As a long and difficult planning process to rebuild Akron’s public schools comes to a close, Kenmore residents are making last-minute pleas to save their high school, to be merged with Garfield. The combined school, the board of education has decided, will be housed in the last new building in the district to be constructed in partnership with the city and state. Only the location remains to be decided, although the new school appears headed for the current Garfield site.
Among those fighting for Kenmore at a Monday evening meeting was Don Plusquellic, Kenmore graduate, star high school quarterback and former Akron mayor. Plusquellic knows how to play to such a crowd, receiving applause and a standing ovation for an unrealistic, if heartfelt, proposal to save Kenmore with a local tax levy.
The former mayor also apologized for not pushing harder to get a new high school in Kenmore earlier in the rebuilding project.
What Plusquellic also knows, and apparently chooses to ignore, is that enrollment, not money, has been the determining factor in the districtwide rebuilding partnership from the beginning. The state share of the project, about 59 percent, is based on enrollment projections. State calculations allow for funding just one more building, the new high school.
Plusquellic, who led the way as mayor for an income tax increase to provide the local share, was deeply involved in the partnership from the beginning. Even out of office, he has been updated in recent weeks on the school board’s plan to combine Kenmore and Garfield.
To save Kenmore High School, a push to boost the neighborhood’s population and school enrollment should have started much earlier, say, 2003, when the income tax increase passed. As it is, the existing Kenmore building is the most underused among the current seven high schools. Kenmore operates at about 33 percent of capacity. Just 291 students, or 54 percent, come from the Kenmore cluster.
Continuing to carry that kind of unused capacity would be costly, draining money from other priorities, such as the course offerings students need to compete.
Plusquellic has been known to boast about his ability to make tough choices. David James, the school superintendent, and colleagues have done just that.
As James explains, extending the income tax is not an option because the city is at the ceiling of what it can borrow. That leaves a property tax levy as the only alternative for a new Kenmore High School — a costly move that would be based on the hope that students would materialize somehow to walk into classrooms.
Akron already is pushing the limits on high schools, the state advising just four, based on enrollment. North High has been spared for now, which leaves six high schools when Garfield and Kenmore are combined. The district is overbuilt, with capacity for 30,442 students and an enrollment of 20,772. At this point, keeping Kenmore would be a costly mistake.