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Lakewood City Schools' Community Tabletop Conversations on September 29

This Lakewood City Schools event is being held on Monday, September 29th from 6:30-8pm at Lakewood High School Cafeteria (14100 Franklin Blvd, Lakewood, OH 44107). If you would like to be seated at a discussion table, RSVP was required by September 22nd. Childcare also required an RSVP.

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If you did NOT RSVP, the district has made it clear that you can still attend. They will just be seating RSVP guests first. Please still come, listen, and observe.

 

Your presence makes a difference, and you can always email the school board members and superintendent after the event to share your perspective.

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This is the last chance to provide input before the Superintendent makes her recommendation to the Board of Education on October 6th whether to close and repurpose an elementary school.

Tips for Tabletopping

Your voice matters around the discussion table. You do not need to know all of the data and facts. You are a taxpaying resident and your unique perspective on how you envision the schools to be utilized is valuable.

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We recommend:

1) Coming into the meeting with your thoughts organized: 3 biggest priorities and 3 biggest concerns.

2) Use your phone to take a picture of your individual response sheet before it is collected.

3) Watch what the facilitator writes down. You can have a good conversation, but if it is not collected in the notes and report out then it will not make it into the larger discussion pool.

4) Take a picture of the report-out notes (by the facilitator) if possible.

5) If you are at a table with a quieter person who has not spoken up, politely rope them into the conversation.

Primary Concerns

Closing an elementary school and creating a centralized pre-k will essentially destroy the walkable system as we know it.

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Enrollment has been stable the last five years. And we are not aware of any marketing efforts to stabilize and grow enrollment.

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We don’t even have a clear problem definition, not to mention the applicable assumptions, cost analysis, and impacts of this major decision.

 

Why the accelerated timeline? Today's event is gathering a multitude of input. The Superintendent has only one week to compile it, analyze it, and form her recommendtion to the Board of Education on October 6th. Why are we rushing this, especially without a strategic plan in place that zooms way out and looks at the entire district?

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If a school facility is repurposed (into something such as a centralized pre-k), how can we guarantee that the repurposed property cannot be turned over to developer in a certain number of years if it should fail? Why are we risking this?

Facts & Information for the Meeting

Lakewood's Growth 

  • Families are choosing Lakewood schools! The district has confirmed that elementary enrollment has stabilized and is projected to remain stable.

  • But aren’t birth rates down?

    • COVID had an impact on enrollment. Some COVID babies have been kept home longer, let’s wait to see where kindergarten enrollment goes for 26-27 school year to bolster our numbers even more.

    • Hundreds of new housing units are coming, but studies ignored these future students.

      • 124 apartments at the old Joyce Buick site

      • 291 apartments at the old Lakewood Hospital site plus 12 additional housing units

      • 10 townhomes at the Thoreau site

  • We are one of the only west side suburbs that can offer a continuous educational experience from Pre-K through 5th grade in one building in a child’s neighborhood - why give that up?

  • Small class sizes are an asset to market the district, espeically when placed in context of our walkable neighborhood school system and excellent teachers.

Who is Maggie Niedwiecki? Who is Kent Zeman?

  • Ms. Niedzwiecki is the Superintendent of Lakewood City School District. She was named superintendent in July 2021 after serving as Lakewood's assistant superintendent for three years. She resides in Perry, Ohio (45 miles east of Lakewood) and the Board of Education did not require her to move her upon accepting her position, which is school district policy.

  • Mr. Zeman is the Treasurer of Lakewood City School District. He has held his position since December 2013. Mr. Zeman recently submitted his resignation/retirement at a Board meeting. You may have missed it because the Board used internal jargon when publicly reading it aloud. The district is seeking to fill his position by Jan. 1, 2026.

  • Neither of these employees have been managed by the Board of Education with annual goals, which is required by school board policy.
     

Basic Information the School District Has Yet To Collect

  • No traffic study was completed, despite requests.

  • No analysis of best use of all buildings; only elementary schools were targeted.

  • Grant & Lincoln are the most utilized and top-rated schools and are at risk.

  • Taxpayers still owe 18 years on buildings; no financial plan for “what’s next.”

  • No district plan for the recreation department’s continued loss of funds every year.
     

Current Strategic Plan is Expiring
 

  • No long-term master plan The current strategic plan expires this year. There is no mention of enrollment decline, capacity, or facilities usage changes. The goals were as follows. #6 does reference better utilizing the recreation department to increase enrollment, but this seems to be unrelated to any of the painted false picture of the district's claims of enrollment declining over a long time. 

goals.jpg

Centralized Preschool

  • No cost/benefit study was completed; competing schools say it will help them and hurt Lakewood because LCSD's draw is that children can receive these services in their conveniently located neighborhood school building, oftentimes the same building their siblings attend.

