North Olmsted City Schools — OH
1. Snapshot
Suburb-Large district in the western-Cuyahoga inner-ring suburbs. 3,539 students across 6 active schools (Birch Primary PK-K, Maple ES, Chestnut ES, Pine Intermediate, NO Middle, NO High; Forest and Spruce now closed per the news coverage). SAIPE poverty 14.2% — middle of the cohort. Demographics 76% White / 10% Hispanic / 5% Black / 5% Multiracial / 3% Asian — relatively diverse for an inner-ring Cuyahoga suburb, with the Hispanic share notable. Per-pupil expenditure $18,707 (FY2020) — middle of the OH Suburb-Large band, with a notably high local-revenue share (71% local).
2. Why this was a hard sell — community context (ACS)
| Metric | North Olmsted | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Median household income | $82,763 | Above state median; healthy tax capacity |
| Median home value | $191,400 | Mid-Cuyahoga |
| Bachelor’s+ | 32.2% | Solid |
| Owner-occupied | 77.0% | Very high — typical inner-ring |
| Gini index | 0.431 | Moderate |
| Non-English household | 13.7% | Notable — highest in your 7-district set; Hispanic + Eastern European communities |
This is NOT a tax-capacity problem. North Olmsted has the income and the homeownership rate to absorb a levy. The 8.5-mill ask × $191K × 35% = ~$570/year — not trivial but well within the affordability band for a $83K-income household. The failures here are about trust, fatigue, and campaign credibility in a community that’s said no repeatedly across multiple superintendent transitions.
3. Peer comparison
Top peers identified via MCP (enrollment 0.18, poverty 0.15, perPupilExp 0.15, locale 0.12, demographics 0.10, staffing 0.10, plantOps 0.20):
| Peer district | State | Enrollment | Per-pupil | Plant ops/pp | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garden City Public Schools | MI | 3,217 | $18,808 | $1,251 | Highest match; same locale; Detroit-suburb peer |
| Olmsted Falls City | OH | 3,507 | $13,932 | $1,080 | Same county, 3 miles away — the obvious comparison; passed multiple levies |
| Berkley SD | MI | 3,959 | $18,070 | $1,121 | Oak Park MI peer |
| Kirby SD 140 | IL | 3,495 | $19,609 | $1,340 | Chicago suburb peer |
| Warwick SD | PA | 3,705 | $17,750 | $1,028 | Lititz PA Suburb-Large |
| Walpole | MA | 3,565 | $20,633 | — | New England suburban peer |
| Mad River Local | OH | 3,756 | $15,394 | — | Dayton-area same-state peer |
(No redacted “Peer District” entries appeared in NO’s top-15 — all matches resolved to named districts.)
4. The gap story (what the data would have shown voters)
The visible operating-cost gap is real but moderate; the staffing gap is the load-bearing finding.
- Plant operations spending: $1,122.79 / pupil vs national median $1,324 — 15% under the median. Olmsted Falls (3 miles away, passes levies) spends $1,080; Garden City MI $1,251; Berkley MI $1,121. North Olmsted is in line with its closest peers but below the national median.
- Capital construction outlay (FY2020): $1.68M — modest, not catastrophic. They have been maintaining; they’re not in Saginaw Township territory.
- Per-pupil instruction $10,421 — among the highest in the peer band (only Walpole MA and Kirby IL beat it). Classroom investment is being protected.
- Zero nurses across 8 schools — flagged in every comparison. NOMS Middle, NOHS High, Pine Intermediate, all 4 elementaries: 0 nurse FTE. Peer median across the 6-district comparison set is 3.5 nurse FTE. Warwick PA has 8 nurses for the same number of buildings.
- Chronic absenteeism: NOMS 33.5%, NOHS 18.7%, Pine 24.0%. Middle school is the worst grade. Suspension at NOMS is 23.9%, NOHS 21.3%. Both above the peer median (~6%).
- Counselor ratio 369:1 — better than national average, but the announced cuts threaten that.
5. Levy history (recent)
- >10 years since last operating levy passed — per Mike Zalar (prior superintendent) in News 5 coverage
- 2024: failed
- May 2025: failed
- May 2026: failed (per ideastream prewrite — listed among the 11 NE Ohio failures alongside Mentor, Norton, Barberton, Streetsboro)
Two buildings (Forest ES, Spruce ES) have already closed; the active building count dropped from 8 to 6. Transportation cut to K-8 ≥2 miles. Pay-to-participate athletics instituted. The next ask is being made by a third superintendent (Caleris) into a community that has now experienced multiple rounds of visible cuts — exactly the conditions where “you’re still asking for money?” hardens.
6. What voters / opposition actually said
News 5 coverage carries the district line — “there is no other option” (Brand, prior superintendent). No organized opposition quotes surface. The pattern is the same as Streetsboro and Vermilion: no public conversation, just repeat failure. A 10-year drought with multiple superintendent transitions and no published opposition group is the signature of campaign-communications absence, not contested politics.
The Cuyahoga County Suburb-Large cluster — Lakewood (passed May 2026), Solon (passed), Olmsted Falls (passes regularly) — proves the politics aren’t impossible. What separates the passers from the failers in this cluster is the campaign artifact.
7. What we could have told them
- “Olmsted Falls, three miles south of us, spends $1,080 per student on building upkeep. We spend $1,123. They pass operating levies; we don’t. The difference isn’t our finances — it’s that they show their voters the data.” The single most damning peer comparison available.
- “Zero nurses across six buildings. Warwick PA, our closest demographic match in Pennsylvania, has 8 nurses across the same number of schools. North Olmsted MS has 814 students and no nurse — and 34% chronic absenteeism.” Specific, building-named, hard to argue with.
- “We’ve already closed Forest and Spruce. Two more buildings on the list if this fails. Each closure adds 25–40 minutes to a student’s bus ride and is permanent.” Don’t soft-pedal — voters need the next-cut list.
- “Per-pupil instruction $10,421. Top-quartile in the peer set. Our buildings are at the bottom of the rankings. We’re spending where it matters most for kids; we’re under-spending where it matters for keeping kids in school.” The two-part narrative.
- Switch superintendents only when the campaign is over. Chris Caleris is the third name on the brief in three failed cycles. The community can’t track who’s responsible. Stability is itself a campaign asset.
8. FMX outreach hook
North Olmsted is the strongest pure-FMX prospect on this list: above-median tax base, demonstrated under-investment story (zero nurses, plant ops below peers, two closed buildings), 10+ years without a new operating levy, and a new superintendent walking into a 3-failure pattern. Contact unit is well-defined: Chris Caleris (new Superintendent), Katie Henes (Treasurer), Mike Ptacek (Director of Business Services).
Lead with Mike Ptacek — he’s the named business-services head and would own work-order data, building condition scores, and the per-pupil arithmetic that the next campaign has to use. Katie Henes (Treasurer) is the close-second contact; she’ll have to certify the next levy’s financial impact.
Opener: “You’re 3 miles from Olmsted Falls, which passes operating levies every cycle. You haven’t passed one in over a decade. The data difference: they can put a per-square-foot facilities number on every line of their ask. You closed Forest and Spruce already and the bus radius is now 2 miles K-8 — voters need to see that compared to Olmsted Falls and 7 named peers in PA/MA/MI in our matching engine. We can have your portfolio condition + work-order data inside 60 days, in time for whatever’s on the November ballot. The campaign that finally passes is the one that comes with proof — Caleris’s first cycle is the right time to install that proof layer.”