Enrollment at the Cleveland Metropolitan School District has dropped by tens of thousands of students in recent decades, creating a problem: Dozens of buildings are not fully occupied and thousands of seats don't have students in them.
Collinwood High School on Cleveland’s Northeast Side has one of the lowest occupancy rates in the district, with just 13% of its 2000 seats full, according to district building capacity data.
Teacher Marcella Hall has watched the decline of students at that school over her 30-year tenure. She’s also watched as programming and support for the facility has also declined.
"Collinwood was the beacon of the neighborhood when I joined," she said, standing outside the century-old building. "We had tons of staff. We had tons of programs. We had everything. We're barely making it. We're struggling now."
Hall said that several decades ago it seemed like every “room and closet” was used. Now, the building’s third floor is vacant. Its Olympic-sized swimming pool sits unused. And she said its career tech program — situated in a once-bustling industrial hub of Cleveland that's lost many of those businesses — is nonexistent.
Collinwood High School is a good example of the challenges facing CMSD and urban districts across the country. As enrollment has dropped with families leaving Cleveland for the suburbs, many districts have been put in a lose-lose situation: maintain buildings that aren’t being utilized fully, or close buildings and risk the ire of residents, among other potential negative consequences.
The conversation is especially important now as the district is facing a deficit and asking voters to support a combined operating levy and renewal of a bond issue in November.
The district did try to close Collinwood five years ago, part of a second wave of closures and consolidation after a larger push in 2010. But teachers like Hall, residents and Cleveland City Council Member Michael Polensek pushed back, saving the building.
But the district’s approach to Collinwood and the high school has left such a bad taste in Polensek’s mouth, he said he’s not voting for the levy.
“If you strip schools like you did on the East Side of programing and curriculum, why would you send your child there?" Polensek said. "I said to (CMSD CEO) Dr. Morgan when he came over to visit us on Council, if I had a high school-aged child today, I would not put him in Collinwood High School."
A balancing act across 91 schools
CMSD through its spokesperson declined to make CEO Warren Morgan available for an interview for this story. But Morgan has discussed the district’s long-term plans — and what he’s called a need to “look at the district’s buildings” — at public appearances in September and this month.
“So it sounds simple. I know a lot of people will say, you know, the district is in the financial position that it's in. 'Why don't you close schools,' or 'Why don't you, you know, do this program or eliminate this?' It's not that simple,” Morgan said during a Sept. 10 board meeting.
It's not simple, he said, because the district has a complicated calculus that includes building conditions, enrollment, course offerings and test scores, which all vary widely from building to building. He also said the district needs time to gather public input on its facilities.
The district has at least 27 buildings that are at 60% of capacity or less, according to an Ideastream Public Media analysis of public records comparing each building’s enrollment from May 2024 with their total capacity provided by the district. Ideastream forwarded this analysis to the school district on Aug. 19, but has not yet gotten a response. Most of the capacity data provided to Ideastream by the district was from 2019, but it's not clear physical building capacity changes over time or whether the district has updated its data since then.
It would cost the district $475 million to update 40 of its older buildings with installation of air conditioning, repairs to heating systems or new roofs, according to a district facility assessment created in 2021 and updated in February 2024.
And concerns persist about a lack of equity in programming between the city’s West Side and East Side. Elijah Brown, a student at Ginn Academy, not far from Collinwood on the East Side, asked Morgan about that perception during Morgan's 2024 State of the Schools speech in October.
“We often hear as students that there is a favoritism between West Side schools rather than East (Side) schools. When it comes to programs and funding ... would you say this is true?" the student asked. "If so, what can be done about it?”
Morgan responded that the district has upgraded facilities on both the East Side and West Side. Specifically, the district updated facilities on the East Side first after several bond issues approved over the last several decades, Morgan said. But enrollment challenges are steeper on the majority-Black East Side of the city, where a significant number of residents live in poverty.
“We all must own, why is it that our East Side schools are lacking in enrollment or the programs that we have?” Morgan said. “What are the types of experiences that you and your families want us to provide on the East Side and also on the West Side too?”
