It's all but assured now that CMSD will close school buildings in the near future.
That's according to CMSD CEO Warren Morgan during a public input meeting Tuesday for the district's "Building Brighter Futures" facilities plan. He said the district needs to cut at least $150 million over the next three years. At the same time, the district needs to improve its quality of education.
"It means that there will be school closure, there will be consolidations, there will be relocations. That is something I will not bury the lede with. That is what will come with this recommendation. But we have the opportunity to enhance programs. We have the opportunities to combine some programs. And making sure that we replicate our programs throughout the entire system."
Morgan said a recommendation will be presented to the board "at some point during the next school year" on which specific schools will be closed or consolidated. He said any consolidation won't take place until the school year starting fall 2026.
That decision will be made based on a gamut of factors, primarily though, it will be around building enrollment, enrollment trends and building conditions, according to a copy of a presentation the district gave during public meetings at schools throughout the month of April. Other factors include student achievement at individual schools, demographics, unique programming offered at schools, how many other school buildings are nearby, and "other neighborhood and historical factors."
Here are takeaways from the presentation, and officials' comments during a Tuesday meeting at Glenville High School.
1: In some regions of the city, the district says there are no schools with a “healthy enrollment”
On Cleveland’s Northeast side, which includes the Glenville and Collinwood neighborhoods, the district says none of its eight high schools or its 12 kindergarten-through-eighth grade schools have “strong, healthy enrollment.” At the same time, it has the most high schools and K-8 schools of any other region.
At Glenville High School, the "adjusted capacity," the number of students the school could comfortably accommodate, is 2,225. But the school only had 326 students as of the 2023-24 school year, according to data obtained by Ideastream Public Media. Collinwood can fit 1815 students, and only has 221 students. CMSD previously sought to close Collinwood High School in 2019, but the school remained in operation after community pushback.
Elsewhere, none of the 10 K-8 schools on Cleveland’s Southeast side have strong enrollment, the district said. The same goes for the two high schools on Cleveland’s Near West side, or the four on Cleveland’s Central East side.
The district defines "strong, healthy enrollment" as having at least 450 students in K-8, or at least 500 in a high school. CMSD spokesperson Jon Benedict said the district could do “so much more” if there are two classes per grade level in K-8 schools, and if each high school class had 125 students in it.
More broadly, the district says just 67% of the available space at all K-8 schools is being used, compared to 50% of the available space at all high schools.
It's important to note the district excluded some "specialty schools" from its calculation of which schools are in which region, which includes the district's arts-focused schools and its boys and girls leadership academy schools.
2: The district says 70% of its building have been upgraded, but…
That means there are still thousands of students still in buildings that aren’t “warm, safe and dry,” the district argues. The district defines “upgraded” as the 52 buildings that have been renovated or rebuilt since 2001.
The CMSD Board of Education voted on April 15 to close Newton D. Baker after years of issues with the building’s roof and foundation meant constant leaks, with trash cans being used to collect water in some hallways. The district plans to send those students to Wilbur Wright and Clara E. Westropp schools, although their families can apply for them to attend any building, officials said during the meeting.
The West region of the district – which it defines as south of Cleveland’s Near West Side – has the lowest ratio of upgraded buildings, with just 18% of K-8 schools and 69% of high schools.
Despite voters approving a levy and renewing a bond issue in November 2024, Morgan said the district is "limited" in how many buildings it can update.
"How might we repurpose some of them? How might we make some investments in upgrading some of the buildings? And in some of buildings that are newer, how might we use some limited investments to make sure that they don't deteriorate any further."
3: Enrollment is down; why?
The district’s enrollment has dropped by about half since 2000, from about 70,000 to about 34,000 students in 2024. The district says it has space currently for about 50,000 students across its buildings.
Meanwhile, the birth rate in Cuyahoga County has declined by 16% during that time, while county-wide public school enrollment has dropped by 15%, according to the district presentation.
During the last two decades the Ohio Legislature drastically expanded access to vouchers to attend private schools, and the number of charter schools in the state has increased. In the 2023-24 school year, 7,800 students participated in that program, up from about 2,000 in the 1996-1997 school year.
CEO Warren Morgan said the district can’t “recruit” its way out of its enrollment challenges.
“To the point of charters and privates, some people also may say that we’re losing kids to charters and private schools,” Morgan said. “Our data has shown us that over the past five or six years, the market rate of families choosing CMSD has been consistent.”
Almost 19,228 students live in Cleveland but attend charter or private K-8 schools instead of CMSD, according to a 2018 study of enrollment patterns in the city. The study found there were 7,599 high school students attending charter or private schools.
Councilmembers Anthony Hairston, Mike Polensek and Kevin Conwell attended a Building Brighter Futures meeting at Glenville High School. Hairston's son goes to Hannah Gibbons School in Collinwood. He noted the school has a science lab that's not in use, and a music room with no music teacher.
"You hear from parents, 'Oh well, you know, we left because they really didn't have anything to do outside of English, math, science and social studies,' right?" Hairston said. "Although those are needed... they want other things, because that's not what's going to keep their attention, right?"
The district has closed many school buildings on the East Side already, Polensek said, which he argued led to people leaving the city, creating a vicious cycle.
4: The district says too many buildings means fewer opportunities for students
Morgan said the district can't offer programming beyond the core subjects at every building because of how thin its resources are spread.
For example, about three-fourths of high schools offer opportunities for students to earn college credit, and 60% offer a "career pathway" program; the district says consolidation could make both those numbers 100%.
Similarly, only 38% of K-8 schools offer non-core courses beyond art, music and physical education; Morgan said consolidation would mean more access at each of those schools to options like foreign languages, band and computer science classes.
Finally, CMSD also struggles to adequately fund and support after-school programs at each school building, according to the presentation that the district has been giving at all of the public input meetings. Consolidation could mean more access to athletics and clubs like chess, dance and robotics.
"We will bring back cosmetology. That's the thing that people ask about all the time. So with Building Brighter Futures, cosmetology will be coming back," Morgan said. "...the other thing you hear about is, why do we not have a training school on the east side? And the training school on the East Side will be coming back with Building Brighter Futures."
