Quoting Public Enemy Again
Fight The Power
Have I been off off, quietly licking my wounds? Yes. The Wednesday following the Unified Calendar school board meeting, I kept my sons home from school. On the Pikmykid app, I selected “death in the family” as the reason for their absence. I am not typically a catastrophizing drama queen but that unified calendar vote being unanimous was a gut punch. There was one vote that hurt more than all of the others even though I thought I had prepared myself for it. The Cleveland Plan is dead and I am in full mourning.
Anyhoo, while I was down for the count, somebody else was up for the fights yet to come. I was sent photos from the neighborhood around the Newton D. Baker school where the grassroots are popping up from under the surface and starting to punch back. Handmade signs are going up on telephone poles pointing out the failure to to properly serve the students of CMSD. The photo above accuses Dr. Warren Morgan, the CEO chosen by Mayor Bibb to run our schools, of violating the rights of Cleveland school children.
Yet another sign features Jerry Billups, a new member of the school board, chosen by Mayor Bibb and Education Chief Michele Pomerantz. Mayor Bibb has appointed seven members of the school board that voted unanimously for the unified school calendar. None of the current CMSD school board members have any expertise in K-12 education. That actually seems to be the primary reason they were chosen by Mayor Bibb, as I have recently received public records from the City of Cleveland about school board applications. Several of the forty-three people who submitted an application for the three open school board seats last fall had education experience. One was a credentialed expert in her field of special education and education research and she didn’t even get a courtesy interview with Michele Pomerantz.
Mayor Bibb wasn’t selecting school board candidates to lead the school district. He was selecting board members who will do what Michele Pomerantz tells them to do. So I have some possible submissions for future telephone pole signs:
(note to my friend Jon Benedict, new Communications Director for CMSD, this is a satirical photo and we all know they didn’t actually say these words)
This sign thing is something we desperately need. Raise awareness of what’s going on with our schools. The parents just finding out how the unified calendar is going to hurt the educational choices for their children found out too late. We need to be gathering all of the CMSD families and talking to one another about what’s going on. There are more fights on the horizon and we have to show up for them.
Getting organized
Speaking of, I had a great phone conversation last week with a mom who happens to be an education organizer. Her name is Rachael Collyer and she has been tasked with organizing the public school families in northeast Ohio. She is looking to create something called Boardwatch, consisting of people willing to watch the school board meetings and write about them in a way that connects/informs everyone else who needs to know what is happening so actions can be planned. What Rachael wants to achieve in connecting northeast Ohio families to fight back against state education funding cuts is what I want to achieve in CMSD families connecting and working together to overpower Mayoral Control of our school district. There will be organizing meetings (maybe even one on June 12th, stay tuned for info) and opportunities to connect. If you want to get in on this, send me an email to pollykarr@gmail.com and I will connect you with Rachael.
I will be posting information from Rachael on the Publicly Cleveland Conversations Facebook group, which now has 838 members and several active user contributor conversations. One new member of the group is Jon Benedict (mentioned above) who says that he can get us answers to our questions, and while I will always double check through public record requests, it’s nice to see a member of the administration willing to find out what Cleveland stakeholders are talking about without the filter of CMSD messaging.
Another recent addition to the Facebook group is Laverne Gore who is running for Cleveland mayor against Justin Bibb. She is open and accessible. You can talk to her and she will actually listen to you. Have an open mind and be glad that someone is willing to stop Justin Bibb from running unopposed. If you are asked to sign her petition to get on the ballot, sign it. You don’t have to vote for her, but do help give Cleveland a choice.
About those conversations
May is a time for field trips and student travel in CMSD. Those trips that excite and enrich our students take a lot of planning by their teachers and school staff. Many times there has been fundraising by the school staff, which they they turn over to CMSD at 1111 Superior to pay for the excursions. Turns out, though, that an easy excursion without financial surprises is the exception, not the norm. In the year since I started writing this blog, I’ve received dozens of tidbits about the failure of CMSD to pay their bills, even when they have been given the funds to do so. I’ve had my own problems as Book Fair Chair, getting sent to collections by Scholastic because CMSD won’t pay the Scholastic invoice with the thousands of dollars I have turned over to the finance department. I shouldn’t have to get CFO Stockdale involved to get my invoice paid when CMSD has had the book fair money for months, and yet that’s what I had to do recently.
Last week we had some CMSD students in Chicago on a trip and when it came time to use the money they fundraised, CMSD “couldn’t find it” and the students were screwed. We had a whole lot of students heading to the Cleveland Metro Park Zoo last week. This is a standard field trip and yet, when some teachers arrived, CMSD had not paid for their admission like they were supposed to. Some teachers used their own money to pay for admission and then when CMSD finally (hours later) turned over the money to the Zoo, CMSD told the teachers that they WOULD NOT BE REIMBURSED. This is not a new problem under Warren Morgan. This has been a problem forever. CMSD is a deadbeat district. It’s incompetence for sure and there is not and never has been any accountability.
But one teacher suggests a way to fight the power which will disappoint the CMSD students and cause families to scream at the teachers, not the administrators at 1111 Superior:
CMSD families need to know that the district is failing their students, not the teachers. Not the principals. Not the people whose names you know and whose email addresses receive all the complaints. It’s the nameless, faceless bureaucrats at 1111 Superior. Name them. Shame them. Put their faces on telephone poles. Fight the power.