CLEVELAND — It’s official. Cleveland’s Newton D. Baker Elementary School will close at the end of this school year, and parents and teachers said they’re upset with the board’s decision.
“After 32 years to have to be told that I have to reapply for my job, no words,” said Leslie Baxter, a teacher at Newton D. Baker Elementary School.
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It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and from the images News 5 saw of the building’s current conditions, not much explanation is needed due to its deterioration.
Still, teachers like Baxter said these issues did not arise overnight, and neither should the board’s decision to close down the school.
“Because the structure was not maintained, the teachers and the students are paying for it,” said Baxter.
For weeks, News 5 has been talking with parents and teachers, who’ve been rallying to save the elementary school.
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But now, Newton D. Baker Elementary School is living in its last days after all seven Cleveland Metropolitan Board of Education members voted to shut it down through what they call a tough but necessary decision due to worsening conditions from this last winter’s harsh weather.
“Patching is not something one that we believe is a safe environment for scholars and educators to be in for another school year,” said CMSD CEO Dr. Warren Morgan.
Morgan said if the district decided to fix the school, that would’ve cost about $30 million, and it would cost $45 million to build a new building, which he said they can’t financially support.
He even said the district’s recent passage of a bond to support costs wouldn’t help either since that money is for all CMSD schools and meant to last 35 years; so now, the school’s 286 population will be split up between Wilbur Wright or Clara Westropp.
“We do not have one building alone that can house all of the students and all of the staff,” said Morgan.
Morgan said parents do have the opportunity to choose, but Krystal Swiney said she fears what these options will mean for her child.
“My son is stuck right in the middle. He’s going to get lost in fourth grade and he might regress back, and so you want me to pick between two schools that were not the right fit,” said Swiney.
As for teachers and paraprofessionals like Baxter and Courtney Sroka, Stephen Christian said they will enter into an open position interview process to find placement within CMSD in the 2025-2026 school year, and if those staff members aren’t selected, he said the district will make a special transfer to make sure they have a job.
“There’s not a guarantee of any specific placement but, through that process, our teachers and paraprofessionals will have assignments for the forward school year,” said Christian.
“We knew that the school was in bad shape, but we didn’t realize that they were going to kind of scatter our kids and not provide for their teachers and their community to stay together,” said Sroka, a preschool Special Education teacher at Newton D. Baker Elementary School.
The open position interview process will begin on Wednesday.
