Cleveland.com: "Lakewood parents push back against plan to close Lincoln Elementary School"

By Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com

LAKEWOOD, Ohio – Lakewood City Schools Superintendent Maggie Niedzwiecki’s recommendation this week to eliminate Lincoln Elementary School, convert it into a centralized pre-k and redraw the boundaries of the district’s remaining six elementary schools has sparked a backlash among some parents.

It also raised questions from two members of a task force that met behind closed doors for months to study the issue.

In a Monday night presentation to the board, Niedzwiecki pointed to the district’s K-5 enrollment, which has dropped from 2,286 students in the 2015-2016 school year to 1,792 students this school year. She also cited long-term outlooks from a contractor the district hired that showed no projected increase in enrollment over the next decade.

Lincoln Elementary School, which is just over a decade old, made the most sense to close out of the seven schools because it provided the least impact on the distance families will have to walk, Niedzwiecki said.

The district’s seven elementary schools range in building capacity from Horace Mann Elementary School’s 53.8% to Grant Elementary School’s 84.5%, with an average of about 66% occupancy.

Getting rid of Lincoln Elementary School and redistricting would increase the average building occupancy to 69.3%, an increase of just over 3%. However, it would reduce the disparity between buildings, with the lowest 63.3% and the highest at 76.6%.

Rather than close entirely, the district will convert Lincoln Elementary School to house all of the district’s pre-K programs. Currently, parents send their pre-K children to their home elementary school.

In addition, Niedzwiecki also recommended moving CHAMPS classrooms from Horace Mann Elementary School to Hayes Elementary School; relocating RISE classrooms from Emerson Elementary School to Horace Mann Elementary School; and moving gifted classrooms from Grant Elementary School to Hayes Elementary School. She also recommended playground upgrades at multiple schools.

Niedzwiecki recommended implementing the changes for the 2027-2028 school year. She also suggested releasing the proposed new boundaries at the beginning of the 2026-2027 school year.

The board plans to vote on the recommendation at its next meeting, on Oct. 20.

Parents and community members who have been following the debate since Niedzwiecki first appointed a task force to study the issue immediately decried the decision.

The group Preserve Lakewood Schools, which was formed by concerned parents early this year to oppose the closure of any of the district’s elementary schools, said in a statement that the board was on the cusp of making “a massive decision” based on faulty data.

“The superintendent’s recommendation is a reactionary move, not part of a thoughtful vision for Lakewood’s future that the community can buy into.”

The day of the presentation, another citizen group called the Friends of Lakewood Schools published a report based upon public records requests that showed that the school board was involved in both choosing candidates for the task force and attended multiple task force meetings behind closed doors.

Niedzwiecki designated the task force as a superintendent’s task force, an executive advisory committee that is exempt from open meetings acts under Ohio law.

However, all five members of the board of education were among the 50 members, and sign-in sheets showed they attended multiple meetings – including one where the task force broke up into small groups and worked on the various scenarios.

Niedzwiecki and the board each denied that members were active participants in the process.

“Board members attended as observers — they did not deliberate as a board, nor sit together,” Niedzwiecki said in an email to cleveland.com. “The intent was to hear directly from community members, not to conduct board business.”

Niedzwiecki also said that none of the board members attended the task force’s final two meetings, where it finalized much of the work.

However, the task force finished without making a public recommendation.

The board said at an earlier meeting this year that the Friends of Lakewood Schools group sent the district a letter demanding the district abandon the task force and accusing it of violating state sunshine laws due to the board’s attendance.

The district consulted with its lawyers and decided it would not use any of the task force’s work.

Niedzwiecki told the Sun News in August that that decision should not be taken as an admission of guilt but as a reflection of “the procedural complexity inherent in public governance.”

Two members of the task force spoke out against the recommendation moments after Niedzwiecki delivered it.

Jason Keiber and Zach Robock, who were among the 45 non-board members appointed to the task force, each said there was no evidence to support the need to close a school.

Keiber pointed out that the task force looked at community surveys and found that, not only was there not broad support for repurposing Lincoln Elementary School, but more than 40% of parents who took the survey said they were unlikely to use a centralized pre-K program.

“There’s not strong support for this. It’s not there,” Keiber said. “What are we doing?”

Robock, who has publicly authored several pieces in the Lakewood Observer critical of the need to close a school in recent months, said the recommendation contradicted the community sentiment delivered at a table-top work session attended by nearly 200 people the district hosted last week.

“What we saw tonight was not accurate or honest,” Robock said.

Scott Stahl said he bought his home around the corner from Lincoln Elementary School believing his 3-year-old daughter would walk there one day.

Stahl said he was disappointed when he learned that Lincoln might close, but said if the data supported it, he would support it, too.

“I still believe we should follow the data,” Stahl said. “And the data, which is now significantly out of line with projections, says there is no need to close an elementary school at this moment.”

For other parents, the decision does not come down to numbers on a page.

Autumn McKenzie’s fourth grade son has autism. He was recently moved from Lincoln Elementary School to the RISE program in Emerson Elementary School. She said she watches how he meticulously rehearses exactly how he will greet each of his new fellow students during pick-up and drop-off.

“I can see how desperately he wants them to be his friends so that maybe, just one day, he’ll be in invited to play at their house,” she said.

McKenzie said she “dodged a bullet” because her son will be in middle school when the new districts are implemented, but she feared for younger students who will have to change students.

McKenzie said many neurodivergent students take years to make new friends. And for a generation of children who already had to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, changing buildings can throw their social development into years of upheaval.

“I beg you to ask yourselves, if school repurposing isn’t absolutely unavoidable, why would we ask these kids to take another hit?” McKenzie asked. “Because sure, some might get right back up. But some, like my son, won’t. Because life isn’t a level playing field.”

Other than a parent who criticized the Preserve Lakewood Schools group for following her child on Instagram, the only person who spoke who was not critical of the decision was former Board President Linda Beebee.

Beebee was on the board in 2023 when it kicked off the facilities study that resulted in Niedzwiecki’s recommendation.

Read this article on Cleveland.com.

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