NEWSEEK ranking description
2013 Application
1/10/2013
Harley Williams, Bexley’s Principal of Secondary Schools on “what makes our
school outstanding”:
Bexley High School is the heart of an active, engaged and supportive 13,000member community, located about three miles from downtown Columbus, Ohio.
Our parents, students, community members and staffers are closely involved
with our school and with each other. Parents volunteer in all capacities while
residents serve on oversight committees, attend performances and cheer on
school athletes. The community generally supports school funding initiatives as
well as our private educational foundation that supplies the many “extras” that tax
dollars cannot fund.
Over and over, our alumni return to tell us how they appreciate the opportunities
they enjoyed and how well prepared they were for challenges presented after
high school. Graduates like world-renowned author Daniel Pink or actorproducer Josh Radnor or presidential adviser Gail Smith urge our students to
take every advantage of their Bexley education.
There is a unique sense of teamwork in both the school and the larger
community here. Everyone works together to help students focus and build on
their strengths and assets. Our staff embraces the professional learning
community model and cultivates relational trust to make educational decisions.
Through collective expertise, staff members meet the needs of our most gifted as
well as our hardest-to-serve students.
Our staff understands that all students can learn. They understand that some
learn more quickly than others and some must work harder than the rest. They
never give up on any student.
Embracing norms of achievement, innovation, collaboration and educational best
practices, we use a systemic planning approach and learning-focused vision to
help each student reach his or her potential both as a student and as a citizen.
Bexley Schools is fully accredited by the internationally recognized AdvancED
(formerly North Central Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement,
or NCA CASI), one of only five in Ohio to earn this distinction.
Bexley High School holds a place on the College Board Honor Roll, one of 388
U.S. high schools recognized last year for expanding access to more rigorous
classes. The school offers 19 Advanced Placement (AP) courses, an unusually
high number for the size of the school; in 2012, 275 students took a total of 538
AP Exams.
Our mission drives us to develop leaders, life-long learners, academic achievers
as well as healthy, responsible, and productive members of a global society. We
teach our students to look both inward – helping them develop a positive sense
of self – as well as outward as they learn to take care of their family and friends,
community, environment and global others.