Take several seats

At least where spending is concerned

When my wife and I moved into our first apartment together on the South Side in Pittsburgh, we went out to Ikea and had a furniture buying shopping spree. At the time, we were flush with cash as I was managing a cafe, and she was working at World of Science in the mall. We were so excited to start this new life together and needed things like a coffee table, end tables, dining table, chairs, a bedframe, desks, and a tv stand. We must have blown about $700 that day. Of course, it took us two months to assemble that furniture, but it was worth it.

So, I get it when Dr. Morgan and his Executive Leadership Team move into empty offices for their new jobs and have absolutely nothing to set their coffee cups on. Oh wait, the offices weren’t empty, as this has been a fully functioning school district in that expensive rental downtown for a while now. Still, I can understand why the New Guy might want a few new things of his own. I’m not quite sure why Dr. Morgan needed to order a $1,399 desk chair on February 16th, 2024, after he had already decided that the district’s budget deficit required cutting instructional minutes from some, not all, of our students as well as cutting some, not many, jobs in Central Office. But damn, it is a pretty sweet chair.

I’m not sure who’s office or which conference room got the very fancy black glass dry erase board, but I do know that it cost $522.99. Now, one purchase is absolutely worthy of discussion. How do you make the decision to purchase a small, unattractive table of questionable quality (1 star reviews) for $499.99? That just seems wasteful, doesn’t it?

Lisa Farmer Cole has been working in the Cleveland Metro Schools for a long time in a variety of jobs that I would describe as job hopping if they were for a variety of businesses. But when one person job hops through administrative jobs in a single school district, I think we all know what they call that. I don’t know why Lisa couldn’t hold on to her previous office furniture, but she couldn’t when she hopped into the newly created job and department called External Affairs, which now runs communications.

For this new job with executive leadership team pay, she needed a new Boss Office Classic Executive Chair for $213, and six Boss Office Ivy League Executive Guest Chairs at $170.93 per chair, totaling $1,025.58. Those chairs likely fit around her new conference table that cost you and me (if you are a Cleveland taxpayer) $224.96. In January she added a cherry end table for $51.69 and a pleather repair kit for $15.75, because maybe those chairs weren’t top quality. Or perhaps she is in the office so much and holding so many high-level meetings, the holes happened organically. I would ask someone from Communications about it, but they’ve all recently quit. Also worthy of note, several of these public records came to me without a label. But there was one whole file full of invoices that was titled, rather pointedly, Lisa’s Office.

Lisa’s furniture was purchased in late November, after Dr. Morgan said the deficit was so desperate that it demanded we end the Get More Opportunities grant program and dump the remaining $17 million dollars from Mackenzie Scott’s gift into our general fund. I wonder which chair he was sitting in when he announced that to the ELT?

When I decided to request the furniture buying records, I expected to find egregious spending. I wasn’t really expecting the purchases to have been made after Dr. Morgan and his trusty ELT had discovered our fiscal crisis. Just like I didn’t expect them to give each other large raises. I’m still waiting for office furniture invoices from Trent Mosley, another ELT member, who has hopped through positions in CMSD. I was also pleasantly surprised that there were “no responsive documents” to my request for invoices from a swanky ELT exclusive holiday party, held separately from the regular office holiday parties. That must have all been paid for privately, without school district funds.

The spending on recruiting the ELT by the Alma Group; the salaries; the raises; the rental payments on 1111 Superior; the worthless millions spent on professional development that isn’t; the refusal to take full responsibility for any decisions; the 12.6% central office cuts that were really just 4.7%; the continued misunderstanding of the Cleveland Plan; the defense Dr. Morgan gave of using the word sped, repeatedly; the way the students on the Get More panel were treated; the opportunities that are being missed while Get More is “re-tooled;” and now these little smacks in the face with unnecessary chair purchases…

I have to say that Dr. Morgan’s first year has been a disaster. There is not one single good thing that has happened in this district, this year, that has been because of him and not in spite of him.