LAKEWOOD, Ohio — For the past few months, a task force in Lakewood has been meeting to find solutions for the district’s declining enrollment. This week, they presented their recommendations to the superintendent — but there’s still one more factor to consider.
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Melanie Whiting has been a member of the Elementary Facilities Planning Task Force, made up of over 50 community members, since August.
“Usually, the meetings were structured that we'd have information presented to us, and then we would have table discussion time,” Whiting said. "At no point did it seem like a decision was made. It seemed like they genuinely wanted to get our input and our feedback as they're trying to make this decision.”
Those discussions stretched over several months and involved parents, school board members, and the community — all working toward one goal: finding the best solution to the district’s declining enrollment while also considering students’ education, class sizes, and walkability.
“Every scenario that we've created, the farthest distance for a student to walk is just under 1.5 miles,” Whiting said.
In recent weeks, the task force held its final meetings and agreed on recommendations.
“There was not a consensus. There was not one scenario that everybody agreed on,” said Whiting.
They presented four different scenarios to Lakewood City Schools Superintendent Maggie Niedzwiecki, eliminating the option to repurpose two schools and instead focusing on just one.
“So three of the scenarios are repurposing one building, and the reason why we would do that in biggest reason is equitable. Class sizes, capacity of our buildings is lower,” said Superintendent Niedzwiecki.
The superintendent says if one school is repurposed, it would be Grant, Roosevelt, or Lincoln, potentially turned into an early learning center. But as of now, they don’t know which it will be. The fourth scenario would keep all seven elementary schools open.
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“Redrawing those boundary lines in the district for the seven elementary buildings, that would also assist us in making some of those class sizes more equitable,” Niedzwiecki said.
What’s preventing the superintendent and task force from making a final recommendation is uncertainty surrounding state funding. Under the proposed state budget, the district could lose millions of dollars.
“Things have changed. You know, the political landscape of the governor's budget bill can certainly change our thoughts around the fiscal piece of this decision,” Niedzwiecki said.
So while the task force has officially wrapped up its meetings, there may be one more ahead.
“So that we can reconvene and, you know, maybe try to come to more of a consensus or some ideas, because right now we don't have the full picture, so it's hard to make a concrete recommendation for sure," Whiting said.
Still, Niedzwiecki said that no matter what happens with the budget, the district has no plans to close more schools than the four scenarios already proposed.
The state budget is expected to be finalized in June. After that, the task force will meet with the superintendent one final time to solidify their considerations.
By September, the superintendent hopes to present her recommendations to the school board, which will then deliberate and vote.
“The most important thing I want everybody to keep in mind is that our most important goal, or the thing that we've kept in mind at the board level and the district level and the task force level is that we want to do what's best for every single lake with city, school, student and child,” said Nora Katzenberger, president of the Lakewood City School Board.
If approved, the changes could take effect as early as the 2026–2027 school year.
