Licking Heights Local - EdTribune OH - Ohio Education Data

Licking Heights: From 30 Asian Students to 1,471 in a Decade

Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2015, Licking Heights Local had 30 Asian students. They made up 0.8% of enrollment, a rounding error in a district that was 61.2% white. By 2026, the district enrolled 1,471 Asian students, 28.0% of its student body. White enrollment fell to 29.0%. No other Ohio district with more than 1,000 students has undergone a comparable demographic inversion this fast.

The shift did not happen because white families left. Licking Heights grew 36.6% over the same period, from 3,846 to 5,252 students, while Ohio as a whole lost 88,804. The growth was driven almost entirely by new arrivals: families from Nepal, Somalia, and dozens of other countries who settled in the affordable subdivisions spreading east from Columbus into western Licking County.

A suburb that doesn't look like its neighbors

Licking Heights sits 20 minutes east of downtown Columbus, straddling the Licking-Franklin county line. Its neighbors are overwhelmingly white. Lakewood Local is 91.0% white. Granville Exempted Village is 89.2%. Johnstown-Monroe Local is 85.4%. Heath City is 84.0%.

Licking Heights is 29.0%.

The contrast is not subtle. Within 15 miles of each other, one district operates with more than 50 languages spoken in its hallways while its neighbors function as essentially monolingual systems. Southwest Licking Local, which shares a border and has also grown rapidly (up 30.3% to 5,024 students), shows the early stages of a similar pattern. Its white share has dropped from 89.9% to 68.0%, and its Asian enrollment has climbed to 15.0%.

The Nepali pipeline

The engine of Licking Heights' transformation is a settlement pattern centered on Nepali and other South Asian immigrant families. Asian enrollment grew from 30 students in 2015 to 241 in 2018, then accelerated: 666 by 2020, 1,094 by 2022, and 1,471 by 2026. The growth averaged more than 130 additional Asian students per year over the full period.

Laura Mickelson, an English language coach who has been with the district for 18 years, described the staffing response to Ideastream Public Media:

"When I came here, I was the third full time ESL teacher. Now, we're up to 17 teachers. We still need more."

The district's English learner count rose from 539 (12.0% of enrollment) in 2019 to a peak of 967 (19.0%) in 2023, roughly one in five students. That rate was nearly five times the statewide average of 4.0% that year. It has since eased to 803 (15.3%) in 2026, still triple the state's 5.0% rate.

Separately, the district has hired three bilingual assistants who speak Nepali, French, Fulani, Liberian Creole, Sierra Leone Creole, and other languages. It now sends all communications in English, Somali, Spanish, and Nepali.

Why Licking Heights and not Granville?

The mechanism is straightforward: housing cost and community gravity. Licking Heights' attendance area includes newer, affordable subdivision development in the western part of Licking County and the eastern edge of Franklin County. Granville, by contrast, is a historic village with higher home prices and smaller lots.

Jhuma Acharya, the district's family engagement and diversity specialist, told The Reporting Project:

"People see the school district as one of the main attraction points."

The same article noted that students and their families moved to the district "seeking job opportunities and a sense of community." Immigration scholars describe this as chain migration: once a critical mass of families from a language community settles in a school district, others follow because the services, translated communications, and cultural familiarity are already in place. Licking Heights' investment in multilingual infrastructure may itself have accelerated the pattern.

The Columbus metro area hosts Ohio's largest Somali population, concentrated in Franklin County. Licking Heights' position on the Franklin County border places it within commuting distance of Columbus employment while offering suburban housing stock. Ideastream reported that Mickelson anticipates continued growth, particularly with Intel preparing to open a plant nearby and large housing developments under construction.

Three-way parity

The demographic outcome is unusual. Most diversifying districts follow a two-group pattern: white enrollment falls while Hispanic or Black enrollment rises. Licking Heights has produced something closer to three-way parity.

In 2026, Black students made up 33.1% of enrollment (1,741 students), white students 29.0% (1,524), and Asian students 28.0% (1,471). Hispanic students accounted for 5.8% (302). The Black-white crossover happened in 2024, when Black enrollment (1,675) edged past white enrollment (1,670) for the first time.

Black enrollment at Licking Heights was already substantial in 2015 (1,022 students, 26.6%) and grew modestly to 1,741, a 70.4% increase. The Asian surge is what reshaped the composition, diluting every other group's share even as most groups grew in absolute numbers. White enrollment did decline in headcount, from 2,355 to 1,524 (a loss of 831 students, or 35.3%), the one group that shrank in both share and absolute terms.

The infrastructure scramble

Growth of this magnitude is expensive. The district passed a $66 million bond issue in May 2022, funded primarily by Franklin County voters who approved the measure even as Licking County voters narrowly opposed it. The bond is paying for a new elementary school (Lima Ridge, opened October 2024 with capacity for 900 students), a high school addition for 300 to 350 more students, a new bus garage, and an athletic complex.

