‘OTHS is doing great things’: O’Fallon superintendent recognized for district’s success
The O’Fallon High School superintendent was recognized as the Illinois southwestern region’s superintendent of distinction on Wednesday.
Darcy Benway is one of 21 Illinois Association of School Administrators to be recognized. The southwestern region includes St. Clair, Madison, Jersey, Monroe and Randolph counties. In total, the region includes 51 individual school districts.
“I truly shared this award with the phenomenal administrators that led through a very difficult time, our teachers who stepped up and met the challenges head on, and certainly all of our educational support staff who worked tirelessly on behalf of our students,” Benway said Thursday. “OTHS is doing great things, and I think that was why I was nominated, but I don’t share that alone.”
In her 15-year tenure as the superintendent of O’Fallon High School, Benway accomplished a number of successes that were cited in her nomination for the honor.
They include: opening the district’s freshman campus, increasing the number of students named as Illinois State Scholars, increasing access to advance placement courses for underrepresented students while maintaining the passing rate on exam scores, implementing a credit recovery initiative for struggling students, and the district performing in the top 10% of Illinois high schools on SAT/ACT assessment while simultaneously spending in the lowest 10% of instructional cost per pupil for her entire tenure.
In 2020, O’Fallon Township High School had a per pupil expenditure of $10,686, while the average for the state was $23,573. For the same year, students averaged nearly 30 points higher than the state average on the SAT, according to the Illinois school report card.
“We’re giving our community great bang for the buck, where we’re doing more for less,” Benway said. “That’s not just a one year benchmark, that’s a 15-year benchmark. Anybody can do great things for a year, but it’s that sustainability over time.”
Of particular note, Benway said she was proud of how her district stepped up and met the challenges of the pandemic. According to U.S. News and World Report, O’Fallon Township High School rose in both state and national school rankings between 2021 and 2022.
In addition to the pandemic, Benway also spent part of last school year working part-time from home after undergoing a heart transplant. She’s back to working full-time in-person this year.
All of the superintendents in the southwest region showed “incredible dedication” to their students through the pandemic, Benway said. To be selected by her peers was humbling, she said.
“For them to select me as standing out during this time is such an honor,” she said. “It takes my breath away.”
This story was originally published May 8, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
