Building tomorrow’s innovators

The hallways of the Metro Schools’ Kenny Road campus once echoed with middle and high school students preparing for college. Now, those same corridors ring with a different sound — the excited chatter of kindergartners learning to design their perfect pumpkins. This marks a milestone in central Ohio's educational landscape: the launch of Metro Elementary School, and the completion of a K-12 pipeline that promises to reshape STEM education throughout the region. 

For Meka Pace, Metro Schools’ superintendent, this moment represents the fulfillment of a vision she’s held since the beginning of her career. “It was always a lifelong aspiration for me to have my own elementary school,” Pace says. “That’s where I started my teaching career.” But the realization of Metro Elementary isn’t just about personal dreams; it’s about addressing a critical gap that Pace and others have witnessed firsthand.  

Metro High School, the first iteration of the Metro Schools project, opened its doors in 2006. When the middle school began operations in 2013, administrators discovered students arriving already two to four years behind grade level. “Our hope was, in starting at elementary, we would be able to really connect our students to a love of learning,” Pace explains. “To close those gaps earlier, or even to make sure that those students don’t matriculate to the next grade level with gaps.” 

The elementary school is the latest development of Metro’s longstanding partnership with The Ohio State University and Battelle, resulting from Ohio State’s strategic decision to purchase the historic Indianola Middle School building and lease it to the Metro Schools. This move enabled Metro’s middle and high school students to relocate to the newly renovated facility, effectively freeing Metro’s Kenny Road location on the university’s west campus to become Metro Elementary. 

Investing in the future of central Ohio 

The Metro@Indianola project and the new Metro Elementary School represent what Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter called “a shining example of what’s possible when partners come together… to invest in students and the future of our state.” This collaborative approach reflects the shared commitment of Ohio’s public and private sectors to developing the next generation of innovators. 

Ohio State’s partnership with Metro extends beyond real estate. Metro Early College High School opened in 2006 as one of the first STEM schools in Ohio through a partnership with Ohio State, Battelle and some Franklin County school districts, and that relationship continues to deepen. The university maintains three seats on Metro’s board of directors and provides crucial support through its College Credit Plus program, which allows high school students to earn college credits. Additionally, Ohio State students serve as tutors and student teachers, creating mentorship pipelines that benefit both Metro learners and the future educators being shaped in the College of Education and Human Ecology. 

One particularly impactful investment came from Women & Philanthropy at Ohio State, a program open to all individuals from the university community interested in pooling resources to collectively fund scholarships and grants for inventive initiatives in and around the institution. Their 2014 grant award funded the expansion of engineering offerings at the middle school level, enabling Metro to implement three courses from the nationally recognized engineering curriculum, Project Lead the Way.  

Creating a culture of community 

For Amy Lint, an administrator who previously served as assistant principal at Metro’s middle school before taking up the mantle as Metro Elementary’s first principal, the most striking aspect of the elementary program is how young students naturally embrace the school’s more complex approaches. For example, Metro’s house system — borrowed from the Ron Clark Academy — divides students into smaller communities that compete for points earned by positive behavior and academic achievement.  

“I thought that they would struggle with the hard names of the houses (including Amistad, Isbindi, Reveur and Altruismo),” Lint notes. “They have no problem with it. Everyone knows who belongs to each house, and they really get into the community-building and citizenship elements of it.” 

This sense of community is crucial for Metro, which draws students from 26 different districts across central Ohio through a non-selective lottery system. The school’s mastery-based approach means students must demonstrate 90% proficiency before advancing to the next grade level, ensuring genuine understanding rather than just seat time. Every afternoon after 2 p.m., teachers focus on design challenges that integrate STEM concepts across disciplines and help the children to better understand the design thinking process. 

Pace sees this early foundation as essential to preparing students for Ohio’s evolving economy. “We are in the ‘new Silicon Valley’,” she observes, referencing central Ohio’s growing tech sector. “In the coming years, there will be many jobs to fill in IT, science and beyond. And so there has to be a pipeline of students ready to go into those careers. Our goal at Metro is to help meet those needs by preparing our students to be part of tomorrow’s workforce.”  

But she emphasizes that the benefits of Metro’s pedagogical approach extend beyond technical skills. “Some of the jobs our little kindergartners will be engaged in; we don’t even know about yet,” she adds. “So, we work to prepare them to be able to identify and pull in necessary resources and work on teams to creatively solve problems — those are skills that all companies want, regardless of the industry.” 

And as Metro Elementary students walk slowly past Superintendent Pace’s office, eyes glued to the TV screens displaying their earned house points and celebrating classmates’ achievements, they’re beginning a journey that could reshape not just their own futures, but central Ohio’s economic landscape for decades to come — one child at a time.