Next year, when Cleveland’s school closure plan goes into effect, thousands of students will be taking new routes to school. District and city leaders have promised those routes will be safe but, so far, the specifics are fuzzy.
Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) CEO Warren Morgan told residents at a town hall meeting in November that the district was working with Cleveland’s gang task force and Greater Cleveland RTA to support students in getting to school safely. Many middle and high schoolers take the bus or Rapid train to school, and safety of those students has been a top concern for parents, teachers and students.
In previous years, the district relied on grants for a “safe passage” program that paid residents to hang outside schools and near bus stops to keep an eye on students as they traveled to and from school.
The city also has participated in a separate state-funded program where city planners map out the safest routes for students to walk or bike to school based on traffic patterns, parent surveys and walking the routes themselves.
But two key supports for those programs no longer exist: the “safe passage” program lost its grant funding, and the district no longer employs a Safe Routes to School coordinator.
Jon Benedict, a spokesperson for the district, said that the safety plan for next year is still “in development” since most kids haven’t picked their schools for next year. He also told Signal Cleveland that “CMSD’s role is limited to their properties” and, so, the district will be relying on coordination with the city next year.
What is Safe Passage?
The Safe Passage program is a national model that’s been used in big cities across the country including Chicago, LA and Boston. In some of those cities, like Chicago, the program was expanded to address safety concerns after district-wide restructuring efforts. Cleveland schools have used different versions of the program over the last 10 years.
In 2023, CMSD, the city, and the nonprofit organization MyCom worked together to expand the Safe Passage project. MyCom trained and paid neighborhood residents as well as volunteers from two local violence interruption organizations, Change Seekers and Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance.
These teams hung out at bus stops, outside schools and along specific routes to keep an eye on students. They also helped school staff mediate conflicts between students when necessary. At the time, that program focused on a number of district high schools, including Collinwood, Garrett Morgan, John F. Kennedy, John Marshall and John Adams.
“The presence of the Safe Passage team members is meant to be preventative, not reactionary,” Kasey Morgan, chief strategy officer at MyCom, told Signal Cleveland at the time. “They are not there to replace security officers, but instead to serve as motivators to keep students moving to the school house and, once there, go to class and be engaged.”
Grant for Safe Passage program ended
The expansion of the Safe Passage program was paid for with grants from the Cleveland Foundation in 2023 and 2024. In 2024, the program was awarded $228,500 and had multiple volunteers stationed at five high schools.
“We supported Safe Passages programs as an important component of student safety efforts, recognizing the need for long-term sustainability beyond any single funding source,” Allison Baker, the director of public relations and communications for the foundation, wrote to Signal Cleveland. “This work has always been part of a broader, whole-community approach…” (The Cleveland Foundation contributes funding to Signal Cleveland.)
That grant ran out, and Safe Passages hasn’t been operational this school year at all, according to Benedict.
Benedict said the district is committed to having the program “up and running and vibrantly enacted in the places that it needs to be” next year. CMSD is currently working with the city to find funding for the program, he said. Signal Cleveland has reached out to the city about plans for funding program but has not yet received a response to that question.
High school students and teachers have said their safety concerns go beyond the areas immediately around their schools. The district doesn’t provide yellow school bus transportation to high school students and instead provides RTA passes.
While district leaders have said they plan to coordinate with the RTA next year, the district doesn’t currently offer specific programming to high school students designed to keep them safe while taking public transit.
How will the Safe Routes to School program work next year?
Safe Routes to School is a state-funded program designed to encourage K-8 students to walk and bike to school. As part of the program, city planners have worked with the school district to develop maps that showed safe walking and biking routes for kids.
Next year, K-8 students won’t necessarily be traveling farther to get to school — most K-8 students will still live less than a mile from the nearest school — but many students will be traveling along unfamiliar routes.
The consolidation plan does include a guarantee of yellow school bus transportation for students who have to switch schools next year, but that only applies to students who live over a mile from their new school.
Signal Cleveland has reached out to both CMSD and the city about whether new walking routes and maps will be developed ahead of next year and what kind of data will go into drawing those routes but has not yet received an answer.
Benedict said that there is ongoing planning around safety and security for next year, but many of those conversations are still abstract because most students haven’t yet chosen their schools for next year yet. Currently, CMSD doesn’t have a dedicated Safe Routes Coordinator, a recommendation of a 2016 safe travel plan created by the district and city planners.
Next year, CMSD and the city will continue to pay crossing guards to help K-8 students cross streets on their way to school. Those positions haven’t been affected by any funding losses, Morgan said.
