When will Cleveland have a normal swim season again?

Nikki Hudson, a mother of two who lives in Cudell, says she’s given up on trying to use Cleveland’s pools. I did so this year myself as well, after hearing that for the fourth summer in a row, the pools would not be back to regularly scheduled programming.

Due to a lifeguard shortage, the city of Cleveland announced weeks ago that even during posted hours, pools could be closed without warning. In addition, deep ends would be closed. The city also announced that the pools would continue to impose a policy of making all patrons exit the entire facility every 45 minutes and then line up for the opportunity to get back in (provided guests do not exceed a certain capacity). (Getting locked out of Halloran without my stuff last year was a low point for me in my Cleveland pools journey.) The pools are also closed daily from 4-5 p.m. 

“The city has these great indoor and outdoor pools,” Hudson said, “but the unpredictability of their operating hours make them difficult to access. And now, by closing all the deep ends and chasing everyone out every 45 minutes, it’s not even worth the effort.”

In its 2023 announcement, the city blamed the nationwide lifeguard shortage for its problems. Nominally, the city’s outdoor pools are open Wednesday through Sunday from 12 p.m, until 7:45 p.m., beginning June 10 and ending August 6. The city said it may extend the season by two weeks if it can find staff. The indoor pools are another story – they’re only open three days a week during the summer, but in the fall, they’re scheduled to resume normal Monday through Saturday hours. “Consistent with last year, the city saw a decrease in applicants for seasonal lifeguarding positions,” the city said in a press release. “This has greatly impacted day-to-day operations and requires creative scheduling to ensure all Clevelanders can enjoy their local pool.”

Plenty of pools, but not enough staff

Most communities in Northeast Ohio appear to have been able to hire enough lifeguards to resume operating with normal hours. Throughout the region, there are few examples of other communities that cut back hours or closed pools. One exception was Mentor, which was forced to close a few of its pools due to an inability to find lifeguards.

Cleveland has a relative wealth of swimming facilities, operating 19 indoor and 18 outdoor pools. (The city’s announcement mentions 20 outdoor pools, but the city’s list of recreation centers and pools lists 18.) The summer swim season has been a little bit limited for years. Posted hours say the pools are open five days a week for about eight weeks. This was true even before the Covid-19 pandemic. That’s about six weeks shorter than Bay Village, Beachwood, and Cleveland Heights, just to name a few examples. 

That means even in normal years when Cleveland can find enough lifeguards, Cleveland kids have reduced access to pools and swimming instruction compared to their suburban counterparts. That contributes to racial disparities in swimming skills, which are a contributor to drownings, a serious public health issue for children. Studies have shown that access to green space and recreation is correlated with class, income, and race in U.S. cities, as well. According to the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore index, 83% of Clevelanders live within a 10-minute walk of a park, but this won’t help them if they can’t easily use it, as is the case with too many of our pools. 

The problem has only gotten worse as the city has struggled for multiple years to fill lifeguard positions. 

Kevin Cronin, a St. Clair Superior resident, was surprised to find his local pool, Kovacik, closed last week during its normal operating hours. The management told him “if they send us lifeguards, we can be open.”

“I was really looking for an opportunity to swim, disappointed that I couldn’t get a break from the heat and the Canadian wildfires smog and get some exercise at the same time,” he said, adding that the pools could be a nice outlet for seniors. 

In fairness to the city, some outdoor pools appear to be operating normally. I stopped by two pools – Lincoln Park in Tremont and Greenwood Park in Ohio City – the first week of July and found them open. Tina Prez, a mother who lives by Greenwood Park, reported she hadn’t had a problem using the pool this summer, adding that she loved her neighborhood pool. 

Ward 12 Council Member Rebecca Maurer, who sits on the committee that oversees the pools and represents Slavic Village, said her understanding is that the city is prioritizing keeping open its highest-volume pools. 

“It’s very clear to me that this is something we need to figure out,” said Maurer. “We also don’t have a very consistent way of communicating with people if there are closures. It’s sort of word of mouth or Facebook groups.”

Many Cleveland families have given up on even trying. Hudson says she’s gotten in the habit of going to Lakewood pools every summer. Lakewood is one of the many suburbs that managed to find enough lifeguards to operate normally this summer. 

Ward 8 Council Member Mike Polensek said the City of Cleveland is having trouble hiring across the board. In addition to lifeguards, it has vacancies in police, paramedics, and park maintenance, and he said that City Council needs to do some “deep diving” on the question of pay rates. 

The Land made multiple requests for comment from the city’s public works and communications departments. City spokesperson Tyler Sinclair issued a statement on Friday, July 14, after this article was published.

“We understand and empathize with residents’ frustration with the pool schedules, which are based on the lifeguard shortage that is being felt nationwide, not just here in Cleveland,” the statement read. “The American Lifeguard Association has publicly stated that nearly a third of the country’s 309,000 public pools were closed during the height of Covid and that, unfortunately, has increased to more than half this year due to the lifeguard shortage – which has been widely reported in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and other cities across the country.”

