© 2026 WOSU Public Media
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Right-sizing Akron Schools Means Some Tough Decisions

Kenmore High School
akronpublicshools.org
Kenmore High School

Enrollment in Akron Public Schools continues to decrease, and that may be increasing the likelihood of some of the city’s best-known high schools going away.

Akron voters O.K.'d a tax increase a dozen years ago to help pay for re-doing the City School District’s infrastructure.  

David James
Credit M.L. Schultze / WKSU
/
WKSU
David James

Twenty-nine projects later

The program is focusing on North and Kenmore high schools.  And, with the student population of each school barely over half what it was built for, Akron Superintendent David James told a community meeting this week one or both may close. “There were a lot of angry people.  And I understand their anger.  But I have to think about the whole district.  Well, why do upgrades to buildings when we have other buildings that have extra capacity that are newer—that we could merge—versus putting money into buildings that we really don’t have the students to keep filled.”

Input Request

There are morecommunity conversations scheduledfor this week.  David James says he hopes to have all of the information gathered, and options laid out for consideration with the Construction Commission when it holds its next quarterly meeting—scheduled for October. 

Copyright 2021 WKSU. To see more, visit WKSU.

Tim Rudell
Tim Rudell has worked in broadcasting and news since his student days at Kent State in the late 1960s and early 1970s (when he earned extra money as a stringer for UPI). He began full time in radio news in 1972 in his home town of Canton, OH.