CPS Facilities, Modifications (November 2006)

Revisions To CPS' Facilities Master Plan

November 2006

The Cincinnati Board of Education approved changes on November 27, 2006, to the district's Facilities Master Plan that allows the construction of 51 schools for a total of 32,315 students.

Piece by piece, a mason installs a terra-cotta sculpture salvaged from the old Condon School onto a wall of new Rockdale Academy.

The Board's goal is to build enough quality classrooms to serve all CPS students without creating costly extra space.

In July 2006, the Board had set an enrollment target of 31,550 students for the revised Facilities Master Plan. That required a reduction of 7,015 seats from the former plan, which was based on a total capacity of 38,565. After discussion with the community, Board members asked CPS' administration to add back 765 seats to the 7,015, to avoid if possible shrinking schools that are performing as Effective or Excellent on the Ohio Report Card.

The original Facilities Master Plan, adopted in May 2002, was developed for 42,165 students in 66 schools. Ongoing reviews of the plan determined the district's enrollment was dropping faster than predicted, so changes to downsize the plan were made.

A school district's enrollment can vary for a variety of reasons, including changes in the city's birth rate, people moving out of the district, students transferring to other schools and changes in available housing. To assure that school districts do not over or under build, Cincinnati Public Schools and the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC) take a look at enrollment projections at the beginning of each segment of the Facilities Master Plan.

The November 27 changes:

Removed four schools previously deferred. (Two schools, Bramble and Losantiville, previously were eliminated from the plan.)

Porter (now closed)

Hyde Park (now closed)

Montessori high school (Eliminates a new building only; the district remains committed to expanding into a second Montessori high school.)

Military high school

Removed 9 additional neighborhood schools

Washington Park (-450 seats, combines with Rothenberg, effective August 2007)

Heberle (-450, combines with Hays, effective August 2007)

Gamble (-650, closes, effective August 2007)

Burton (-550)

Central Fairmount (-550, closes, effective August 2007)

Jacobs (-450) (now closed)

Whittier (-550)

Quebec Heights (-550)

Parham or Hoffman (-450) (The Evanston community will determine the site of a neighborhood school for Evanston.)

Reduced enrollment capacities at 6 neighborhood schools

Hartwell (-150 seats)

Hoffman (-50)

Sayler Park (-50)

Chase (-200)

Parker (-100)

W.H Taft (-50)

Increased capacities at 3 neighborhood schools (so no school would have a capacity below 400, per the Board)

Mt. Washington (+50 seats)

Westwood (+50)

Silverton (+50)

Reduced capacities at 2 magnet elementary schools

Academy of Multilingual Immersion Studies (AMIS) (-150 seats)

Winton Montessori (-100)

Reduced capacities at 3 secondary schools

Hughes Center (-200 seats)

Aiken High School (-600)

Clark Montessori (-100)
(Although Clark Montessori and Hughes Center are in the high-performing categories, they stayed at 600 and 1,200 students respectively at the schools' requests.)