Company Profile

We Are:

Akron City School District, or Akron Public Schools (APS) serves our community of 198,000 with 47 schools, or community learning centers, as we now call them.  We are a diverse, urban system serving a city covering 62 square miles.  

Why We Call Them CLCs

We call our schools, community learning centers or CLCs.  Community learning centers are co-owned by the city and the school district and serve the entire community with myriad activities after the school day has come to an end.  Rather than building new community activity centers for the residents of Akron, these are built into our school buildings for all to use.

All but a handful of our schools have been rebuilt in the last 15-20 years in a massive, $800 million, taxpayer supported effort to bring modern, tech-ready, energy efficient new school buildings to our city and our student body of 21,000 plus in pre-kindergarten through grade 12.

We’re Focused

Our stated goal to be the number one urban school system in America is not just a lofty aspiration but one our teachers and staff of4,400 employees are dedicated to daily.  From Ohio Department of Education statistics, APS is always at or near the top performers among the eight largest urban districts in Ohio.

APS high school students earned 9,713 college credits last year and invested 14,373 hours in job shadowing or internships.

Our students earned 1,440 industry certifications last year, a stunning jump of 1,500% from the year before.  

Our attendance rates are between 90 and 95% in nearly every elementary, middle and high school and is 99% in our acclaimed Akron Early College High School and STEM schools.

Akron Public Schools strongly supports, values and pursues fine arts education with one school dedicated to visual and performing arts and a high school that is home to the award winning Akron School for the Arts.  

We are home to I PROMISE School, a joint venture supported fully by taxpayers as they do all of our schools.  But, I PROMISE School has additional funding from LeBron James to offer the high, at-risk student population with wraparound support services aiding in food, clothing, shelter and help with social services.  

We Have a Big Team

Partnerships with virtually every non-profit organization in our city has enriched our students’ education by working their expertise in the arts, history, zoology, business and more directly into our curriculum with their oversight.  

A special collaboration with GAR Foundation allows elementary schools unprecedented access to some of our most treasured resources for their learning experiences.  

Our new College & Career Academies of Akron is a robust town-gown effort that marries the needs of students with those of the local business community (close to 300 partners now) and broader job market.  The program, developed with the nonprofit Ford Next Generation Learning, worked with ConxusNEO and Ford to track regional economic data to identify skills in high demand. This allows students to study through a career lens, applying basic and advanced learning to in-demand fields of their choice. https://ccaa.akronschools.com/

Nuts and Bolts

Few districts in Ohio are as diverse as APS.  Our North Akron cluster high school, middle school and four elementary schools are among the most diverse in the state, thanks to Akron’s welcoming and settling a large number of refugees from the Himalayan Mountain region.  In fact, 1,800 of our students have a language other than English as their first language, AND, 45 different languages are now spoken in Akron Public Schools.

Our students walk, take the bus, get a ride or drive their own vehicles to school.  Our bus drivers logged 1,023,050 miles last year, and our specialized vans transported 600 special education students over 1,432,725 miles.  More than 8,300 kids ride on one of our vehicles.

When they get to school, they’re served breakfast, lunch and a snack…and it’s all free to our students.  Our nutritional staff prepares 31,000 meals every day and serves them in nearly 50 buildings.