Graduated 1980, Faculty from 1999-present
When Dr. Jim Renner returned to Mariemont High School as faculty in 1999, it was nothing like the Mariemont he graduated from in 1980. In the 1970s there was no standard on high school education. Mariemont students had schedules reminiscent of college students, which gave them free reign of the vastly more open campus. For instance, the 1979-1980 Mariemont yearbook included pictures of students holding guns and hunting on and around school grounds.
Renner says “[public education] was wild. It was out of control.” He believes the school “was not conducive to a good studious environment,” and around the country school was a place where students went to “have a good time.” Not where they went to grow academically.
When the current Mariemont High School building was newly built, it came with a large change in academic instruction. Renner remembers that “it was opened without walls” and because of that “people [came] from all around the world to see what education would look like in the future.” He believes that with more advanced technology this open instruction philosophy may have been more successful in the long term.
Since then, Renner explains that Mariemont has “reestablished [itself] as a first rate academic high school.” Mariemont high school earned two Blue Ribbon Awards in the first 5 years Renner was faculty, and has earned two more in the years since. The Mariemont City Schools district was the first to utilize Smartboards in the United States, and the district was among the first to provide its students with individual laptops. On top of that, Mariemont continues to evolve: offering unique curriculums in the form of masterclass, advisory, independent study, Warriors Beyond, Intersession, and student travel.
Although the district has changed academically, Renner notes that many of the school traditions have remained the same as when he was a student. Parades and dances are largely the same, and prom was held in the Hall of Mirrors back then as well. Along with that, Renner mentions that the communities around the school have always shown the district support and their own Mariemont spirit. Even during stressful times like the Mariemont teachers’ strike, the communities surrounding the school supported the district in the way they personally believed was best for the school.
Arguably, the most significant event in the history of the district was the 1981 Mariemont teachers’ strike. There was a turnover of approximately 60 teachers, which was almost the entire Mariemont High School faculty. Renner explains that leading up to the strike, the communities around the school were largely conservative, but many of the teachers were progressive and “drawn to a progressive type of high school,” like Mariemont. This “divided the community right down the middle over whether to support the teachers or support the board of education.”
There was nothing unique about the strike itself. Schools all over the country were experiencing similar things, but the Board of Education’s unwillingness to negotiate with the teachers Union set the district apart. Not only did the strike significantly lower Mariemont’s student enrollment rates in years following, but it also got the attention of former Ohio Governor Dick Celeste, who passed a law that allows collective bargaining in public schools. Meaning that teachers are allowed to negotiate things including their starting pay and hours, but are limited on negotiation of things like health care, paid time off, and benefits.
In the year following, during the Reagan administration, the strike in Mariemont had become nationally known. When the air traffic controllers went on strike, Renner reports that “Ronald Reagan sent a team to meet with the Mariemont attorney to figure out how to get a union to stick.”
This was such a significant event to Renner that he wrote his 2004 dissertation—titled “The 1981 Mariemont Teachers’ Strike: A Lesson in Leadership”—on the Mariemont strike and the effects, changes, and lessons that came out of it.
In a similar vein, Renner was faced with running Mariemont High School on September 11, 2001; in his last year as assistant principal, and on a day the principal was out of the district. During this time there were no TVs in the building, cell phones were not widespread, and all of the computers were shut down because much of the infrastructure ran through the World Trade Center. All Renner knew was that “the tower went down” and “to the best of [his] knowledge, [the school was] being invaded.”
Renner remembers parents of Mariemont students who were traveling for business at the World Trade Center. The students and him had no way of knowing if the parents were okay. He also remembers feeling pressure to decide whether to continue the school day and after school practices as if nothing happened or to cancel those things all together. With no way to contact his boss, Renner explains that “the rest of the day is just this big blur,” and he is unable to recall many specific details.
Other than that, Renner experienced the blizzard of 1977, which closed the elementary school and moved the kindergarteners to the upper library of the high school; he experienced the failure that was the combination of the Mariemont Junior High and High School into a singular building in the early 90s due to the drop in enrollment; and he has experienced every academic and cultural change to the district in the last half of a century.
Renner believes that after high school, “everybody goes off and does their thing, but when they think about their school experience—for the most part—[Mariemont is] really a good experience.”