  • Pre-K was difficult to fill for 2025–26 (see below Facebook post).​

prek.jpg

  • After meeting with existing local pre-k providers, the district concluded that “further study” should be considered. We are not aware of further study that occured after these notes were taken.​

further study.jpg

Excess Capacity, Class Size, and "Equity"

  • District data shows 6 elementary schools can’t fit all students. Read more from a Task Force Member on this subject.

  • Closing a school raises class sizes up to 25 per classroom.

  • Redistricting with a light touch, and not closures, is the fix for class size and teacher balance.

  • Class sizes and teacher movement are a function of where the kids' residences are distributed around the city. All scenarios come with a redistricting which will help temporarily with those items, but over time, the unpredictability will return because kids don’t stay in one place. They move around, they move away, and they move in. This is regarded as a fact of life in Lakewood (barring consolidating into a single building) and even then, teachers will change grade levels and class sizes will change based on the size of the overall class.

  • Grant and Lincoln are the school buildings with the highest utilization, and the school district projects for this to remain the same over the next 10 years.  See chart below.

  • Grant and Lincoln are Lakewood City Schools' highest-rated schools according to State of Ohio's recently released School Report Cards - both Grant and Lincoln were the only two schools in Lakewood City Schools that received a "5" or "Excellent" rating.

  • "Equity" needs a full definition. Read more here about what we think is missing from this term.

  • Utilization is currently fairly balanced in the 60-70% range, and the stated goal is 60%. See below chart from the district:

2025-enrollment-projections.png

  • ​There appears to be reactive decision making in reference to the previous 60% threat about losing buildings to charter schools. Read more here.​

Teacher Movement

  • The Superintendent cited in a July 25, 2024 Board meeting that teacher movements have stabilized. This is well within the superintendent’s capabilities to manage without needing extensive Board of Education involvement or community Task Force input, not to mention considering closing buildings because of it. It has since become a major focus of the Elementary Planning Task Force work that kicked off shortly after the Superintendent’s claims and a point cited by board members several times publicly as a key rationale for repurposing. There’s no evidence this affects teacher retention or student performance. No drastic remedy is needed.

  • We have not seen any data to support teacher movement being significant, having an affect on teacher retention rates, or impacting student performance.

Safety and Walkability

  • No traffic study completed for closing an elementary or creating centralized pre-k.

  • “Walkability” needs a functional definition. Generally, school districts in Ohio are required to provide transportation for students in grades K-8 who live more than two miles from their school. However, specific research shows that kids stop walking after 0.8 miles.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Financial Factors

  • The below graph provided by the district shows cash balance. This is considered normal as districts get a levy in a certain year and then spends it down until needing another levy. This is not an emergency as the graphic lines might suggest.​

cash flow.jpg

  • As the superintendent and school board continue to state, there is no financial emergency or pressing financial need.

  • A levy will be needed whether or not buildings are closed and repurposed.​

  • Lakewood City Schools has stated that closing and repurposing an elementary school would save only $500,000 to $1 million per year - less than 1 percent of the school district’s annual budget.

  • Lakewood City Schools received an increase in state funding for the next two years in the recently passed state budget. Read more here.

  • As Treasurer Zeman noted in the Fall 2024 Community Conversation presentations, LCSD is a “personal services industry” where staff salaries and benefits are by far the largest expenditure.  He has suggested that LCSD is approaching the limit of further staffing cost reductions within our current elementary footprint. But there’s more to “Fiscal Responsibility” than optimizing elementary staffing. Taken in context, LCSD is not an irresponsible outlier when compared to other districts:

  • The Elementary Planning Task Force failed to review any actual cost benchmarks in other districts while suggesting that retaining the 7 elementaries is necessarily fiscally irresponsible. The below graph created by a former Elementary Task Force member, illustrates that Lakewood is not an irresponsible outlier but rather delivering a solid ROI in a very socioeconomically diverse community.

spend chart.jpg
Taxes, Pupil Spend, Ratings, and Absenteeism
as Compared to Other Districts

Sources:
Tax as % of market: Levy Impacts on Your Current Bill
Tax as % of property tax:  Parcel Valuation and Tax Distribution - Tax distribution detail
Per pupil cost, performance ratings, and absenteeism: Ohio School Report Cards data current as of the 2024-2025 Report Card publication date, accessed on 9/25/2025

Helpful Links

Call to Action: After You Share Your Voice, Lakewood Needs Your Vote

Election Day is November 4, and Lakewood voters have an opportunity to elect new voices and expertise to Lakewood’s school board. Lakewood’s school board consists of five community members elected by Lakewood voters. The superintendent and treasurer are hired by and report to the school board, which is the ultimate decision-making authority over our public school district.  

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This November 4, there will be two seats on the five-member school board up for election, and Lakewood voters can vote for up to two candidates on their ballot.  

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Please attend Preserve Lakewood School's Meet the Candidates Night on Thursday, October 2, 6:30-8:30pm. The first portion of the event is family-friendly. Learn more and RSVP here

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