Kurt Scheiderer, the principal of Lima Ridge, told The Reporting Project that the new space was already filling a need that existing buildings couldn't meet:

"I would say by 2030 we'll have to build another elementary."

The growth rate, however, is decelerating. Licking Heights added 231 students in 2023, then 91 in 2024, 50 in 2025, and 31 in 2026. Whether this reflects a natural plateau as the district approaches capacity or a temporary pause before Intel-driven development brings the next wave is the central planning question for the district's administration.

What the EL dip may signal

The English learner count peaked at 967 in 2023 and declined to 803 by 2026, even as total enrollment continued to inch upward. Two mechanisms could explain this. Students who entered as English learners may be reclassifying as English-proficient after several years in the program, a normal part of the EL lifecycle. Alternatively, the rate of new immigrant arrivals may be slowing. The data cannot distinguish between these explanations. Both could be operating simultaneously.

The decline matters for staffing. Districts receive additional state and federal funding tied to EL counts; a sustained drop from 19.0% to 15.3% would reduce the revenue available for the multilingual infrastructure that Licking Heights has built. The district employed 14 ELL teachers and three bilingual aides across six buildings as of 2022. Whether that staffing level holds depends on whether the EL count stabilizes or continues to fall.

What Intel will bring

Intel's $28 billion Ohio One semiconductor fabrication plant is under construction in neighboring New Albany, with a projected 2031 opening. Housing developments are already spreading through western Licking County to accommodate the expected population influx. Southwest Licking's own shift, from 89.9% to 68.0% white over the same period, suggests the pattern is already dispersing across the county.

Lima Ridge Elementary opened in October 2024 with capacity for 900. Its principal expects the district will need another elementary by 2030. In a state where most districts are closing buildings, Licking Heights is building them. The $66 million bond passed because Franklin County voters, many of them newer residents who chose the district precisely because of its diversity, voted yes. The community that transformed the district is now funding its expansion.

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Ohio Lost 203,000 White Students. Every Other Group Grew.

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Ohio's public schools lost 88,804 students between 2015 and 2026. White students accounted for 202,924 of that decline, more than double the total loss itself. The math only works because every other major racial and ethnic group grew: Hispanic enrollment surged 68.4%, Asian rose 51.4%, multiracial climbed 37.7%, and Black enrollment held roughly steady at +1.0%. The state did not simply shrink. It transformed.

The white share of Ohio's K-12 enrollment dropped from 72.7% to 64.6% over 12 years, an 8.1 percentage-point slide that redrew the demographic profile of schools in every region of the state. Of the 578 traditional districts with comparable data across both years, 523 lost white students. Just 55 gained them.

A decline that accelerated after COVID

Before the pandemic, Ohio's white enrollment was falling at an average of about 14,700 students per year. That pace was steady: between 8,784 and 18,373 annually from 2016 to 2020. Then COVID hit. The 2021 school year saw a staggering 47,258 white students disappear from the rolls in a single year, a loss that dwarfed every other year in the dataset.

The brief rebound of 2022, when 719 white students returned, was the only year of gain in the entire 12-year span. It was also the last. Since 2023, the pace of white enrollment loss has averaged 20,778 per year, roughly 42% faster than the pre-COVID baseline. The two worst non-COVID years on record are 2025 (-25,602) and 2026 (-24,161), both occurring at the tail end of the series.

Three consecutive years of post-2022 losses above 19,000, each larger than any pre-COVID year, makes a post-pandemic overshoot hard to argue. The current pace has held for long enough that it now looks like the new baseline, not a temporary disruption.

Who grew while white enrollment shrank

Hispanic enrollment added 59,349 students over the period, growing from 86,736 to 146,085. That 68.4% increase lifted the Hispanic share from 4.8% to 8.5% of total enrollment. In absolute terms, Hispanic growth was the largest of any group, concentrated heavily in suburban Columbus and the state's mid-sized cities. South-Western City alone added 2,062 Hispanic students. Hilliard City more than doubled its Hispanic enrollment from 1,055 to 2,175, a 106.2% increase. Olentangy Local, one of the state's fastest-growing suburban districts, saw Hispanic enrollment rise 153.0%.

Multiracial enrollment grew by 31,493 students (+37.7%), rising from 83,610 to 115,103. Multiracial students now make up 6.7% of Ohio's enrollment, up from 4.6%. Some of this growth likely reflects evolving identification patterns, as families increasingly choose multiracial categories on enrollment forms, rather than new arrivals. That distinction matters: a reclassification-driven change is real in what it reveals about identity, but it does not carry the same service implications as an influx of new students.

Asian enrollment grew 51.4%, adding 18,414 students. Black enrollment was essentially flat in absolute terms, rising by 2,952 (+1.0%), though its share of total enrollment crept up from 15.9% to 16.9% as the denominator shrank.