Should the district close schools?
Shari Obrenski, president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, said it’s clear that the district has too many buildings.
“The bigger challenge is figuring in the human side of it,” she said.
Closing schools is hard politically, with alumni associations and politically connected alumni. Collinwood, and the push to keep it open, is a good example. Plus, closing schools potentially harms the fabric of neighborhoods, Obrenski said.
The district closed 13 buildings in 2010 under CEO Eugene Sanders, which she called “devastating,” leaving neighborhoods like Cleveland's Slavic Village without a public high school.
“It is much more complicated than just the numbers," Obrenski said. "There is the, how important that school is to that community? How ingrained it is in that community? And what type of supports having that school provides to that community?"
The district would also need to lay off staff working in buildings it closes. Obrenski said the union started off the year with about 100 staff vacancies, which she said could suggest a place to start for the district if it were to "right-size" itself, although she cautioned that the district is still in need of some specialty staff, like special education teachers.
Buildings that are less than 60% full carry their own risk. Ohio law requires school districts to make those schools available for use by a charter school, said Chad Aldis of the Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank.
"But to my knowledge, there is no one actively enforcing those provisions," Aldis said.
Regardless, as enrollment has fallen in recent decades in urban schools due to demographic shifts, Aldis said, closing schools is the right decision. Schools district can’t provide the right resources when students are spread thin, he argued. However, Obrenski said closing schools could lead to further public school enrollment losses as students choose to attend charter schools now occupying the former public school building.
Obrenski said schools that lose enrollment are caught in a vicious cycle because fewer students means less funding from the state and fewer teachers assigned to the school building. Less staff means less support for extracurricular programs and fewer course offerings. That can mean fewer parents want to send their kids there.
Missing opportunities for students
At a parent-teacher night at John Adams High School on Cleveland’s Southeast Side in August, Andrea Dockery-Murray, an art teacher at the school, played calming music in her room as she met with parents about their kids and her class.
Dockery-Murray said the school provides high-quality programming, including career training like what was once offered at Collinwood, and parents and students who stopped in to see her said they liked their time at the school.
"I want the district to really kind of continue to rebrand and continue to reintroduce how great they are," she said. "And I had a conversation not too long ago and I was saying the district really should make sure the public is aware of all of the great graduates that have come through CMSD."
The building was also renovated in the last decade or so, so it has plenty of new amenities, including a music room.
“We even have a studio where they can record," Dockery-Murray said
But there’s no music teacher, she said. The music room — a large space complete with sound proofing — and studio space is now filled with old desks, chairs and boxes of tests.
“But no music," Dockery-Murray said. "Only music in their heads as they take a test.”
Elsewhere on the East Side, Michael Hardaway, head track and field and basketball coach at East Tech High School, said he wonders why his school, which boasts Jesse Owens as an alumnus, doesn’t have an outdoor track to practice on.
There is an outdoor track about a mile away owned by Cuyahoga Community College, but Hardaway said scheduling use of of the Tri-C facilities can be difficult. He said better amenities for student-athletes translate to students coming to school and staying engaged.
“We need more money into our athletic programs because this is giving certain kids the opportunity,” he said. “They may not get an opportunity outside of the athletic realm to go and further their education. It's important because, just to be transparent, for certain people, sports kept them coming to school. They kept them engaged in school.”
Hardaway added the he is aware of only two other outdoor tracks across the school district, one at Collinwood High School and Robert Bump Taylor Field at Arnold Pinkney East Professional Center, both of which need renovation. (The board of education had approved $763,000 to renovate Bump Taylor Field in August).
Both East Tech and John Adams have seen their enrollments drop by about half since 2010.
The school district recently broke ground on a new track and high school football stadium at John F. Kennedy High School on the city's Southeast Side.
Morgan told Ideastream Public Media after the groundbreaking that students having access to more facilities like those could go a long way to bringing enrollment back to the district.
