Attention:
 
Akron Public Schools Administration and Board & the City of Akron
 
We the residents and advocates of Kenmore demand that Akron Public Schools not take yet another action to disinvest in Kenmore’s community. Schools are an important anchor, and Kenmore’s schools have dwindled from 10 to only 4 that are currently in use. Now, district leaders are discussing closing Pfeiffer Elementary School, while the former Kenmore High building sits vacant, overlooking Kenmore’s jewel: the Kenmore Boulevard Historic District. 
 
As the residents and stakeholders of Kenmore, we demand: DO NOT further disinvest in our neighborhood, allowing the former Kenmore High School building to sit vacant and unused as occurred with not one but two of our elementary schools, Lawndale and Smith, in just the past few years.  
 
INSTEAD, we demand that you invest in Kenmore by supporting this important community asset in the following ways:
 
1. Maintain Pfeiffer Elementary School as an open, functioning neighborhood-serving school and create a plan to rebuild.
 
2. Create a STEAM school in the former Kenmore High School building, blending STEM with the arts.
 
OR
 
Move some other APS school to the site.
 
OR
 
Create a dynamic recreational and sports complex at the site, something that will serve APS and the entire city while filling a longtime gap in our community's infrastructure.
 
DO NOT disinvest in Kenmore’s youth or in the Kenmore community any further, as you have done repeatedly in the past by allowing APS buildings to be purchased by negligent property owners only to be vandalized, set on fire and razed. We demand better!
 
YOU MUST begin handling all decisions about school facilities, investments, and decommissioned properties through a thoroughly transparent process that takes in to account potential impacts on the surrounding communities, the school building’s role as an anchor and attractor of additional private investment, and best practices in other districts.
 
NO school properties in any neighborhood should be sold simply to the highest bidder as Lawndale and Smith were. Every property must be made available through an RFP process, where potential owners provide a plan for reuse (whether a building or land) and demonstrate the capacity to execute the plan. Any sale should be contingent on assembling financing and include a contingency for reversion back to the district if it fails to come together within a certain amount of time.
 
To the City of Akron, we remind you of Kenmore's support of your 2003 levy and your promise to rebuild all the schools, a promise that was later broken here in Kenmore time and time again. We stand with Mayor Horrigan, who has clearly stated on record: no land swaps until there’s a plan for North and Kenmore high schools. Yet, with roughly 10 months remaining in his term, there is no plan, and it threatens to move Kenmore backwards despite our community's many revitalization efforts.
 
With a whole new slate of candidates vying to take Mayor Horrigan’s place, we ask this: What is your position on Kenmore High School and the closure of additional schools in the Kenmore community? Kenmore stands ready and mobilized to hold you to your word.
 
Drafted by the Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance