No Confidence
The appointed school board has failed
I am done with appointed school board chair, Sara Elaqad. She has no particular public school expertise and has a dearth of empathy for school based CMSD staff. Worse than that, she seems to despise the parents and children who rely on CMSD. She disdains public comment. She stares angrily at the people who have signed up to speak about the things with which they have the expertise and she does not. Her behavior wielding the gavel for the past three years has been infuriating. If she were elected and I had to at least respect the vote of my fellow citizens, I’d still call for her to step down. But she was appointed board chair for no reason other than she was willing to do what Justin Bibb told her to do. I don’t respect that. I don’t respect her.
She should have resigned ten minutes after sending out this letter to CMSD families after the April 14th board meeting.
She should have resigned after the April 28th meeting when she tried to keep the public out of the meeting, claiming that the gymnasium had reached capacity. The teacher in this photo was threatened with arrest by a Cleveland Police officer because Elaqad told them not to let anymore people in. The teacher was trying to explain to the officer that she was signed up for public comment and needed to get in. He responded with, “do you want to get arrested?”
Once the rest of the public was allowed into the gymnasium, we still didn’t fill the bleachers and there was plenty of room for standing. People walked up to the podium with support and the support was turned away by Elaqad and her angry gavel, lest they create a fire hazard by blocking the aisles, she explained. The aisle in danger was never in danger.
Sara Elaqad was first appointed to the school board by Mayor Frank Jackson back in 2019. You can watch her swearing in on You Tube. While she had community involvement experience she has never had any particular education experience. I have not found any sources that indicate that she has children who attend CMSD schools. Recently at the City Club event to promote BBF, the moderator brought up former CEO Eric Gordon’s last State of the Schools speech in which Gordon said the state of Cleveland schools had never been stronger. At the mere mention of Eric Gordon many in the room snickered and giggled because the CMSD messaging post teacher layoffs has been that things have been awful since 2018 and only Sara Elaqad and Dr. Morgan have the balls to fix it.
Why didn’t she alert the public to the financial mess in 2019? 2020? 2021? 2022? Or even pre-November 2023? Was she asking tough questions during school board meetings then? No. Why did she approve such an expensive contract for Dr. Morgan if she “knew” the district was in tremendous fiscal crisis?
Has she asked tough questions behind the scenes? Did she tell people how to build brighter futures before? She has no right to curl up the corners of her mouth into a knowing smile now while everybody is blaming Eric Gordon and former board chair Anne Bingham for not closing enough schools fast enough.
In the time that Elaqad has been the board chair she has acted like she works for Dr. Morgan instead of the other way around. She has given him too much power to execute questionable contracts without seeking board approval. And if she truly believed that CMSD needed to lay off so many teachers to save money, she would have voted NO on paying full salaries and benefits to 60 teachers to act as building subs next year. Broke school districts don’t do that.
I think think Elaqad should step down. If not, she should be removed by the mayor. She should be replaced by Jerry Billups. He asks thoughtful questions. He tried to help get textbooks to students. He is a father of current CMSD students. He has yet to offend the parents of Cleveland.
Electing a school board
Replacing Sara Elaqad poor leadership on the school board is not enough. Cleveland residents should be able to elect their school board. Yes, we are going to elect some awful people, but it should be our choice. Our elect a school board group is just about ready to start circulating petitions to get this option on the ballot. You can be sure that I will let you know when it is time.