Months after parents and teachers raised health concerns caused by a leaky roof at Newton D. Baker School of the Arts, the district decided to permanently close the building at the end of the school year.
Around February, parents and teachers started contacting Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) leaders about Newton D. Baker’s leaky roof, citing water damage and mold growth. They were concerned about potential health effects from the mold.
On Tuesday, the CMSD Board of Education voted to shutter the building, located in Kamm’s Corners, for good, citing the cost of repairs and the age of the building.
Some parents and teachers were shocked at how quickly the district made the decision following years of delays in making repairs. They also worried what would happen to the students and school community following the closing.
“I do not like making decisions that we’re not able to really think through all of the elements ahead of time,” district CEO Warren Morgan said. “But when we’re faced with a situation where our scholars and educators are in dangerous conditions, we must act.”
CMSD officials announced their intention to close the school at the end of March. The district then hired environmental specialists to clean up the building.
Replacing Newton D. Baker’s roof and repairing other parts of the building would cost about $30 million, Morgan said. Building a new school would cost about $45 million, he said.
Why did the closure come so suddenly?
Newton D. Baker staff have been warning CMSD administrators about deteriorating conditions in the school for years, said special education teacher Natosha Czuba. As recently as a week before the district announced its intention to close the school, Czuba heard the facilities department was planning to replace the roof, she said.
“We’ve been waiting for a long time and being patient, you know, doing things the right way,” Czuba said. “They should have done what was in the best interest of the students, not just close.”
CMSD officials talked about closing Newton D. Baker in 2019, Morgan said, before he became the CEO. The district has known about cracks in the school’s roof, he said, but administrators did not expect the cracks to expand so much this winter.
The district closed four school buildings in 2019 after residents and local officials pushed back against more closures. District officials are currently considering more closures, and this time around, they can’t put off tough decisions, Board of Education Chair Sara Elaqad said.
“We’re going to have to make difficult decisions, and deferring them does put us in situations like today,” Elaqad said, referencing the closure of Newton D. Baker. “Sometimes, people want us to make decisions based on hope, and I’m going to say right now that we can’t. We can’t do that this time around. We’ve got to have a really solid plan around all of our facilities so that we don’t leave anyone behind.”
Is Newton D. Baker safe?
CMSD recently hired an environmental specialist company to test air quality in Newton D. Baker after a storm.
The environmental specialists smelled and saw mold growing in the ceiling in parts of the building, according to their report. They detected black mold in two rooms, including the cafeteria, and other kinds of fungus elsewhere in air quality tests on March 25.
The specialists cleaned up the building and reported that a follow-up air quality test on April 7 did not detect any black mold. The levels of other fungi detected in the air were lower, so the specialists recommended “no further action.”
CMSD also brought in Dr. David Margolius, the director of the Cleveland Department of Public Health, for a walkthrough of the building. He deemed the building safe for continued use, according to a letter sent to Newton D. Baker parents.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a national teachers’ union affiliated with the local Cleveland Teachers Union, reviewed the specialist’s report and raised an alarm about the district’s approach to cleaning up the building.
The visible mold growth in the ceiling and its smell means students and teachers could have breathed in mold spores before the specialists cleaned up, AFT Assistant Director of Health Issues Keith Wrightson wrote in a letter. Exposure to black mold can cause respiratory issues and eye irritation.
“A deeper review reveals troubling patterns and systemic issues that demand a stronger response and ongoing oversight,” he wrote.
Because the specialists are still waiting for test results from swabs of various surfaces in the building, Wrightson wrote that it’s too early to say whether or not the building’s mold issues have been resolved.
What happens to students and teachers?
Newton D. Baker’s teachers will have to go through a staff relocation process outlined in the district’s contract with the teachers’ union. The process is different than it would be for a brand new teacher, said Czuba, the special education teacher, but people will still have to go through interviews for positions they want.
All of Newton D. Baker’s teachers will have a job next school year, Morgan said.
The school’s 286 current students can choose any school in the district that has seats open, but they will have guaranteed enrollment at Clara E. Westropp School of the Arts and Wilbur Wright PreK-8 school next year.
Clara E. Westropp got the same three-star rating as Newton D. Baker on last year’s state report card, while Wilbur Wright got two stars. Wilbur Wright is about three miles east of Newton D. Baker, and Clara E. Westropp is about two miles south.
CMSD Board of Education Member Jerry Billups, appointed last year, questioned how the district would support students during their relocations.
CMSD’s enrollment team has been working with families on options for relocating students, Chief Academic Officer Selena Florence said. The district has open houses for Newton D. Baker families scheduled at Wilbur Wright and Clara E. Westropp at the end of this month. Students will also get a chance to visit Wilbur Wright during a school day, she said.
Billups also asked how the district planned to support students with disabilities through relocations. Across all the district’s schools, Newton D. Baker had the eighth-highest percentage of students with disabilities relative to its overall student population, according to state data from last year.
District administrators have so far reached out to the families of 14 students with disabilities to help them find a new school that meets their needs, Florence said. The school has about two dozen students with disabilities, she said.
River Panzarello has two children at Newton D. Baker, one of whom is on the Autism spectrum. She chose to send her children to Newton D. Baker because they live down the street from the school and the special education teachers created the best individual education plan she’d ever seen for her child.
With Newton D. Baker closing, Panzarello isn’t sure what to do. She wants to relocate her children to Riverside School because it’s the next-closest school, she said, but CMSD officials told her Riverside doesn’t have any open seats.
“I just built this life where I can be engaged in my kids’ schooling because it’s right down the street,” Panzarello said. “It just gets more complicated the farther away the school is.”
