Cleveland.com: "Parent group sues Lakewood school board over Lincoln Elementary School closure vote"

This article appeared on Cleveland.com on October 24, 2025.

By Staff, cleveland.com

LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- A nonprofit formed by Lakewood parents is suing the city’s school board, accusing it of violating Ohio’s Open Meetings Act in the lead-up to a controversial vote to close Lincoln Elementary School and consolidate Pre-K programs.

Friends of Lakewood Schools filed the complaint Friday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, seeking to block the closure and invalidate the board’s October 20 vote. The group accuses the Lakewood City School District Board of Education of conducting deliberations in secret — including improperly noticed executive sessions, closed-door task force meetings, and private text and email exchanges.

The case was assigned to Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams.

A Lakewood City Schools spokeswoman said the district referred the lawsuit to its lawyers and declined to comment further.

The lawsuit centers on a 90-minute executive session held August 19, 2024, which the board publicly noticed as a discussion about property purchases. But according to the complaint, board members instead discussed scenarios for repurposing elementary schools — including Lincoln — based on a redistricting study prepared by a Columbus-based planning firm. No mention of the study or the task force was made during the public portion of the meeting, which lasted just 19 minutes.

The complaint also highlights a February 25 executive session, which was publicly noticed for personnel and property matters. However, internal communications suggest board members discussed revised school capacity data and redistricting maps prepared by the planning firm FutureThink — topics not permitted under the stated purpose of the session.

In one email sent three days later, board member Colleen Clark-Sutton asked the superintendent to share walking maps and student data discussed at the meeting, writing: “At Tuesday’s meeting, you thought you might have these. If not, can you ask FutureThink to send these to you/us?”

The lawsuit further accuses board members of improperly discussing public business over group text messages and emails, including a December 2024 thread in which board member Lisa Dopman questioned the community’s resistance to school closures and suggested messaging should reach beyond “engaged elementary parents.” Clark-Sutton responded that “their ability to express their love for their individual elementary school communities cannot be a major factor in making our decision.”

In another text exchange, board member Betsy Shaughnessy commented on a local news story, in which parents discussed their concerns over the potential closure. Shaughnessy wrote: “Saw it this morning. Tired of the focus on parents who can stroll to a school a block away and chat with other parents.”

The complaint also challenges the board’s handling of a draft report prepared by a district-appointed task force. Although board member Clark-Sutton publicly stated in May that the board “did not help write the report” and was merely “receiving the report,” internal text messages show Superintendent Maggie Niedzwiecki sent draft pages to board president Nora Katzenberger and asked if she wanted the report “heavier or lighter in any area.” Katzenberger replied: “Okay, will read now and report.”

“This case is about transparency and accountability,” said Jeff McCourt, a board member of Friends of Lakewood Schools. “The Lakewood School Board voted to kick off a series of massive facilities and programmatic changes without any strategic planning or meaningful financial review.”

The board ultimately voted 4–1 to adopt Superintendent Niedzwiecki’s recommendation to convert Lincoln Elementary into a centralized preschool. Clark-Sutton cast the lone dissenting vote, citing a lack of clear financial rationale and frustration with the timing of key information.

“When people ask me what are the specific areas we are saving money, I cannot give them a clear answer,” she said during the meeting.

The executive summary released by Friends of Lakewood Schools argues that the board either failed to plan responsibly or conducted extensive planning in violation of state law — or both. The group said it repeatedly urged the board to pause and launch a strategic planning process, but its requests were ignored.

“Public education depends on trust,” the group said in a statement. “That trust has been broken. Our goal is to help rebuild it.”

Read this article on Cleveland.com.

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