19 News: "Lakewood parents fired up over possible repurposing of elementary schools"

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By Brittany Wier and Caitlin McCarthy

Published: Apr. 14, 2025 at 10:52 PM EDT

LAKEWOOD, Ohio (WOIO) - Lakewood City Schools parents voiced their concerns about the board of education’s proposal to repurpose possibly one or two of the elementary school buildings.

The meeting, Monday night, was held at Roosevelt Elementary, which is one of the buildings up for consideration.

The other elementary schools a part of the discussion are Grant and Lincoln.

The district currently has seven elementary schools.

Many parents, like Monica Bruaw, are worried about their children having to start over at a different school.

Her children attend Grant Elementary.

“I’m afraid that the students would lose and be hurt by moving with their social emotional wellbeing,” Bruaw said.

Many parents, along with Bruaw, said one of the biggest advantages of sending their kids to the school district is the walkability to each elementary building.

Those parents are worried about that being compromised with this proposal.

“You get to know your neighbors, you get to know the family, it gets rid of some of that energy in the morning for the kids to go and play and run and it gets them ready mentally and physically to go to the school,” Bruaw said. “It’s just a great bonding experience for the community.”

The Lakewood School District created an Elementary Planning Task Force that came up with seven different proposals for optimal use of the district’s facilities.

The school says one of the reasons behind the new proposals is due to a lack of enrollment.

They are predicting that by 2031, they will lose about 300 students.

“We had some declining enrollment over the last 10 years and that affected the capacity in our elementary buildings and we wanted to study that and make sure that we were using our facilities the best that we could,” Board of Education President Nora Katzenberger said.

Other concerns that the school is focusing on include Pre-K space limitations, finances and excessive capacity.

Currently each elementary school in Lakewood has its own separate Pre-K. However, with the new plans there would be one central Pre-K for the entire district.

“They would have before and after care services and the nice thing about having an early childhood center would be that we could consolidate all of the additional services that children might need,” Katzenberger said.

Bruaw believes the district is ignoring what parents think is best for their children.

“The school board has a mission to work in partnership with families and the community and they’re not doing that,” Bruaw said. “They’re failing it and they really need to come together and we have plenty of time because there is no emergency, there’s not a crisis that has been said by the superintendent.”

Any changes to the use of elementary school buildings will not be implemented until the 2026-2027 school year.