Pickerington Schools Board Member Mark Hensen discusses his second year in office and his goals for 2025.

January 12, 2025
From Pickerington Schools Board Member Mark Hensen

This represents my views and does not necessarily reflect those of the PLSD Board of Education (BOE) or my colleagues. I’m speaking for myself, NOT the board.

I’ve been on the PLSD BOE for a year and wanted to share some thoughts. This will be in four parts: Getting Started, The Good, The Challenges, and The Way Ahead.

Getting Started

So far, it’s been an exciting, challenging, and interesting experience with many learning moments. I’ve truly enjoyed contributing to the BOE’s efforts to improve our students’ education and overall experience. Over the past year, I’ve gained a better appreciation for the significant impact the BOE can have—either positively or negatively.

When I joined the board, it was clear that considerable improvements were needed, particularly in communicating with stakeholders (and fostering transparency) and promoting better relationships among leadership and staff. This cultural change requires time, dedication, and collaborative leadership to create lasting results.

In my first few months, I worked hard to emphasize the importance of change and progress, even though it may have been challenging for some to hear. For the last year, I’ve focused on working behind the scenes to help drive these efforts forward. While there’s still much work to do, we’re starting to make headway. I’m committed to working closely with the interim and incoming superintendents to remove barriers and foster collaboration. Increasing the pace of needed change may require more public effort moving forward.

The Good

Over the last year, I’ve had the privilege of meeting many staff members and witnessing their incredible daily work. Our educators are heroic, dedicating themselves to our students’ success. Our state report card reflects their efforts—earning 4.5 out of 5 stars—demonstrating that we’re generally on the right track academically.

The majority of our kids are achieving, progressing, and graduating. Our educators are closing achievement gaps among various student groups and helping to prepare our students for life after high school. Our teachers, support professionals, and school administrators work together to maximize student learning.

Thanks to our diverse resource base, including an income tax that helps stabilize funding (and keeps us off the ballot longer than other districts), we’ve mostly had the resources to advance learning effectively. We’re also starting to make strides in hiring enough staff to support our growing district.

Beyond academics, our sports, band, theater and other fine arts programs are growing and improving. Our schools also have additional extracurricular activities and clubs, but we need to do more to facilitate and increase participation in these extracurricular/club areas.

The Challenges

Despite these successes, we face significant challenges. The strain and stress on our overloaded educators and staff is the most pressing. Increased state mandates (like high-dosage tutoring and reading improvement management programs), staffing shortages, and growing student needs have taken a serious toll.

We must also transform our definition and approach to fiscal responsibility. Education is people-focused, and investing in recruiting and retaining talented staff is crucial to our success—especially in a growing school district.

Lastly, we need greater parental involvement, as many students still have significant achievement gaps and behavior issues. Increased family involvement will help ensure every student is maximizing their potential.

The Way Ahead

Thanks to the incredible efforts of our educators and staff, we’re generally on the right track academically. Moving forward, we must focus on areas that support and enhance their work. Effective leadership—from the BOE to the district’s senior leaders—will create a positive and productive environment for staff, students, and families.

My priorities are:

1. Improving communication: Strengthening internal and external communications to build trust, foster understanding, and create a culture of listening and action.
2. Encouraging and increasing parental involvement: Supporting families to become more active partners in their children’s education.
3. Supporting our staff: Ensuring realistic expectations, appropriate staffing, and fair and competitive compensation to show our staff they are valued and respected.

In future updates, I’ll share some ideas and initiatives I’ve discussed with the administration to advance communication, parent involvement, and staff support. Some tangible steps to support our staff include reducing class sizes, improving start and end times for the school day, improving busing, and fostering strong, positive leadership at all levels—from the BOE to the district office to our school buildings.

Together, we can maximize the potential of our staff, students, and community. Further collaboration will move our district forward.

Finally, an operating levy is needed to keep up with our growing student population and staff needs. As a reminder, PLSD has not had an operating levy on the ballot for nearly 14 years (2011).