Closing Time

They aren't building anything better

Newton D Baker is closing at the end of the school year. Mayor Bibb’s appointed and unelected school board members voted to close the school at their April 15th meeting. Even though the building is in a dismal state of decay and has been for years, Dr. Morgan and Shari Obrenski want to keep students and teachers in the building until the end of the school year for reasons that are certainly pure and honest. Families have been given choices for next year and Obrenski made sure to split up the teachers, who have been promised jobs for next year. And what of the 286 students? Well, if their families continue to have any level of trust in this school district (which I can’t imagine) they are guaranteed seats at two nearby K-8 schools, Wilbur Wright and Westropp. CMSD is, for now, a school choice district, so the families with daughters might want to look at Douglas Macarthur Girls Leadership Academy which is 2.4 miles from NDB and has consistent 4.5 star ratings on the school report card. It is ranked 4th out of 109 schools in CMSD for academics.

The staff at Newton D Baker have been stalwart in fighting for their students. They did everything they could to keep the school together and to provide the district with possible solutions. Any school that gets them next year will be lucky to have them. They care about their students and each other. They care about right and wrong and call it out when they see it.

More to close

After the first Building Brighter Futures meeting at Garret Morgan High School, the picture of what Mayor Bibb and Dr. Morgan want became clearer. They are targeting the low enrollment schools for closure and consolidation. Sure, you may love your little neighborhood school with 282 close knit students, but that’s just a waste of space to the administrators in the luxury offices downtown. Drs. Morgan and Florence would like to see the K-8 schools have no fewer than 450 seats filled. Those portfolio high schools with specialized themes and instructions - also a waste of space and money. Drs. Morgan and Florence want to see high schools with at least 750 students enrolled.

With the new city council ward maps, it seems like the time might be right to take on Mike Polensek and pull the plug on Collinwood High School. It’s been in the cross hairs since the beginning of the Cleveland Plan. Well, the Cleveland Plan is dead, Councilman Polensek has lost his ward, and neither Bibb nor Morgan have to worry about the support of Collinwood residents.

Collinwood High School has 222 students and 228,000 square feet for them. I have suggested that we end the lease for administrative offices at 1111 Superior downtown and move them all to Collinwood. Other than the complaint of “gives me the ick” and no air conditioning, I have yet to see flaws in my proposal.

But that is just one school amongst the 98 that CMSD has to contend with. Our enrollment across the board continues to plummet and reducing the footprint of the school distract makes sense. I have no faith in Mayor Bibb, nor Dr. Morgan that they can do this well. From the moment he arrived in the district, Dr. Morgan has made rash decisions on cuts (remember the Get More blunder) which he has then had to walk back. He has not been honest with the press, with teachers, or with families. His current disposition is cagey and defensive. Not a good look. Not a great mindset for making even bigger decisions.

Here are two maps of schools in our district. I tried to highlight the schools in each section of the city that have enrollment numbers under 300.

The high schools that house multiple specialty schools in one building were not highlighted. John Hay has three schools in it and the total number of students served is in the ballpark of what Bibb/Morgan want. The only way to get more students enrolled would be to change the admission criteria. None of the three schools can fill their available seats each year. Changing the criteria, changes the schools in question.

The sad truth about Campus International High School is that I was wrong to be even a wee bit hopeful about the new principal, Endora Knight-Neal. She has not kept her pledges. She has not gotten the IB training that she promised she would. She is not the right leader for that school. Maybe nobody is. Maybe an IB high school can’t work in a school district that isn’t committed to it. With Dr. Florence now choosing the curriculum and forcing it on each school in the district, first for ELA, next for mathematics and science, we can’t really have portfolio schools.

Next year the principals will be losing even more building autonomy, as decisions about staffing needs will be dictated by the layers upon layers of bureaucrats at 1111 Superior. The same bureaucrats that have failed to get a certified math teacher for grades 6, 7, and 8 all year at Adlai Stevenson are now going to bring that kind of success to all of the schools.

Anyhoo, here are the enrollment numbers that public records gave me last fall.

Assumptions

The following admission is going to tell you just how naive I am. When the talking of changing the instructional calendar started last year, I assumed that being presented with evidence would save the Cleveland Plan. Similarly, I assumed that when talk of closing schools started, Dr. Morgan and his team would have a really good feel for how all of these schools work. They would have learned why families chose schools. They would have visited the buildings enough to know the staff and students whose lives they might be upending.

