(8 of 10)
To conservative Wilmingtonians, however, multiculturalism is a loaded term, redolent of racial preferences and other leftish incursions. So the committee's recommendations have been ignored--and the committee was just disbanded by the new superintendent. After a rancorous school-board meeting in October, a board insider took Hawley aside. "You folks are getting a reputation," he said. "You're always trying to enlighten us."
"Then I guess we're not succeeding," Hawley replied.
The culture clash extends to academic issues because professionals moving to town want a college-prep curriculum that the system has been slow to provide. Wilmington's system ranks in the bottom quarter of Ohio school districts, according to a Cleveland Plain Dealer study, and sends less than half its graduates to college. Rick and Leslie Chamberlain moved to town thinking the schools would be adequate; they no longer think so. Their oldest child, Jeremy, was an apathetic student who fell in with underachievers at the high school. But because Jeremy wasn't a troublemaker, says Rick, the guidance counselors never noticed him. The more Leslie tried to interest her children in her idea of small-town pastimes--board games in the parlor, gingerbread houses at Christmas--the more Jeremy wanted to dye his hair purple and turn up his stereo. Wilmington is as saturated with pop culture as the next place; Jeremy's interests ran to rap music and cartoon art, and he dropped out during his senior year. Now 20, he has earned a GED and is studying at a local college.
The system doesn't always serve high-achieving children well, either. The Chamberlain's middle child, Nicole, 17, a high-school cheerleader and straight-A student, has received no guidance from school in choosing a college; on the day she was supposed to take her PSATs, she felt pressured to take part in a school track meet instead. While the school board has built new elementary and middle schools to keep up with rising enrollment--and a new high school is in the works--"we've seen no upgrade in the quality of education," says Rick. "When professionals moving here ask me about the schools, I say, 'You may have a problem.'" The superintendent is working to improve the college-prep curriculum, but the Chamberlains have lost patience. They send their 12-year-old to parochial school in a town 30 miles away.
THE COMMUTERS
The Wilmington newcomers who come closest to fulfilling their small-town dreams are those who don't get sucked into local politics--people who create their own sanctuaries amid the farmland and maintain their good humor come what may. Paul Rice and Karin Dahl were just moving into their new home on 100 acres near Wilmington when a police car came bouncing down their driveway. A Clinton County deputy sheriff climbed out of the car to meet them and seemed to react oddly because their last names weren't the same. Dahl felt the need to clarify. "We're married," she said.
"I know," said the deputy. "We checked you out on the computer."
Six years later, the memory still brings gales of laughter from Rice and Dahl. "He didn't want anyone living in sin in his county," says Dahl, 59, an associate professor at Ohio State University in Columbus.