Delaware City Schools is asking residents to help shape the future of its buildings as the district’s long-term facilities plan, Delaware 2040, moves into its options phase, the district reported through coverage in the Delaware Source. The planning effort is driven by two numbers district leaders say they cannot ignore: an estimated 800 additional students expected in the years ahead, and nearly $100 million in needed building repairs across the district.
Superintendent Keith Pomeroy is leading the 17-month process, which began with a district-wide listening tour and is scheduled to produce a completed facilities master plan by July 2027, according to the Delaware Source. No decisions have been made yet, district officials stress — the current phase is about assessing the challenges the community identified and developing possible solutions for residents to react to.
The conversation turns to specific buildings this month. A building team meeting open to parents, staff and community members was set for Nov. 11 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Hayes High School to discuss options for the high school and middle school, and a follow-up meeting on Dec. 3 will take up the district’s elementary buildings, the Delaware Source reported.
Delaware 2040 grew out of Mission: Delaware, the listening tour Pomeroy conducted when he arrived in fall 2025, visiting all seven of the district’s school buildings to hear directly from staff, families and residents. District leaders say what they heard on that tour — aging systems, crowded spaces and buildings asked to serve a growing city — set the agenda the master plan now has to answer.
The district is not doing the technical work alone. Delaware City Schools is working with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, the state agency that partners with districts on school construction, and with the architecture firm SHP on the facilities assessment and options work, according to the district’s account reported by the Delaware Source.
The scale of the repair bill is central to the discussion. Nearly $100 million in identified building needs is far beyond what routine maintenance budgets absorb, and how the district sequences repairs, renovations and possible replacements — and how any of it is paid for — is exactly the kind of trade-off the options phase is designed to put in front of the community before board members are asked to choose.
Growth is the other half of the equation. Delaware remains one of central Ohio’s fastest-growing communities, and an expected 800 additional students would strain buildings that are already absorbing enrollment pressure. Planning for where those students learn — and whether current buildings can hold them — is the question the master plan must answer with data rather than guesswork.
The facilities plan is one piece of a larger four-part strategic plan Pomeroy hopes to have fully approved by January 2027, the Delaware Source reported. That timeline means the choices residents weigh in on this winter will shape board action well before the master plan’s July 2027 completion date.
For families, the stakes are concrete: which buildings their children attend, how crowded classrooms become, and whether aging roofs, heating systems and safety features get addressed before they fail. District officials say that is why the process is built around repeated rounds of public input instead of a finished plan presented for a single up-or-down reaction.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: What is known is the framework — the enrollment projection, the repair estimate, the meeting schedule and the July 2027 target for a finished plan. What is not yet known is the options themselves: no building closures, consolidations, renovations or new construction have been proposed or decided, and no cost or funding plan for any option has been released.
What happens next is the Dec. 3 elementary buildings meeting, followed by the district’s continued options work with the state facilities commission and its architects. Residents who want a voice in where Delaware students learn for the next generation can attend the building team meetings and follow the Delaware 2040 process through the district as options are published.
Delaware’s growth is not abstract for the district. New housing across the city and southern Delaware County keeps adding families, and every subdivision that breaks ground eventually sends children to a Delaware school door. District planners say a master plan built now — while options can still be weighed calmly — is far cheaper than emergency portable classrooms and rushed construction later.
Residents who cannot attend a building team meeting can still follow the process: the district is posting Delaware 2040 materials as the options phase unfolds, and the school board’s public meetings remain the venue where any eventual recommendation will be debated before a vote.