John F. Kennedy High School (Cleveland, Ohio)

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John. F. Kennedy High School is one of 22 public high schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. The school first opened in 1966. The current enrollement is under 900.

John F. Kennedy has had a troubling past. While it was considered to be a premier high school when it first opened it has, through years of steady neglect, become a shadow of what it once was. Years of indifferent administrators and a potpourri of educational plans have left the school demoralized and adrift. This has been reflected in the drop in enrollment of well over 2500 around the year 2000 to it falling below 900 as of 2007.

In the fall of 2005, John F. Kennedy, as well as many other high schools in the school district underwent many changes. The major change was the program, Small Schools. John F. Kennedy is also with the No Child Left Behind Act. The idea behind this program was to take a large and generally indifferent bureaucratic structure and somehow turn it into several small effective schools. It has been long known that most organizations don't function well in numbers above 500. This is particularly true in schools. John F. Kennedy has tried to split itself into four or five (eventually becoming three) small schools in the same large building. The purpose of this is to try to "transform" the school while putting little or no effort or money in. The real purpose of this was to try and qualify for grants from outside agencies while actually doing little if any effective change.

The graduation rate of the Cleveland Public School District is hovering around thirty percent with 43% of seniors not eligible to graduate in 2007 due to failure to pass the 10th grade Ohio Graduation Test.

John F. Kennedy is on the short list of schools that the Cleveland Municipal School District wants to close as of June 2007 due to financial and performance considerations.

The Cleveland District is chronically short of funding and frequently has little or no basic supplies such as books or elementary classroom materials. This is part of the focus of an FBI investigation targeting former Mayor of Cleveland Michael White and former CEO (she had the name changed from Superintendent of Schools as she had no education degree) Barbara Byrd Bennett involving numerous kickbacks and corruption of city and school funds.

The future of John F. Kennedy is in serious doubt in the near term.

The mascot is the Eagle and the school colors are red, white and blue. It is often referred to as the "K-House" (a nickname thought up and encouraged by former Principal Mary Rice in a rather weak effort to boost school spirit back in 2000) to the students who attend. Kennedy has won multiple City Championships, the most recent in 2006 defeating Cleveland South High School.