Cleveland Metropolitan School District students at extended-year schools could have their calendars shortened next school year as district officials weigh the costs and benefits of bringing all their schools onto the same calendar.

CMSD schools operate on five different calendars. Most schools have longer breaks in the summer and winter. The other 22 schools in the district have longer school years with shorter breaks. Some schools, both with traditional and extended calendars, also have longer school days.

The district could save about $9.3 million if it moved all schools to the same calendar in the fall. The benefits of different calendars, officials said, may not be worth what the district spends.  A study of the different calendars conducted by independent researchers and CMSD staff showed that longer school years and days generally didn’t improve academic outcomes.

Having five separate calendars is costly, inefficient and unintentionally harms students’ experiences, Selena Florence, CMSD’s chief academic officer, said during a school board meeting Tuesday.

“The case for transitioning to one school calendar is clear,” she said.

CMSD will run through its savings by 2028 if it doesn’t cut costs. The district has even less time to spare if it wants to avoid being flagged by the state as financially unstable. CMSD will need to cut at least $96 million in expenses before this November or the state will take a more direct role in overseeing the district’s finances.

With potentially less state funding and collective bargaining with unions on the horizon, cutting $96 million may not be enough, said Kevin Stockdale, the district’s chief financial officer. 

“We’ve been looking at $96 million as the minimum savings that we must accomplish in order to meet minimum state requirements,” he said. “Realistically, something more like $150 million is a better target.”

Why do CMSD schools have different calendars?

The different calendars for CMSD schools came about after the 2012 passage of the Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools, a state law intended to overhaul the district. At the time, the district faced a budget deficit, poor academic quality, and declining enrollment with only about half of its students graduating. The Cleveland Plan gave more autonomy to individual schools, allowing them to create more specialized programs.

Some of those specialized programs require longer school years and days, said Shari Obrenski, the president of the Cleveland Teachers Union. Teachers at those schools — such as Campus International and New Tech West — often need additional training days to maintain certifications, she said.

“I am concerned that there seems to be a move to completely standardize our schools when that is not the spirit of the Cleveland Plan,” Obrenski said. “I think we will have many people in the community who are upset about that because they have passed levies and they have given support to the district based on the tenets of the Cleveland Plan. So our district leadership needs to be careful about that.”

Obrenski acknowledged both the district’s financial problems and the fact that schools with different calendars require more funding. Still, the Cleveland Plan, a state law, committed CMSD to offering different kinds of schools for parents to choose from, she said.

“This is something that the district has been contemplating for a long time,” Obrenski said. “I would urge them, for changes that they do make, that they don’t do them in such a sweeping manner that would cause harm. I’m afraid that that’s what this has the potential to do.”

Have CMSD officials talked about school calendars before?

Since early 2024, CMSD officials have said the district cannot afford the building and staff costs associated with extended-year schools. When officials first started talking about changing school calendars, some parents and staff strongly opposed the idea. 

Officials held off on making changes until late last year. In October, CMSD CEO Warren Morgan announced a study with a survey and focus groups to look into the financial costs and academic benefits of the district’s different school calendars. 

CMSD staff and researchers from the Cleveland Alliance for Academic Research presented the findings from that study to the district’s Board of Education Tuesday. In most cases, for both high school and K-8 students, longer school years and days didn’t improve test scores in math and reading. The findings essentially back up the conclusions CMSD officials came to when they first considered eliminating extended-year calendars.

CMSD officials have not formally recommended any calendar changes — that will happen at the next board meeting on March 11. The board will set aside some time during that meeting to hear feedback from the public about calendars, Board Chair Sara Elaqad said.

Eliminating extended-year calendars would cut up to about a month of pay for some teachers, said Obrenski, the teachers union president. Still, the district didn’t give the union any more information than it has given to the public throughout this process, she said.

“What we have gotten is pretty much what the community has gotten in terms of, ‘This is the survey, fill it out, and we’ll let you know,'” Obrenski said.

What does CMSD’s research say about school calendars?

According to researchers, high school students with a traditional school calendar and shorter school days spent about the same amount of time overall learning math and reading as students with longer school years and longer days. 

“I heard lots of staff talk about, many times, these additional days are tacked on at the end of the school year, teachers are winding things down,” said Nicholas D’Amico, the executive director of research, evaluation and accountability at CMSD. “They’re not usually using this for extra instructional time. They’re typically using it for field trips, field days for kids.”

In K-8 schools, students with longer school years and longer days didn’t score much better on math and reading state tests. 

There were a few outliers, though. The longer school years and days at the Cleveland School of Architecture and Design and the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine corresponded with higher math scores. 

“From my point of view, it seems the research would point to a very clear recommendation to eliminate additional days,” D’Amico said. “When it comes to additional minutes, I think the question is more complicated.”

In surveys and focus groups, both parents and staff brought up how longer school days allow students to take extra courses such as music, art, Algebra I and foreign languages. Staff also noted that longer school years give them more time for field trips and field days. Most parents and staff favored keeping school calendars the way they are. 

Having the availability of those activities tied to school calendars runs counter to district officials’ goal of making educational quality more even across the district, Florence said.

“Schools with additional days are able to provide more experiential learning, but this advantage is not equally distributed across all schools,” she said.

👋 Hi, Michael here. I cover K-12 education for Signal Cleveland. I’d love to hear your thoughts on CMSD’s school calendars. If you have a minute, please answer a couple questions below. If you want to talk more, feel free to call or text me at (216) 704-0295.