“We are doing everything we possibly can with the limited number of resources we have and appreciate residents’ patience and understanding.  These schedules and accompanying policies, although frustrating at times, are the best thing we can do to ensure everyone has the opportunity to enjoy their local pool.  We are open to suggestions and remain committed to doing the very best for our residents.”

“At the end of the day, we need more lifeguards.  All pools have a capacity level based on available lifeguards.”

Increasing pay and adding trainings were not enough

Cleveland raised pay for lifeguards last year. They now make $15 an hour, but require special training.

This is the same rate Cleveland Metroparks pays. The Metroparks reported they had no trouble hiring lifeguards this year. Christy Moore, Cleveland Metroparks’ director of aquatics, said the agency was able to fill all 80 openings without issue. 

“We really rely on our staff to help us recruit,” she said. “We have a referral bonus program. We give lifeguards the opportunity — if they refer someone to us and we hire them and they stay through the season… we will pay the lifeguard. It’s $200 per person they refer that stays through the season.”

She said many lifeguards return for multiple years. Every year, the agency usually has to hire only about 40% of the lifeguard staff as new employees. And about half of these come from referrals.

Maurer said, for its part, Cleveland City Council’s Municipal Services and Properties Committee spent a lot of time over the winter discussing how to avoid the same fate as last year – not being able to hire enough lifeguards to keep the pools open.

“We were told they were offering more classes,” she said. “It wasn’t that it was forgotten, it was that the changes were not good enough.”

She said she thinks it’s a problem that lifeguards do not receive a bump in pay if they return after the first season. She said there is no clear path for upward mobility the way there might be at competitor workplaces like fast-food restaurants.  

In a statement, Sinclair defended the city’s strategies at bringing on new lifeguards and said some progress has been made. “The city has been creative, starting a lifeguard academy for youth through our work with Y.O.U. (Youth Opportunities Unlimited), which allowed us to offer training to youth before the summer,” he said. “Youth who passed the lifeguard test were then placed in the pipeline for a job.  Unfortunately, not many have been interested.  Despite that challenge, we have seen success with the program – of the 11 youth who completed training, 10 passed the exam, and 9 are now working at pools (with another 1 currently in the hiring process).”

“We encourage parents to have their kids apply to become a lifeguard – it’s the only position in the city where applicants can start at the age of 15,” Sinclair continued. “We begin lifeguard training in August of each year, and it takes approximately 6-8 weeks to properly train a lifeguard, according to American Red Cross standards.  We train from August through May.  Those who are interested in becoming a lifeguard should email Delice Wood at dwood@clevelandohio.gov.”

Additional challenges

Polensek added the city has some disadvantages when it comes to hiring that go beyond pay as well. 

“When you’re in an urban setting there’s other challenges you have,” Polensek said. “So often some of those challenges are safety related.”

Some city insiders quietly say there are simply too many pools to maintain. The city had 37 indoor and outdoor pools. By comparison, Chicago has 50 outdoor pools to Cleveland’s 18 – but a population more than seven times greater than Cleveland’s.

In addition, Cleveland’s pools are often remarkably close together. For example, there is an indoor pool at both Clark and Zone Recreation Centers, in the Clark-Fulton and Detroit Shoreway neighborhoods, respectively. The two facilities are .6 miles apart. 

Even outside of summer hours, the indoor pools can be frustrating and unreliable to use. Hudson said she was taking her teenage daughter to Michael Zone Recreation Center to try to prepare her for lifeguard training (her daughter is a lifeguard in Lakewood), but three times they arrived only to find the pool closed for various reasons. 

In addition, the city’s recreation center schedules are hard to access, complicated, and change frequently. The schedules are only accessible as individual PDFs on the city’s dated website. The Bibb administration has said it’s planning to roll out a new website where recreation resources will be featured prominently, but that hasn’t happened yet, despite a tentative June timeline. 

Polensek said it’s a long-term problem.

“The city builds stuff, administrations over the decades… do a terrible job of maintaining,” said Polensek. “Our kids are so often at inferior facilities or inferior services.”

One official said off the record that no one wants to be the person to close their neighborhood pool. When asked for a response to this comment, Maurer wouldn’t say whether she thought that was a problem but she agreed that she wouldn’t want to see her neighborhood pool closed.

“If they told me that Warsaw Pool was being closed I’d lose it, because that is such a lifeline for our families,” she added.

Sinclair said the facilities questions will be answered by the city’s new parks and recreation master planning process. “The city of Cleveland recently selected a nationally-recognized consultant to work on the development of a Citywide Parks & Recreation Master Plan, which will include an assessment phase dedicated to identifying the current and future needs of the department,” he said.

Maurer said this process is much-needed and she hopes it yields results. “Do you have a functioning city if you don’t have functional pools? I don’t think you do,” she said. “This is something that is really essential to our quality of life.”

This article has been updated to reflect the city’s statement issued Friday, July 14, after this article was initially published.

To learn more about neighborhood pools, locations and hours, visit the division of recreation website or call the division of recreation at (216) 664-2561.