Eclipse-gate
I expected more from a former science teacher
I had never attended a school board meeting before 2024. No, I did not start attending to rabble rouse about which books were in our school libraries or any other hot button issue that has been driving board meeting attendance all over the country. I started attending the meetings because my wife signed up for public comment about the new district CEO’s proposal to solve the budget deficit by cutting the extended hours and days that some of the schools in the Cleveland Portfolio have. Our children attend one of those school and we know that the extra 150 minutes per school week are crucial to the students.
I always enjoy hearing my wife speak at the school board meetings. Her tone is thoughtful, but impassioned. I always enjoy hearing about the concerns of the other people selected for public comment. I’m learning so much about the varied concerns in our school district. At our second meeting, in March, some people spoke up for the district’s paraprofessionals. I don’t think there is any school district that pays paraprofessionals enough money, but the pay in Cleveland Metro Schools is abysmal. During their public comment, I set a reminder for myself to make sure our school parent committee celebrated Paraprofessional Day.
A Failure to Communicate
In retrospect, I wonder how the social media manager for the school district failed to see the pit he was about to fall into. It’s just so obvious. On the morning of April 3rd, the district messaging was an ill-advised homage to all of the hard work paraprofessionals do. I’m sure the communications team thought the Facebook post was going to go over well. It did not.
Almost immediately people started posting in the comments about how the district should pay the paraprofessionals more. Shortly after, the social media manager shut down the public comments on Facebook. Oddly, none of the comments were deleted, they just remained there, in an almost taunting manor, the absolute failure of the communications team on the simplest of tasks.
That was the day I filed my very first public records request from CMSD. I was wondering who controlled the messaging for the district. Did they have a dedicated social media person? How much were these people being paid. I did not have a public records request format. All I had was a hunch. So, I sent the following:
I would like to find out the names and salaries of he people within the school district who control the social media accounts.
That was sent on April 3, 2024. I had no idea that the following day was going to provide an even worse failure of communication.
That’s Not How a Solar Eclipse Happens
I do not always play the videos that are posted on the CMSD social media accounts. However, the April 4th message about the upcoming solar eclipse featured our new district CEO, Dr. Warren Morgan. Schools were going to be closed for the eclipse, NASA had given the district eclipse glasses for the students. It was kind of a big deal. So, I watched the video. I did not care for the way Dr. Morgan spoke, as if he were doing a guest spot on Barney, but that’s a style thing. When he got to the part where he explained how the solar eclipse happens, I started shouting, “no, no, no,” at my screen. “The moon will go behind the sun and the earth…” No. No. No. This was not an extemporaneous explanation during a casual conversation and sometimes people make mistakes. This was a scripted video, produced, edited and uploaded to social media.
I made a comment on the Facebook post. It was nice, just saying that the information in the video was incorrect. A few minutes later another person made a similar comment. Our comments started getting Likes and this was around nine o’clock in the morning. I took screen shots. I made a recording of the video. I went to Twitter(X) and made a less nice tweet about how Dr. Morgan should have asked a student from one of our extended day/extended year schools about how a solar eclipse works.
I truly expected the dream team in the CMSD communications department to take down the video. Or shut off comments. Or do something, anything at all. But they did not. The day wore on and the video remained, and more people commented, but nothing happened. I started to get a bit mad, which is silly. But the longer they left the video up, the more I questioned, who wrote the script. Who edited it? Did anyone notice that a large chunk of the information being conveyed was wrong? Why were they leaving it up?
Later in the afternoon, just after I had made a biting comment about how Dr. Morgan began his career as a secondary science teacher and how he had been recognized as a teacher of the year, so he should probably know how a solar eclipse works, all the posts disappeared. When they reappeared, the video had been edited to remove the part about the moon going behind the sun. A stealth edit.
Public Records Request Number Two
This led to my second ever public records request. It is the request that taught me the lesson that if my initial request doesn’t yield results, rephrase the question and resubmit. For example:
I would like the know the name of the person who wrote the script for the video posted on Facebook and X social media accounts, titled: 2024 Solar Eclipse Message From CMSD CEO Dr. Warren Morgan (posted on 04/04/2024)
I would like to know the name of the person who filmed the same video, the name of the person who edited the video, the name of the person who uploaded the video to social media, the name of the person who deleted the video, and the name of the person who then edited out Dr. Morgan’s description of what happens during a solar eclipse.
On April 15th, the public records people responded that there were “no documents identified for this request. If you have other information that could extend the search, please let us know.”
I rephrased my records request, thusly: I would like all professional email, text, or SMS communications between the media manager, Dr. Morgan, chief administrative officers, and the communications staff about the eclipse messaging beginning Apri 1, 2024 and ending April 14, 2024.
The Communications Staff For CMSD
On April 9th, I had received a response to my first records request. It was basic, but it had confirmed my hunch that we had people collecting big paychecks for while screwing up the simple communications from the district. Cleveland Metropolitain School District, a district serving students in poverty, and a district with a huge budget deficit employs the following:
Communications Officer for $159,500
Director of Communications $86,139
Tv Station Manager $82,386.85
Multimedia Journalist $82,940.97
Media Manager $72,971.21
The average paraprofessional working in CMSD makes $37,000 per year, for a little perspective. The taxpayers of CMSD pay out almost $500,000 per year for a communications staff that fails to communicate. When considering how to reduce the budget deficit, Dr. Morgan’s go-to answer is to reduce instructional time for students rather than look at the bloated payroll of people who work for the district but have no involvement in teaching a child to read or do math. I know this because I did another public records request to get the job descriptions for each of the people on the communications team.
The social media manager, in particular, is galling. It’s not that I just started noticing his mistakes. On October 10, 2023, he posted a political fundraiser for the re-election of Newburgh Heights Mayor Gigi Traore. I pointed it out then that it was an inappropriate use of public school district social media. I think someone working for the school district should know just that.
There was also the recent screw up of the social media posts celebrating Principal Appreciation Day. For a school district…
Everybody makes mistakes and typos. But not everyone draws a salary from a public school district that is in deep deficit. On the daily, I make mistakes when I post on Twitter(X) or Facebook or Instagram. But I’m just a mom, having fun with social media, not earning over $72,000 to make social media posts. I expect more from our school district. I’m not just criticizing the social media manager. We have a communications officer running the whole department who let a video get posted of her boss that was embarrassingly filled with misinformation. The emails I received my records request about the video show that she thought the best course for dealing with it was to bring even more attention to it. I’ll bet Dr. Morgan is happy that the media manager didn’t listen to the advice of the communications officer.
I received a files of email communications for my second attempt records request about the eclipse video. We now know that there was an actual script with correct information and that Dr. Morgan changed the script. What we can’t know is if anyone tried to correct Dr. Morgan, and if so, how did he react? Or did they just blindly go along?
And we also know that the communications director isn’t very good at “crisis” communications.
I also now know that I can make public records requests and get good information from the law department. Since my first request on April 3rd, I have made 15 total requests. With each one I am getting a better picture of what is happening in the school district and just how poorly run it is. I’m excited to continue to share this information with you and with my wife so that her public comments continue to dig away at the farce of a unified school calendar as a budget solution.