Cleveland has been talking about closing schools for a very long time. The first paper my wife wrote about CMSD was written back in 2012, but not published until 2018 in the Journal of Urban Affairs. That paper argued against CMSD using building closure as a district improvement strategy. Cleveland has closed schools and consolidated schools. However, the plunging enrollment means the district can no longer just close buildings here and there. They need to close down several underutilized and decaying buildings. The school district is going to hold a series of public input events to give cover to the decisions Mayor Bibb, Michele Pomerantz and (likely) highly paid consultant, Patti Choby, have already decided.
The build back better brighter futures tour is your opportunity to have your opinions heard, though it is unlikely your opinions will mean much of anything. For the Goals & Guardrails pretend listening tour, only a few board members were dispatched to deal with the people. I have no idea what we should expect from this magical Mystery Tour. Will it be the actual decision makers? Will Dr. Morgan attend? He loves a listening tour. If April 23rd is a warm day, Dr. Morgan might skip Collinwood High School because it lacks air conditioning.
I want as many people as possible to attend these meetings, both in person and online. It is my hope that those who attend are not swayed by the perception of authority and expertise. Remember, the members of the school board rarely know anything more than a few hours before they are asked to vote and even then, they only get information if they ask for it.
The following links are to public records I have collected over the past year that deal with facilities. Read them, get informed, and make this listening tour real work for our district leadership.
First up, contracts and payments for The Cobalt Group, Patti Choby’s consulting group that deals with facilities and neighborhood relations.
This is the lease for 1111 Superior, where the administrators work
These are the teacher overage costs. Overages happen when the district chooses not to hire new teachers and instead pays for the existing staff to work more.
These are the closed and vacant CMSD schools and properties
Information about how many nurses we have staffed and in which buildings
Here is the enrollment data
All schools building budgets
Schools with paid Parent Ambassadors (yes, it matters)
Here are some school building staffing costs files. I don’t have many, just the ones that got me curious. You can request others though.
Whitney Young
Campus International School and Clark
John Hay, all 3 schools
Bard
RG Jones
Here is the administrative salaries pdf for the current school year
This should be a good start. If you have questions that I might be able to answer, please ask. You can email me at pollykarr@gmail.com or join the Publicly Cleveland Conversations group on Facebook. I can probably scrounge up a few more records that I missed here. Please do try to attend one of the meetings. Don’t let them do things without having to answer for it. Even if you agree with what is coming from the district, let them know that you aren’t just going to blindly follow along. You are going to make them earn those fat paychecks.
Hi, fyi the numbers for prek enrollment are lower than what we actually have, at least in my building.
An additional source of information about CMSD and school buildings is the Bond Accountability Reports
https://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxUkcGOmzAYhJ8GbkT4N2B88CHbik12laqJ2m6zl8jYDjgxNrVNCH36KttLexvNp5FGM4JH1Tm_sCkon3k1miWVrJCoLutUMUQKoAhXQNOeIU7PVSmrUkhFRSkAE0IlITWhqFSqSjWDHMocQ4mKIod6RQSFs0RYohpzKqqkyIcOVmFqQ-TiuhJuSA3rYxxDgtcJNAk08zyvWmclF8JNNvJWGx2XlfNdAs0DZP-TTLhh0CFoZx_9nY8hgQZygAQa8pAogUYMQWZB9M6ZbPRuVD4umbY3ZaPzS8ZD5s5ZTgB9BHFzboXRMsGft_MR7hc-v3y1czRqc5jW0Jh2v73v9uunzXf7jMVt976J_UG-hed5zIxZk_uPPbbFpi1-vkI3HLH4dKQ4vk62he6yvb-o7sTVcKKX6_tm9_b0-1BTPn57_tWLL7ZLRxfiSUuGSloVVQ7krxOXUTGr5mBUjMqnno3OmOXKvU-KvBu4Nh-LhqmVbuDasnFqjRZmEUbdlOFWpvHfo28M_gQAAP__LWWrBw