"When I think about the high school I grew up in, or (that) many of us did, we think you have all of the everything there at your school, and you don't have to travel, or you don't have to go to another person's school," Morgan said. "It's your own. So I think that gives a point of pride for the students, but then also for the community."
What’s happened to CMSD’s enrollment?
CMSD had 33,918 students enrolled as of the October 2023. Its total "adjusted capacity," which takes into account special programs and students with disabilities' needs, is about 55,500 seats, according to district records.
While the district’s enrollment hasn’t dropped significantly since the pandemic, the district has seen a long downward trend since the late 1970s. That trend followed a 1976 federal court decision ordering desegregation of the school district, which implemented a plan for busing that began in 1979, according to an article from Cleveland State University's Center for Public History and Digital Humanities.
Thomas Dee, Barnett Family Professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, said the country has seen a “re-sorting” of its population since the 1950s.
“There's been substantial mobility across the country generally towards warmer areas. And then within metropolitan areas, there's been a re-sorting of the population towards the suburbs over that period,” Dee said.
However, much of that exodus in Cleveland has been on the basis of race, statewide enrollment data shows. It's part of a broader pattern of “white flight” across major U.S. urban centers, research shows. CMSD’s student population was 35% white, 59% Black and 3% Hispanic in 1978. As of October 2023, CMSD was 14% white, 63.4% Black and 17.6% Hispanic.
Since the 1990s, Ohio has also seen an explosion of school choice options, starting in Cleveland with the Cleveland Scholarship Program in 1997, the state's first program where families could get vouchers to pay for private school. In the 2023-24 school year, 7,800 students participated in that program, up from about 2,000 in the 1996-1997 school year. Ohio also drastically expanded access and funding for voucher programs in 2023.
In addition, a large number of charter schools have opened in the last several decades, including in buildings that CMSD once operated. Dee, who worked with the Associated Press to analyze enrollment patterns across the country since the pandemic, found another emerging trend: More parents are homeschooling their children in Ohio in the last several years.
Even after CMSD closed 13 schools in 2010, and closed four buildings and consolidated others in 2019, CMSD still has about 20 more schools than Cincinnati Public Schools, which has 1,700 more students than CMSD.
Those decisions to close buildings occurred under the tenures of two different CEOs, most recently under CEO Eric Gordon and before that under Sanders. Neither responded to a request for an interview.
What’s next?
At Collinwood High School, longtime teacher Marcella Hall said if the school district tries to close buildings again, Collinwood shouldn’t be among them.
“We have to say something to the community that not only do we value the community, we value your children,” Hall said. “So you don't have to worry about catching a bus (to a school) all the way to the West Side.”
Hall suggested people vote for the school levy this November. She said the district’s solution to declining enrollment shouldn’t be to cut its way out of the problem.
However, even if a levy passes this November, the district is still going to need to cut its budget, Morgan said during an Oct. 10 Board of Education meeting. The district could be out of money almost entirely by the end of the next school year if the levy doesn't pass, according to its five-year forecast from spring 2024.
“We're going to be looking at our buildings and are going to be looking at our program staffing models," Morgan said. "That happens whether a levy passes or not."
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said during his 2024 State of the City speech earlier this year that the district will need to make “hard and necessary choices” about its building footprint.
“As Mayor Bibb has repeatedly noted, we are clear eyed about the hard choices necessary to ensure our children's success,” read a statement issued by the city on Sept. 5. “We must all invest in the future of our schools, and we know we can’t continue to operate with an outdated building footprint. Our schools were built in an era when Cleveland’s population was triple what it is today. We need to adjust for that reality in a way that guarantees quality schools for all Clevelanders.”
Hall said the school district doesn’t need to close Collinwood. It needs to invest in it, so more families want to choose to send their kids there.
“Figure out a way to keep Collinwood open" Hall said. "And figure out a way, if you just bring one program back, if you listen to the community and you bring one program that the community as a whole believe should take root, you will see the growth. Start from there. Don't cut us off by the knees.”
