Article written and posted in the Circleville Herald on November 19, 2025, by Lindzay Mason, Reporter.
(MUHLENBERG TWP) — When Jason Fife took his current role as superintendent at Westfall, there was a goal amongst the school board, himself, and treasurer Joseph Patete: establish “Big Rocks.” These “Big Rocks” are commonly known as mission-critical objectives that help the board and district keep their focus on what matters most.
Their first Big Rock is safety.
“I’m very proud of the fact that we take safety and expectations of safety very seriously here in the district. I’m not saying that other districts don’t, but I think potentially there are times where there are certain things that are out of your control, but as schools, we’re faced with dealing with them and addressing them.
“I think we’ve been very proactive in that, by the expectation that we have and the fact that we can help support students that are dealing with certain things. We have our school counselors, we have a couple clinical counselors on staff, and we have two school resource officers on campus at all times. I think our district’s done a great job of making sure that that’s a priority,” Fife said.
The second Big Rock is viewing the whole child. In the year of 2025, that encompasses more than academics. It includes their relationships, their growth, and their emotional needs. As Fife said, they have several counselors on staff for their students. The district understands that meeting all their needs and not simply the academics is an important part of the student’s ability to grow and make achievements.
The third Big Rock is stewardship. Fife explains this as, “being good stewards of our taxpayers dollars and investing back into the facilities that we have, and trying to seek ways to improve that; giving good experiences to our kids, our staff, and our community.”
Shifting financially, Fife spoke on public education school funding, House Bill 96, and the governor’s biennium budget:
“Each biennium budget is every two years — that’s where a legislator puts together that budget, then from that budget it really drives how public schools are funded. In most bills, there are proposals to make cuts, make additions, those kinds of things. I think it’s really become a struggle from the local side of things in correlation with the state side of things. There’s somewhat of a perception, at times, that the burden of funding public education is landing on our local taxpayers. From a personal standpoint, and also from a professional standpoint, our taxpayers are just maxed out.”
One of the largest businesses in the district is agriculture. The community is made up of a large number of farmers, yet they don’t have the benefit of setting their own prices. If the price fluctuates too much, then the farmers and their families can struggle.
The school also receives funding due to two natural gas lines running through the district. An upcoming, potential funding situation comes from the solar farm in Atlanta — waiting to see how much power it produces and the percentage of funds coming to the district is more of a waiting game.
To fully support the “whole child” like one of their big rocks aims to do, that requires cooperation. Fife acknowledged that sometimes they can get “tunnel vision” on their own district, but reaching out to other superintendent can be helpful for feedback and reassurance.
“I really enjoy how our county schools, at least from the superintendents levels, all four of us, I would include Pickway-Ross, five of us, really working together to help support one another,” Fife said.
Speaking of Pickaway-Ross, Westfall has a number of students who attend the vocational school. The partnership works well, including transportation. The students gain an extra skill set by managing their Pickaway-Ross schedule, the events at Westfall, and any clubs or sports they participate in. The biggest thing, Fife added, is having communication between the schools to help support one another and remediate situations that arise.
There are also satellite offerings from Pickaway-Ross, such as the Agricultural Education or Information Technology programs that are taught at Westfall by Pickaway-Ross instructors.
“We have two full-time FFA teachers here in the district and then they provide a third teacher for us that is more so in our informational technology side of things, offering courses like drones and things like that,” Fife explained.
With their Future Farmers of America (FFA) program so large, it is very beneficial to have these instructors on campus as well as the opportunity to send students to Pickaway-Ross. Westfall also has the benefit of a digital academy, which allows students to receive adequate high school credits that will allow them to graduate. This benefits the students who participate in the satellite classes as well.
“We have a few students taking sports med and things at the satellite campus, and then also taking some courses from our digital academy as well. A lot of those are our seniors that are really close to graduating, and it’s an opportunity for them to have a little more flexibility and diversity in their schedules, since some of them work in the afternoon,” Fife added.
Since the Ohio School Report Cards came out within the last few months, that was also a topic of discussion. Westfall Elementary was ranked at 4 stars, Westfall Middle School was 3.5, and the High School was a 2.5. With the star levels decreasing through the school district, Fife stated that they were looking more closely at what the problems are and how to improve them.
“The State of Ohio has recently rolled out, a year or two ago, there was a new initiative with the science of reading. Our district went through that process and adopted a new reading curriculum for grades Kindergarten through Fifth. The state is also beginning to steer towards mathematics in that same capacity,” Fife commented.
Fife also added, “We recently met in our district leadership team. From that meeting, there were two things that I took away. One — the stage initiative and the workforce development piece. That’s such an important piece, particularly for our high school students, but we’re also looking at how does it begin in our elementary, middle, and high school and preparing those students for that. Workforce development, establishing that in the elementary with kiddos thinking about what they’d like to be and what they would like to do as they get into middle school and high school.
“Two — mathematics. We do have a district mathematics team made up of teachers and administrators that are currently looking at the data: what is that data telling us ,what is our plan to address those deficiencies, what areas are we doing well in, how can we continue to capitalize from that. I think, right now, it’s truly about the collaboration state of things and
discussing how we are going to improve those things, and that is sometimes difficult.”
Westfall has a school work-based program, as well. This provides students with jobs within the school, such as custodial, classroom support, cafeteria support, etc. Students in this program receive a paycheck and still acquire their core classes for graduation requirements.
Westfall also has Title I teacher supports. Fife explained that Title I is funding from the federal government that is given to school districts, ones that qualify due to socio-economic and enrollment demographics. He stated that receiving that funding allows for the district to have the Title I teachers that support students in reading and math.
This is more of a small group type of situation, where multiple students will come together with the teacher. For students with IEPs or 504 plans, one-on-one instruction may be used by the intervention specialist as it meets the needs for those students.
Westfall is partnered with the Pickaway County Educational Service Center (ESC), which offers school psychologists, occupational therapists, speech-language therapists, behavioral specialists, and more. Their services allow Westfall and their other partner schools to better serve their students.
Westfall Local School District is located at 19463 Pherson Pike, Williamsport. They can be reached via phone at 740-986-3671.