While Cleveland Metropolitan School District says it's still working on its plan for the future of its school buildings, the district this week confirmed some details: it will look to build at least one new high school in the future and demolish a handful of old buildings.
The CMSD Board of Education approved an agreement with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission Tuesday that will ensure matching state funding for those projects, so long as the state approves the agreement sometime by late Summer. The district is calling this wave of construction and demolition "Segment 9," as it finishes up "Segment 8" projects.
The next wave includes:
- A new high school, estimated to cost $81.7 million. The board's agenda does not describe where it will be. It does say the school will be large enough to accommodate 1,200 students and will include a gymnasium.
- Demolishing Cranwood Elementary School for $808,000.
- Demolishing Empire Computech Elementary School for $2.5 million.
- Demolishing Iowa-Maple Elementary School for $908,000.
- Demolishing Mount Auburn Elementary School for $730,000.
- Demolishing Paul Revere Elementary School for $1.124 million.
- Demolishing Audubon Middle School for $5.55 million.
- Demolishing Central Middle School for $1.45 million.
- Demolishing Willson Middle School for $721,000.
The district will be covering about a third of those costs with the state kicking in the rest, said Karen Thompson, chief of district operations. That means roughly $31 million of the district's $295-million, 35-year bond issue, approved by voters in November 2024, could be used for the projects.
Thompson cautioned that the district could remove some of those schools from the slate of demolitions if it finds interested buyers. She said the district is regularly meeting with the city and other partners to find businesses or other entities to buy its old school buildings, to repurpose them for different uses like new housing or to knock them down for green space. The agreement with the state in general can be amended in the future to adjust costs or take projects off the list if the district's priorities change, Thompson said.
More broadly, Thompson said the district is still working on its "Building Brighter Futures" plan after gathering public input in April. CMSD CEO Warren Morgan said the plan will involve closing buildings and consolidating schools after years of enrollment decline, on top of a challenging future financial outlook. But the district hasn't said which buildings will be closed yet, and the board won't vote on any plan until "some point during the next school year," Morgan said.
Thompson said the district has not determined when or where the proposed high school could be constructed because the "Building Brighter Futures" plan is still being developed.
"We're in a pretty good space with some of our schools, but we have other schools that are real challenges when you look at our building conditions," Thompson said. "And so this is an opportunity to look at having a new high school that could service our student population, and it's what they deserve."
The district has said about 30% of its buildings are old and need replacement or renovation. The district was able to replace the rest of its schools after two bond issues were approved by voters over the last 25 years; those projects represented "segments" one through eight, Thompson said.
CMSD is also still finishing up "Segment 8" of the construction funded by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission. Details on those projects are below:
- Construction on the Joseph M. Gallagher School on the city's West Side for K-8 students was completed in the spring and set to be open for the 2025-2026 school year.
- Thompson said a new Clark School for K-8 students, which will house both the former Clark and Walton schools, is set to be open by the start of the 2025-2026 school year.
- Thompson said a plan to rebuild Marion Seltzer school in Cleveland's Cudell neighborhood is now complete, with construction expected to be finished during the 2027-2028 school year. The district went back to the drawing board with a new plan after neighbors filed a lawsuit to block removal of old trees in the park where the school is located.
- The district plans to build a new Lincoln-West High School, which is located in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood. Thompson said that project won't be complete until sometime in 2030.
The board approved an amendment to the district's agreement with the facilities commission on those Segment 8 projects Tuesday, increasing the budget for each project by 11%, for a total of an additional $11.6 million, due to increases in construction costs since the original approval in 2021. That increase also funds an expansion to the Lincoln-West project, adding 400 classroom seats and an auditorium.
