward High School building on Sycamore Street, the home of several schools dating back to the late 1800s.
* The two stone lions that stand in front of UC's McMicken Hall - dubbed Mick and Mack - are replicas of statues standing today in the Loggia del Lanzi in Florence, Italy.
Enquirer reporters Mark Skertic, Katie Hillenmeyer, Sue Kiesewetter and Darrell E. Pressley contributed to this report.