I was wrong. I had requested a list of all the schools Dr. Morgan has visited this school year and I was told there was no list. However, I was assured by the team at public records that “Dr. Morgan visits every single school in the district” during each academic year. So, I requested his calendar from July 1, 2024 to April 1, 2025. They sent it to me pretty quickly.

In August, Dr. Morgan spent three hours over two days at Cleveland School of the Arts to prepare for Convocation.

On August 19th, Dr. Morgan drove around the city doing Welcome Back To School visits. He visited five schools that day, spending an exhausting 30 minutes at each school greeting students.

On September 16th, Dr. Morgan paid surprise visits to give gifts to special teachers at eight different schools. These surprises lasted 20 minutes each.

On October 3rd, Dr. Morgan and his $2 million dollar Executive Leadership Team visited John F Kennedy High School for the ground breaking of the new athletic facilities. JFK is in Ward One and Ward One always gets out to vote, so Dr. Morgan stayed on the school grounds shaking hands for 90 minutes.

Speaking of voting, on November 5th, election day for the school levy and bond issue, Dr. Morgan spent 2.5 hours in the morning at Memorial School. In the afternoon, he spent another 2.5 hours at Almira School. No students were present.

On November 26th, Dr. Morgan spent 90 minutes having lunch at Rhodes High School.

On January 23rd, Dr. Morgan visited Bard Early College High School for 60 minutes to record episodes of The District Dish.

On February 11th, Dr. Morgan did official school visits that included walk-throughs with the Network Leader and principal. These visits each lasted an hour (he takes very long strides when walking) and they were for Mound and Bolton, both elementary schools.

On February 19, Dr. Morgan did a 30 minute drop in at Facing History.

On February 24th Dr. Morgan spent a few non-violent hours at Halle Elementary for the school board meeting. I can’t recall if that was the night he got chased down by Ed & Peggy Gallek. A few days later, Dr. Morgan went back to Bard for more District Dish recording.

On March 4th, Dr. Morgan started out his morning with his second biggest fan, CTU President Obrenski, at Memorial. I think this was a union rally for an hour. Later in the day he stopped by East Tech to record an episode of The District Dish with students from the Remote High School, during which he asked them illuminating questions like, “Do you guys have a prom?”

This calendar page was also kind of great because Dr. Morgan spent all day visiting magnet charter schools in Toledo.

March 17 through 23, are the final entries with Dr. Morgan inside a CMSD school. It was Memorial and he was just there for meetings.

I did some basic calculations and I figure that from August to April Dr. Morgan spent 1,065 minutes inside CMSD schools. Is that really enough time to get to know them, how they function, what they mean to the students and to the community? No. But I don’t think he really wants to know these schools. Much like the man who hired him, Dr. Morgan prefers the parts of his job that are spent traveling to anywhere but here.

Speaking of being inside the schools

I have been having the best phone conversations with a grandmother of a Kenneth Clement Boys Leadership Academy student. She has been giving the district a difficult time because the KCBLA school is decaying in ways similar to Newton D Baker. Last week she was able to get Facilities Chief Karen Thompson to come to the school to do a thorough walk through with her. Karen assured the grandmother that the Health Department had recently been to the school and deemed it safe. I tried to get the report from public records but they can’t seem to figure out what kind of document that would be. Karen also told the grandmother that the air had been tested and it was fine. During the walk through, Karen directed a facilities guy to put tiles back up to cover exposed pipes. The previous tiles had eroded due to whatever was leaking on them from above.

It was during my conversations with the grandmother that I started thinking that CMSD families need an independent, districtwide, parent group. We need to be talking to one another. Maybe they are Zoom meetings, but we could also get library meeting rooms for in person get togethers. It’s too late in the school year to get going now, but hopefully we can have something possibly by the start of the 2025-2026 school year.

Ending with this image of enrollment percentages by city section. Someone in the Publicly Cleveland Conversations group on Facebook said that Dr. Morgan claimed that our enrollment woes had nothing to do with charters and private schools. That seems an absurd thing to say. By the way, you should visit that Facebook group to witness the Newton D Baker thread (now closed to comments) where the Union President loses her mind on the NDB teachers. Not much surprises me anymore, but that was stunning.

I’m planning on attending the BBF meeting at Collinwood High School this Wednesday. If you are there, too, say hi. I’ll probably be wearing my favorite Campus International School t-shirt.