I think there are lots of big things that the administrators at 1111 Superior want to keep hidden from the local media, CMSD parents, Cleveland tax payers, and auditors. I think that there are so many questions to be asked of district leadership that a free-wheeling press conference every weekday for the next four months would still leave us with more questions than a precocious four year old. I think that when district leadership is questioned by anyone who cares to press them even a little bit, they first choose to lie and then fall back on the blithering idiot routine.
However, I didn’t really expect the school district to go full clown show over some questions about circus tickets. Which is what happened when I got curious about an event advertised on the CMSD social media accounts. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, join me, center ring in the External Affairs tent, where you will witness spectacular acts of public relations buffoonery.
This ad appeared on all of the CMSD social media platforms on December 2, 2024. A few things about the ad were curious. An event to celebrate the 3 Star rating on the Ohio Report Card that would honor Dr. Warren Morgan during the show. Eh, not great. Morgan had very little to do with the 3 Stars. If anything, the circus should have honored the handful of gifted students whose growth scores took CMSD from very close to 3 Stars in 2023, to the full 3 Stars in 2024. Or, celebrate the teachers who are with the students every day. The Dr. Morgan hagiography of the Candice Grose communications era (365 days is an era, right?) never appealed to me.
The other curious things about the ad… two days notice for a districtwide celebration event? An event for CMSD families on a weeknight? At 7pm on a weeknight? An event for CMSD families on a weeknight, late in the evening, in Bedford which is not in Cleveland? To top it off, the ad said that tickets for the event would start at $24.50 for a family event in a school district that is one of the poorest cities in the country.
None of these things made any sense.
When things involving CMSD don’t make sense to me, you all know what I do, right? Hello publicrecords@clevelandmetroschools.org! On December 10, 2024, I sent a public records request for ticket redemption data from the Universoul Circus event. If I am being perfectly honest, I assumed the event was going to be a flop and I was going to use that information to ridicule the administration. Instead, when CMSD responded on the 13th, they told me there were no responsive documents because “the tickets were donated.” The quoted sentence had been cut and pasted into the email.
This really didn’t have to become a thing, but CMSD’s office of External Affairs turned it into a thing.
I started asking people, families and teachers, if they had been offered tickets or had attended the event. Nobody had and most people hadn’t been aware of it. Some people mentioned that, in the past, the district would offer tickets to Universoul Circus for family engagement. That made sense to me. When our children were in school at The Music Settlement, they would come home with free circus tickets sometimes. The organization Pre-4-Cle gave our family hockey and basketball tickets, too. That’s normal.
It took a month for CMSD to reply to the more in depth records request. While I waited, there were finally photos from the event appearing on social media and through a CMSD family engagement newsletter.
And also on Dr. Morgan’ LinkedIn page
That’s Dr. Morgan with Chief of External Affairs, Lisa Famer Cole.
And that is Dr. Morgan being given a Universoul Circus plaque in the center ring.
When CMSD finally replied, they said that 58 tickets had been donated. But they did not say how many of those tickets had been redeemed. In one of the CMSD provided photos, there are about 14 people in the group. Curiously, in the email communications between a representative of Universoul Circus and Lisa Farmer Cole, only 14 tickets were mentioned in late November. Recall that CMSD didn’t advertise this event until December 2nd. Lisa Farmer Cole was trying to put the 14 tickets in her personal Ticketmaster account on November 27th.
It isn’t until December 3rd that Val Copeland tells Lisa Farmer Cole that they are printing up 44 more tickets. Did those come through the QR code from the CMSD ad? We don’t know. Did CMSD families redeem those tickets? Again, no answer. But for sure, Universoul Circus is going to claim a donation of 58 tickets for their business.
This is a silly thing and yet, there are so many questions about how it all went down in the big tent.
Gratitude
I once again thank the 430 subscribers to this Substack blog. I appreciate the 62% open rate for the readers who get it through their email. I’m told that’s pretty good for Substack. I’m thankful for the Likes and comments. Grateful for the cups of coffee I’ve gotten to share with readers and for the future cups of coffee I have penciled in on my calendar. I hope to get back to public comment at school board meetings once the weather stops causing late pickups from our after school program, CIS Plus. If you sign up to speak, send me an email so I know to watch for you. Feel free to use any of the information I’ve provided in the blog. Make sure you look through the Clorox Wipes blog post, which is a collection of raw public records information. I’ll be sending out another one of those this week, too.
Thank you, too, for all of the 641 members of the Publicly Cleveland Conversations group on Facebook. I post a lot of information there and the conversations generated are informative and funny. Join us in conversation, or just read anonymously.
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