The Akron Public Schools is preparing for a transition in leadership. In the next months, new officials will replace Sylvester Small and Susan Long as superintendent and deputy superintendent, as well as Linda Kersker, a 16-year veteran of the school board whose legal and financial experience have been invaluable to the district. The district will need continued sturdy leadership for the challenging times ahead.

Ohio's largest urban districts are struggling — and not too successfully, for the most part — to cope with rising academic demands, unstable financing and a host of social problems. If Akron has fared better than other urban districts, the pressure remains no less severe to perform better on all counts. Small has pointed out that most of his time is spent raising and stretching funds. It won't be much different for his successor as long as Akron continues to lose students.

Enrollment is a crucial factor in dispensing funds to districts. The state formula for basic aid is based on per-pupil attendance. In the 30 years since 1977, enrollment in Ohio's urban schools has dropped steadily, reflecting the migration from Ohio's urban centers. The Cleveland school system has shrunk from roughly 113,000 to about 53,000. Youngstown is down from about 19,000 to fewer than 8,000. Enrollment in Akron is under 26,000, from 47,000.

Legislation that has expanded school options has quickened the decline since the mid-1990s. The Akron district has lost more than 1,000 students since last school year. With each student who opts for a voucher to attend a private school, open enrollment in a neighboring district or a charter school, the state transfers tuition costs from the funds that would have gone to the home district.

Student losses occur systemwide. The result is school officials are unable to respond immediately to the loss of revenues by closing a building or reducing staff to yield substantial savings on operating costs. For a district losing enrollment, the only safety net the state offers is a guarantee that it will not receive less in state basic aid than it did in the previous year. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that routine operating costs as wages and benefits, energy, utilities and supplies will also remain frozen.

For Akron, a declining enrollment amounts to a slow financial bleed, sapping resources needed to improve curriculum and teaching. For the district's leaders, the situation presents a Catch 22: The district must grow enrollment to stop revenue losses. But to do so, school officials need staff, programs and facilities of a quality that attracts students to the district, an investment that is not possible with budget cuts forced by declining enrollment. Over the past six years, the district has had to cut $40 million in operating costs, closing schools, trimming more than 500 jobs, including teaching positions.

With fewer than 20 percent of Akrons households having children in the public schools and competition from other school options, Akron school leaders now face the hard task to convince enough residents of the relevance of the public system to their aspirations, relevance that would spur them to enroll their children.