Clay Junior-Senior High School is a public high school in Clay Township, Ohio, United States, located four miles (6 km) north of the Portsmouth in Scioto County. It is the only high school in the Clay Local School District. Clay is a rural high school serving about 300 students in grades 7–12 in Southern Ohio. The first class graduated in 1940.
Clay High School is now part of one building serving students in PK-12. The old high school building was one of three buildings used in the district from 1956 to 2010. Rubyville Elementary School (4-6), which was on Maple Benner Road at the intersection of State Route 139, and Rosemount Primary School (K-3), which was on Rose Valley Road just off Rosemount Road in Rosemount, Ohio, were the other two buildings.
General information
The enrollment for Clay Junior-Senior High School, grades 7–12, is 300 with 190 students in grades nine through twelve. The school's mascot is the black panther while the school colors are royal blue and gold. Ninety-six (96.22) percent of the students that attend the school are white. The other four percent are Hispanic (1.15), African American (.82), multiracial (.82), Asian (.66), or American Indian (.33). The district covers . There are twenty-two full-time faculty members serving the 300 students. The athletes complete in the small division in every Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) sport. The school competes with ten (10) sports teams at the high school level and three at the junior high level. The school belongs to the OHSAA and to the Southern Ohio Conference - Division I (SOC I).
The district received communication from the Ohio School Facilities Commission on May 3, 2007, that the district had been approved for the state funds. After new Ohio legislation allowing the district to proceed, a bond issue was placed on the March 2008 ballot to build a new preK-12 facility. The ballot issue passed and the district began building a new facility. The actual groundbreaking was in the Spring of 2009.
History
The Clay Local School District was created in 1940 to serve the residents of Clay Township and the individual communities of Eden Park, Rosemount, Rubyville, and Twin Valley. For those students who desired to go on to high school before the opening of the high school in 1940, the board of education provided their tuition to Glenwood High School or to Portsmouth High School. When the school was built in 1940 "there were buses to transport students to and from school, but there was no cafeteria, therefore, students brought their lunches." The first graduating class in 1940 was nicknamed the "Dirty Dozen" because there were twelve students who walked across the stage for the first time as Clay graduates.
The district began with four buildings - one high school and three elementary schools. There were two buildings in Rubyville - the Rubyville Elementary building, which served as the high school from 1940 to 1956, and an elementary building (originally Sumers, later renamed Long Run School), which is now a local church. The district also had an elementary building in Eden Park, which still stands but is no longer used by the district, and one in Rosemount (Scioto Trail School), which was located on the current site of JW Village Market.
In 1956, the Rubyville building (built in 1939) became the elementary building. With a bond issue to raise $325,000 (along with matching funds from the state and federal government for a total cost of nearly $600,000) a new high school building, which opened its doors on February 1, 1956, was built on Clay High Street. Mr. Carl Bandy was the Executive Head of the Clay (Rural) Local School District when the high school was built in 1955 . At that time, the enrollment of the district was 719. One year later, it was 915. During the period of peak employment at the Atomic Plant in Piketon (now U.S.E.C.), the enrollment was 1100. A new elementary building was then built in Rosemount (Rosemount Primary, built in 1964).
The district no longer uses these three buildings. At the time the Rosemount building was constructed in 1964, a band room and a junior high wing were added to the high school. In 1998 an additional "wing" was built on to the high school structure. Additional upgrades and renovations have occurred to all three buildings over the years including improvements to the high school gym, new science laboratories, renovations to all the restroom facilities, new roofs, and air conditioning for all three buildings. The enrollment for the district is currently 717.