Lakewood City Schools Leaders Allegedly Broke Ohio Sunshine Law in Elementary Schools Decision

This article first appeared in the August 20, 2025, edition of the Lakewood Observer.

By Bill Locke

Background

Preserve Lakewood Schools PAC is a local Political Action Committee (PAC) that advocates for keeping strong neighborhood schools in Lakewood, Ohio’s densest and perhaps most walkable city. Our focus is on good governance, transparency, community involvement, and holding our elected school board accountable.

For the past 10 months, many residents have spoken out against the district’s plans for Lakewood’s elementary schools, calling for a clear and open strategic plan for the district’s future, with emphasis on how public funds rebuilt these same schools in 2010. Despite repeated requests, both at public board meetings and in private conversations, district leaders have continued moving forward without that process. 

How Friends of Lakewood Schools Got Involved

In spring 2025, a separate local nonprofit group, Friends of Lakewood Schools (FLS), an Ohio nonprofit organization, began looking into the district’s decision-making process from a legal perspective. FLS discovered what it believes are multiple violations of Ohio’s Sunshine Laws- laws that require public business to be conducted openly, not behind closed doors.  The reference to sunshine implies that the best “disinfectant” for poor decision making and public corruption is sunlight, meaning public transparency.

According to FLS, the Lakewood Board of Education broke Ohio law in several ways, and not just related to the Elementary Planning Task Force (ETF) process. Some examples include:

• Holding ETF meetings in private with the full Board of Education present, rather than allowing public attendance as required by law. 

• Regularly deliberating on public school business in private, using full-board text messages and private meetings to align on votes and decisions outside of the public meeting process required by Ohio law. If you’ve wondered why the School Board never talks about substantive issues during their public board meetings, and seemingly has everything buttoned up before the meetings start, this is why. And it is not legal.

  
  

These violations prompted FLS to send the Board a formal demand letter in May 2025. Due to the numerous flaws both substantively and legally in the ETF process and report, the letter asked the district to cease use of the ETF process, and start a transparent strategic planning process that sets a clear vision for the future of Lakewood’s schools and includes proper stakeholder input. Strategic oversight and planning by school boards is also required by Ohio law. 

For context regarding FLS’s demand for strategic planning: The district’s last strategic plan was issued in 2022 and was explicitly stated to be a three year plan (ending now). It made no mention of enrollment issues or financial issues, let alone a desire to shutter a newly built elementary school. The district owes the public a long-term strategic plan explaining what it is trying to accomplish. Instead, it launched a multi-year, closed-door process to close an elementary school without any strategic planning effort, and violated Ohio law multiple times in the process.   

Shortly after receiving the demand letter, in June 2025, the Board abruptly shut down the ETF process without public explanation. 

Preserve Lakewood Schools’ Position

Preserve Lakewood Schools PAC is not the same organization as Friends of Lakewood Schools (FLS), an Ohio nonprofit organization advocating for strategic planning and good governance in Lakewood's public schools. But we fully support its calls for accountability.

District’s Response

Since the May demand letter, while abruptly abandoning the ETF process without public explanation, the district has refused to create a strategic plan. We also understand that the district has so far refused to provide numerous public records related to their activities. What are they hiding?

Meanwhile, the superintendent continues to indicate in public emails that she intends to move forward with a plan to address “declining enrollment”, potentially including a school closure, without committing to a clear timeline. 

Rather than listen to broad community input and resetting the dialogue with a strategic planning process, it appears the district is intent on plowing ahead with closing a school even if that means drawing the district into an easily avoidable lawsuit.   

The absurdity of this situation led one ETF member to send a scathing email to the superintendent and school board this week. In his email, ETF member Zack Robock, who is a lawyer and former investigator and is not affiliated with PLS or FLS, noted the obvious: nobody responds to a demand letter by immediately ceasing their actions unless what they were doing was illegal. You can read his full email on the PLS blog.

Other Concerns

Even beyond the Sunshine Law violations, there are troubling governance issues:

• The Board of Education is supposed to set annual goals for the superintendent and treasurer (the top two highest paid employees in the district making $198,969 and $181,795 respectively), but no goals have been published for years. Not having goals for the District’s top two leaders is consistent with the Board having no strategic plan. These are significant failures of basic governance. 

• Anecdotes suggest the superintendent personally interfered in the ETF’s final report meeting, becoming upset when members questioned the accuracy of its content or pushed for clarifying language. She even emailed them the next day to apologize.

• Now that the district no longer has a Task Force report on which to base its own recommendation, perhaps their protective shield is gone? And with the Ohio budget just finalized, showing Lakewood set to gain $800,000, the moving target of losing funding can no longer logically be used as a reason to close a school. Now they are pivoting to claims of declining enrollment, which isn’t true at the elementary level, per the below charts generated from their own raw data. Elementary enrollment is stabilizing and presents strong opportunities for marketing. Why aren’t we discussing how to draw in new students? Could the task force have studied THAT over the past 10-11 months?

What’s Next

The district is now seeking proposals for a new enrollment study. It is unclear why a new enrollment study is being conducted, as the district just paid for one in January. Though we suspect the district was not happy with the January study, as it completely eviscerated their rationale for closing an elementary school - showing elementary enrollment was actually growing, not declining as they’ve trumpeted for several years. Perhaps the negative PR campaign the superintendent has launched over the past year, attempting to convince the world that Lakewood is in a death spiral and needs to shutter newly built schools to stabilize, is having an effect on kindergarten enrollment for 2025/2026 school year. Perhaps the superintendent believes a new study will show that self-inflicted outcome, and allow her to set aside the January 2025 study that completely undermined her efforts. Either way, proposals for the new enrollment study are due August 15, 2025. The district will not disclose who was solicited to submit proposals, what their scope is, and who will control the process- the superintendent or the Board- and what happens after. We only know this information about the new study because of our inquiries for public records. The only publicly communicated timeline provided by the district has been “at some point throughout the year”. Though, with enrollment study proposals due in mid August, it appears they are trying to move quickly, potentially as early as mid September 2025. 

Why This Matters

This situation isn’t just about closing a school- it’s about whether our elected local officials follow the law and involve the community in major decisions that involve publicly funded buildings. So far, the Board has refused to engage in the transparent planning process that concerned residents have been requesting for months on end.

To use an analogy: the district was caught speeding, but is angry at the officer for pulling them over. They seem to have their foot on the same pedal, just on a new back road. It’s time for a new driver. That’s why Preserve Lakewood Schools is calling for new leadership on the Board of Education in the November 4th election.

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Read the Article on LakewoodObserver.com.