Kent, Ohio - Education

Education

See also: Kent City School District, Kent Free Library, and Kent State University

Preschool, elementary, and secondary education is mainly provided by the Kent City School District with the small portion of the city south of State Route 261 a part of the neighboring Field Local School District. The Kent district was created around 1860 and later merged with the Franklin Township and Brady Lake school districts in 1959. It serves most of Kent and Franklin Township, the villages of Brady Lake and Sugar Bush Knolls and a small part of southern Streetsboro. Kent has five neighborhood elementary schools that serve students in grades K–5, Stanton Middle School for grades 6–8, and Theodore Roosevelt High School for grades 9–12. The district also operates a preschool program housed at Davey Elementary School, and is a member of the Six District Educational Compact with five surrounding districts to facilitate vocational education with many of these programs housed at Theodore Roosevelt High School. In 1985, Theodore Roosevelt High School was given the United States Department of Education Excellence in Education award and the school has consistently been rated "Excellent" by the Ohio Department of Education since 2004. In December 2009, it was named in US News & World Report as one of the best high schools in the United States, earning the publication's Bronze Medal designation. The Kent City School District has been consistently rated as "Excellent" or "Effective" by the Ohio Department of Education and in 2007 Walls Elementary School was named a "School of Promise" by the Ohio Department of Education, while Longcoy Elementary earned the U.S. Department of Education's prestigious Blue Ribbon School award. Kent also has one private school, St. Patrick School, which serves around 300 students in grades K–8 from Kent and several surrounding communities. It is part of Kent's St. Patrick parish and is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.

The Kent Free Library is the main public library. It was established in 1892 after Kent became the first village in Ohio to use an 1892 state law which allowed municipalities under a population of 5,000 to tax residents for the upkeep of a library. Andrew Carnegie donated $10,000 in 1901 for construction of a permanent home for the library, which opened in 1903. The 2006 expansion to the library brought available space to 55,000 square feet (5,100 m2) with a book collection of 147,390 items as of 2010. It is a school district library associated with the Kent City School District and is also part of the Portage Library Consortium, connecting it with Reed Memorial Library in Ravenna and the Portage County District Library, which maintains six branch libraries across the county and a bookmobile.

The main campus of Kent State University is located in the southeastern part of the city. The campus itself occupies approximately 866 acres (350 ha) and the university owns thousands of additional acres adjacent to the campus. Additional facilities include a research park and golf course just east of the city limits in Franklin Township and the Kent State University Airport, just west of Kent in Stow. Founded in 1910 as a teacher training institution, the university has become a world leader in the development of liquid crystals through the Liquid Crystal Institute and was the site of the first patent for the modern liquid crystal in the 1970s. Kent State also has a nationally recognized fashion design program and nationally ranked programs in library science and business. As of 2010, the College of Nursing is the 5th-largest nursing school in the United States and largest in Ohio. In 2009 the university inaugurated the College of Public Health, the second public health program in Ohio and 33rd in the U.S. The Kent State library system, which includes the 12-story main library and houses over 2.6 million volumes, includes six additional department libraries on the main campus and a branch at each of the seven regional campuses. The library system is a member of the Association of Research Libraries, one of 3 in Ohio and 124 in North America. The university offers over 300 programs of study combined in the undergraduate and graduate levels and serves over 41,000 students in eight campuses across Northeast Ohio with over 26,000 at the campus in Kent.