Open Letter To The Board Of Education Regarding Superintendent’s Recommendations For School Repurposing

This article appeared in the Lakewood Observer on October 16, 2025. Zach Robock is a member of the Elementary Planning Task Force.

by Zach Robock

This message was originally sent to the Lakewood Board of Education and Superintendent on October 7. There has been no response, except to refer to the District’s FAQ website.

Good evening,

I am sharing preliminary suggestions/questions based on Superintendent Maggie Niedzwiecki’s recommendations for school repurposing and a first review of the FLS Report.

• Hayes. Hayes has 20 classrooms total (Slide 11). Moving 3 gifted classrooms and 8 CHAMPS classrooms to Hayes leaves only 9 GenEd classrooms for the current ~250 GenEd students at Hayes.

  • You would need at least 12 classrooms to ensure there are two GenEd sections of each grade level (i.e., two Kindergarten, two 1st Grade, two 2nd Grade, etc.). With only 9 classrooms, you will inherently have at least 3 grade levels with only one section, and no room for growth, fluctuations, winter recess, etc. This process was supposed to eliminate grades with only one teacher, but at Hayes it seems to exacerbate the issue.

  • How many students from Hayes will be redistricted and where?

  • What is the contingency plan if Hayes enrollment increases or a grade level fluctuates (such as the incoming ’26-27 class that is expected to be higher and may need 3 classrooms for K)?

  • Are you proposing to reduce the # of classrooms available to CHAMPS?

  • How much will it cost to undertake the necessary renovations for CHAMPS? (I think relocating CHAMPS to a first floor makes sense and I support the move to enhance accessibility/safety.

  • However, we were told moving CHAMPS was cost-prohibitive during the first TF meeting and it was off the table. Have you spoken to any CHAMPS parents or teachers to better understand how they would prioritize maintaining stability at Horace Mann vs. improved accessibility at Hayes?)

• Transition Committee.

  • Who is expected to serve on the Transition Committee? Parents? Teachers? Administrators?

  • How will the district re-establish trust to fill out a Transition Committee after the way the Task Force process has gone?

  • Will there be consultants on the Transition Committee? How much will that cost?

  • How much is the Transition process expected to cost overall?

  • What are the opportunity costs of the Transition Committee and overall Transition? In other words, district staff serving on the Transition Committee would inherently trade off other efforts such as curriculum, administration, marketing, or other district efforts.

  • How many students overall are expected to be redistricted from their current school?

• Walkability. Walkability has been the #1 issue identified by the community throughout this process, including last week’s community conversation. There should be more detail than what was shown in the single Slide on 10/6.

  • Boundary lines have not been drawn, so how can you evaluate walkability?

    • If there is a draft of the boundary lines, then you should share them. If there is no draft, how was any of this determined?

  • What is the specific difference in walkability for the re-located students — current vs. future state walking distance?

  • Have you considered partnering with the RTA to provide some type of East-West bus on Clifton? This would make the long East-West travel for affected Lincoln families more manageable and build skills in the children to be comfortable with public transit. Downtown Cleveland has those green trolleys – perhaps LCSD could partner with the RTA to have one of those run East-West on Clifton from 8:15-9:00 in the morning and 3:15-4:00 in the afternoon. Or simply coordinate with RTA to see if drivers would be willing to help kids on and off the bus?

• Maintain Reasonable Class Sizes. In the Class Size “parity” slides shown on 10/6, it says:

  • 2025-26 Current: 81 classrooms are between 13-22 students, and 7 are 23-25 students

  • Repurpose Lincoln: 77 classrooms are between 13-22 students, and 11 are 23-25 students

  • Analysis:

  • There will be an increase in the number of classrooms at the 23-25 student range – meaning class sizes will grow outside of the preferred 18-22 range for more students.

  • You are projecting the same number of classrooms district-wide (88 total in both), meaning the same number of teachers and therefore no apparent path to financial savings.

• Preschool.

  • There are 180 current preschool students whereas Lincoln’s capacity would be 425 using the district’s formula (17 rooms x 25 students). Some of those 180 students are AM-only or PM-only, meaning there are even less than 180 students in preschool at any given time. This equates to <42% utilization and creates more imbalance.

    • What research has been done to give you confidence that there is demand from Lakewood residents that will fill the preschool?

  • Lincoln has 3 floors, which is a potential challenge for housing 3- and 4-year olds from a fire safety / building code perspective.

    • Have you confirmed whether the third floor can or should be used for preschool under building and fire code?

• Elementary Aftercare. Good questions were asked last night about aftercare, which were not adequately answered. These questions are not new and have been mentioned since Winter 2024-25.

  • We are consolidating schools to provide aftercare for preschool, but do not currently have enough capacity for elementary aftercare and there appears to be no meaningful plan to address this issue – which would be exacerbated as you consolidate more kids.

  • What is the concrete plan to address elementary aftercare?

• Honesty & Integrity. I reviewed the FLS summary and found the below screenshot particularly concerning. If true, the draft task force report was not only reviewed by Pres. Katzenberger before it went to the task force, but she actually provided feedback on how it should be written to shape a particular narrative. This was supposed to be a report from the Task Force to the Board, not a report written by the Board to itself.

  • Did Nora or others on the Board review and make recommendations on the TF report?

I remain available for dialogue should anyone be interested in discussion. I appreciate those of you who seem to have listened to my feedback and feedback from others in the community and raised thoughtful questions last night.

Regards,

Zach

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