Next month, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) will announce its recommendations for school closures and consolidations as part of the Building Better Futures initiative. The district hopes to improve student experience and offer standard options across schools and grades while cutting the costs of maintaining buildings that don’t have enough students to fill them.
For example, CMSD wants to make sure that all CMSD elementary schools will offer one enrichment course like Algebra 1 or foreign language and that all CMSD high schools offer college credit and career pathways.
This fall, CMSD provided information to parents and teachers on their school’s total enrollment, the building condition, recent state school report card rankings and other factors it will consider in making recommendations. Signal Cleveland compiled that information for all of the schools. You can explore it using the maps below or look up information for different schools in the district.
How many schools does CMSD currently have?
This number is not as easy to find as people might think because there are schools that CMSD lists as separate but may share the same building. For example, John Marshall High School is one building with three specialized schools in it: the John Marshall School of Engineering, the John Marshall School of Information Technology and the John Marshall School of Civic & Business Leadership.
Currently, on its website, CMSD lists 59 PreK-8 schools, 30 high schools, two K-8 schools, one K-5 school, and three online or remote schools. But according to district data there are 61 school buildings that serve elementary schoolers and 19 buildings that serve high schoolers because of the distinction CMSD draws between a school and a building in some cases. Right now, the district serves a total of 33,399 students.
When CMSD CEO Warren Morgan talked about closing and consolidating schools in his recent State of the Schools address, he at times referred to the process as “taking buildings offline.”
What will CMSD consider when making decisions about which schools to close or consolidate?
CMSD has had a number of community meetings about the Building Brighter Futures initiative. During these meetings, officials said the district will primarily use enrollment trends and building conditions to make decisions.
It has gathered data on if each school has gained or lost students since 2019 and scored each building’s maintenance needs. On the building conditions scale, “newly built” represents a score of 100.
Signal Cleveland has put together maps of K-8 schools and high schools comparing enrollment trends and building conditions, which you can check out below. For an interactive story version of this data, click this link.
How many buildings meet CMSD’s conditions goals?
CMSD’s goal is that all students go to school in buildings with a condition score over 80. Right now, for K-8 schools the scores range from 46 to “newly built,” or 100, and 21 schools have a score below 80. High schools range from 48 to 90 with eight buildings scoring below the target.
CMSD has specific enrollment goals, and only a few schools meet those targets
District leaders say they’re aiming for all K-8 schools to have 450 students and all high schools to have over 500 students, with around 125 students per grade level. Right now, 11 out of 61 elementary schools and three out of 27 high schools meet those goals.
Morgan told Signal Cleveland the district worked with consultants to develop the goals. At the elementary school level, they’re based in part on a student-to-teacher ratio of one teacher for 25 students. That standard is laid out in the contract the Cleveland teachers’ union has with CSMD. This number is paired with the district’s goal that each grade should have at least two teachers so they can lesson plan together as well as support each other.
For high schools, the enrollment targets are geared toward allowing the district to offer things like college credit and career pathways at every high school, CMSD leaders say.
“If you’re talking about offering the full suite of college readiness programs, well, not the full suite, but offering college readiness programs that are recognized by the state, career pathways, complete career pathways that are recognized by the state and fitting it within the scheduling,” Morgan told Signal Cleveland. “You need at least about 500, when you have these really small schools, you can’t do it.”
Enrollment trends don’t show the full story of a particular school, however. Schools struggling with negative enrollment trends often score just as well on Ohio’s school report card as those with positive enrollment trends.
Can all schools meet the district’s enrollment goals?
Not all schools have the physical space to meet CMSD’s stated targets for enrollment. For example, Louisa May Alcott, the district’s only K-5 school, in Edgewater, only has space for 275 students. There are also high schools that may not meet the district’s enrollment goals but are co-located in the same building as another school, so the building may already be at capacity.
CMSD communications officer Jon Benedict told Signal Cleveland, “there is no one equation” CMSD is using to make a decision because that might miss important factors. If you’d like to look up the capacity, condition and enrollment trends of a specific school, you can use the search tool below.
Are enrollment and building conditions the only factors CMSD is using?
At a community meeting two weeks ago, Megan Traum, a strategic advisor at CMSD, said the district is looking at additional school and neighborhood factors including community feedback, nearby school options or the special programming offered by a school.
When will CMSD announce the plan for school closings, and what happens next?
At the recent State of the Schools address, Morgan announced CMSD would present its recommendations for school closures and consolidations to the public and the board of education within the next month. Following that announcement, the board of education will have to vote to approve the recommendations. Once approved, they will begin going into effect in school year 2026-2027.
Share your questions or thoughts on the upcoming changes
Whether you’re a CMSD graduate, current student, family, teacher or community member, I’d like to hear from you.