The urban core and inner suburbs bore the heaviest losses

The largest absolute white enrollment losses fell on a mix of urban districts and older inner-ring suburbs. Columbus City Schools lost 4,443 white students (-35.0%), dropping from 12,680 to 8,237. Toledo lost 3,533 (-42.1%). Akron lost 3,469 (-43.4%). South-Western City, a large suburban Columbus district, lost 3,459 (-24.6%). Parma, Cleveland's largest suburb, lost 3,443 (-38.0%).

The pattern in Ohio's five largest cities is stark. White students now make up 18.0% of Columbus City Schools, down from 25.2%. In Toledo, the white share fell from 38.5% to 23.7%. In Akron, from 37.2% to 23.4%. Cincinnati Public Schools dropped from 25.2% to 20.9%. Cleveland Municipal, already the least white of the five in 2015 at 15.2%, fell to 12.4%.

Eighteen districts that were majority-white in 2015 crossed below 50% white by 2026. Licking Heights Local, east of Columbus, saw the sharpest swing: from 61.2% white to 29.0%, a 32.2 percentage-point drop in 12 years. Fairfield City, north of Cincinnati, went from 67.1% to 38.1%. South-Western City fell from 66.3% to 47.9%.

The median district lost 17.3% of its white enrollment. Only 55 districts gained any white students at all, and most of those were exurban communities on the outer edge of metro areas.

Shrinking birth cohorts and outmigration

Ohio's birth rate has declined 15.7% since 2006, according to March of Dimes data. In 2023, 126,896 babies were born in Ohio, and white non-Hispanic births accounted for roughly 70.7% of the total in the 2021-2023 period. That share, while still a majority, is lower than the 72.7% white share of school enrollment in 2015, meaning the incoming kindergarten cohorts are more diverse than the graduating 12th-grade classes they replace. Each year, a whiter class exits and a more diverse class enters. The pipeline arithmetic is relentless.

The state's overall population has barely grown. Between 2024 and 2025, deaths exceeded births by 729, according to USAFacts. Ohio's modest population increase of 39,900 that year was driven entirely by immigration, not natural growth. That immigration is disproportionately non-white, adding to the compositional shift.

School choice expansion may also play a role. In 2023, Ohio's legislature removed income limits from the EdChoice Expansion voucher program, making all families eligible for public subsidies to attend private schools. Voucher use jumped from 23,272 students to 88,095 in one year. As one superintendent told The Statehouse News Bureau:

"The students who take vouchers in our district are disproportionately not low income and disproportionately white."

The wrinkle: roughly 84% of new voucher recipients were already attending private schools. Private school enrollment grew by fewer than 3,000 students despite nearly 70,000 new scholarships. The program mostly subsidized families already outside the public system, limiting its direct enrollment impact. But it may depress future re-entry by removing the financial incentive for private-school families to return to public schools.

Columbus as the state's demographic laboratory

The Columbus metro has become the focal point of Ohio's demographic transition. Columbus City Schools lost 4,599 total students since 2015, but its Hispanic enrollment grew by 4,283 and its composition shifted sharply. The surrounding suburbs show the same pattern at different speeds: Dublin City lost only 200 white students (-2.0%) while adding 626 Hispanic students. Hilliard City lost 1,595 white students but gained 1,120 Hispanic students.

Columbus's foreign-born population has grown substantially. Between July 2023 and July 2024, more than 20,000 immigrants moved to Franklin County, with immigration accounting for 54% of all county growth. The city's 15.1% foreign-born share is nearly triple the state average of 5.3%. Established Somali, Haitian, and other immigrant communities in Columbus have expanded, adding students to public schools even as white enrollment contracts.

Whether that immigration-fueled growth can offset the broader state decline is uncertain. An Ohio Capital Journal analysis warned that federal immigration restrictions could threaten the state's modest population gains, noting that net immigration into the United States dropped from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025. If that trend continues, the one source of enrollment growth Ohio has left could weaken.

What to watch next

In 2015, eighteen districts were majority-white and on the cusp of crossing below 50%. All eighteen have now crossed. Fairfield City went from 67% white to 38%. South-Western City dropped from 66% to 48%. Licking Heights, once 61% white, is now 29%. These are not distant projections — they are transformations that already happened, in suburbs where the yard signs and the sports rosters and the PTA meetings look nothing like they did a decade ago.

The EdChoice voucher program, now uncapped by income, may accelerate the shift further. Ohio superintendents report that voucher recipients skew white and non-low-income — families subsidized to leave a system they had already chosen to leave. The public school system they leave behind is increasingly Hispanic, increasingly Asian, and increasingly reliant on those growing populations to slow a total enrollment decline that shows no sign of bottoming out.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.