Inside a century-old Carnegie library on Cleveland’s southeast side, a brand-new kind of high school is getting ready to ring its first bell. Forward Girls Leadership Academy, a tuition-free, independent all-girls high school, opens its doors to its founding freshman class next Monday, August 17, with roughly 42 girls enrolled so far in what the school is calling its Class of 2030.
The school is the vision of Dr. Luciana Gilmore, a former Cleveland Metropolitan School District administrator who previously served as principal of CMSD’s John Adams High School. As reported by WKYC, Gilmore said she wanted viewers to see how the school project had progressed since the station first introduced her in December 2025. According to The Vindicator, Gilmore spent more than a decade developing the concept, drawing on her experience running one of Cleveland’s public high schools.
Gilmore told WKYC that the school vision now has a home. That home is the former Miles Park branch of the Cleveland Public Library at 9250 Miles Park Avenue, a building constructed in 1906 with funding from Andrew Carnegie that served the neighborhood for more than 80 years before closing in 1987, according to the Case Western Reserve University Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. The renovated space now features an open-concept design anchored by a large circular community area that the school intends to function like a college student union.
A Long-Missing Option in Cleveland Education
Forward Girls Leadership Academy fills a specific gap in the city’s public school system. CMSD already operates two all-girls magnet schools for Pre-K through eighth grade, Mary McLeod Bethune Girls’ Leadership Academy and Mary B. Martin Girls’ Leadership Academy, but the district has offered no public single-sex option once those students reach high school. Girls graduating from those middle schools who wanted to continue in an all-girls environment previously had to look toward private institutions…