The Playbook

There's a plan, but not really, and what it is isn't great

The president of the CTU, Sheri Obrenski, was quoted in the union’s December newsletter as saying that CMSD has a “half-baked” plan for the transition to Building Brighter Futures work. Clearly she didn’t think much of it. After I read that there was a plan, I asked around to see if anyone had it, while also submitting a public record request for it. The copy of The Playbook I was gifted made me laugh. There is a heavy reliance on potlucks and time capsules to soothe the pain the school mergers are going to cause. I, of course, shared my copy with anyone who asked. A teacher friend pointed out to me the many misspellings and typos, which also made me laugh. When CMSD finally gave me my own copy, complete with links to resources to implement their plan, I stopped laughing.

Remember when Dr. Morgan got to the end of his 2025 State of the Schools speech and brought up the moving story of the John Adams valedictorian? He was moved to tears recounting how she was asking why she couldn’t have more Advanced Placement classes at John Adams when other schools had them. She felt limited in the rigor of the academics CMSD offered her. He vowed that with Building Brighter Futures, CMSD students would get more AP classes. Who could possibly argue with that? Of course we need to “right-size” the school district, but if there is a higher calling to the process, a wider offering of electives and AP classes for all, well then get on board with this plan. When the mayor’s office loaded up their workers into the public comment spots, the valedictorian and her AP wishes were intoned again and again.

When citizens and parents attended the Building Brighter Futures stakeholders meetings, we were told that only with this consolidation plan could we get sports, band, orchestra, arts electives, Algebra 1 in 8th grade, and more AP classes for our scholars. Maybe you wanted to argue about which schools were getting merged, but nobody disagreed with our scholars getting more.

Algebra 1 in 8th grade was the first promise to go silent. The reality is that there are fewer than 120 8th graders in CMSD who are prepared to take Algebra 1. It would be a waste of money and resources to offer it in every building for all 8th graders. But we will still have increased sports teams, band and orchestra, and increased electives. They wouldn’t promise that and then not come through, right?

When the School Choice Portal opened, the big focus was on all of the CTE pathways (and the killing off of the popular horticulture pathway at East Tech) so I went looking for high school information and all of the increased AP offerings. Since John Adams had played a big role in the emotions of Building Brighter Futures messaging, I started looking there. I couldn’t really find anything. I thought I might ask some high school teachers to see what they had been told. Still waiting to hear back. But I did get my official copy of The Playbook and guess what I found?

Instead of bringing new rigor to our scholars, Brent Dean (I assume) figured out which AP courses our scholars have had before and which ones they done well in, and then continue to offer them. When you click the Academic Resources link, you get the list of AP courses that will be offered and they don’t look all that different than before our future got brighter.

AP Courses in BBF

I guess Dr. Morgan and Zak Reed just used that John Adams valedictorian for emotional manipulation. I assumed the tears were fake when I watched the speech but now I know it.

The Playbook also says that there will be a students electives interest survey to send out for out middle school students. You know, the ones that deserve more and are going to get more with BBF. There is a link for the survey.

But it really doesn’t matter what your middle school student is interested in. You see, there are so many amazing electives, but CMSD is only committed to offering the electives based on the abilities of the teaching staff.

This is a school district that had a long term substitute “teaching” a music class at Kenneth Clement Boys Leadership Academy for the past eight years. Don’t worry Valley View parents, that teacher is no longer teaching music. Now she is the middle school ELA teacher.

To keep a worried and stressed out staff in line, The Playbook has lots of links in the Resources file dedicated to dealing with change. Principals are directed to watch You Tube videos for guidance on making their staff adapt to the mergers.

HR is You Tube now. Which you would think saves us a big chunk of money, but no. We are still paying the contract of an HR consultant who fancies herself an HR Influencer. I like this post where she pretty much tells me, a Cleveland taxpayer, that she has been doing a poor job. How inspiring is this? The average income of of a Cleveland household is around $38,000, and this is how Dr. Morgan and our appointed school board think we should be spending tax money?

Building Brighter Futures passed. Building Brighter Futures is going to happen. But it is just a slogan and some fake tears. We did need to close some buildings and consolidate schools. We did not need to lie to the public to do it. Dr. Morgan and his team have lied to the stakeholders. They have lied to the students who will choose CMSD next year based on more AP classes or more electives. Money saved will go to paying district administrators and consultants, just like before, but the administrators and consultants will be paid more.

To read The Playbook for yourself, click this link. To read all of the public records I have collected over the past two years, click this link. That’s a Google Drive with everything in it. I will add new documents to it when I get them. You are welcome to use them any way you like. Even though the file says CMSD Public Records, the documents come from CMSD, Akron, Atlanta Public Schools, Portland Public Schools, Akron, Canton, Shaker Heights City Schools, CH-UH, Medina, DC, Saginaw, Cincinnati, Columbus, Missouri, and some others.

In addition to copies of the documents I have received, I have also included in the file screen shots from email exchanges with the legal department of CMSD. Sometimes they don’t give me documents but do give me conversational answers to my requests. Here is an example:

I have information like that from when I first asked about the people who worked in Communications and when I asked about how much having the various IB programs cost CMSD each year.

Bond Accountability Commission

Late one night as I was getting ready for bed, I got an alert from Twitter that the Bond Accountability Commission had posted for the first time in awhile. So I checked it out and they were publicly announcing on Twitter a meeting for the next day.

It wasn’t quite 24 hours notice, but it was the required public notice, so there’s that. I couldn’t find any other announcement of the meeting anywhere else. Just Twitter for their 503 followers. They have a website but it’s kind of awful and it’s difficult to know if anything is current. I did use it to find an email address for commission member Michael Houser so I took the opportunity to ask him some questions.

And that is where the story ends. Houser did not respond to that question. I would have also like to have asked, if all of their meetings for the year 2026 are set from that December 29th, 2025 meeting, why don’t they just post them all at once so that people can plan to attend? I guess we’ll never know.

Recommendations

Trying something new here. I love podcasts and one of my favorites is called Chalk & Talk with Anna Stokke. She is a Canadian math teacher but she interviews math instruction experts from around the world. I recommend the podcast overall but particularly episode 62, “Why classroom technology is making students learn less,” during which Stokke interviews Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath about his new book, “The Digital Delusion.” It is a great episode and I paused midway through to order the book. I’ve been reading it the past few days and it is alarming but good. My 6th grade son, Jonah, also loves books like this so when I can’t locate it by the sofa, I know to go look for it on his bedside table.

Resolutions

This semester’s schedule is going to make it difficult for me and my wife to make it to school board meetings as much as we would like. I had also planned to attend more city council meetings to speak on the changes in CMSD. Our city council members should know what is happening to the schools in their wards. I thought maybe we would make it once a month, but now I am not so sure. But we will make it sometimes. It’s important to show up.

I have a lot more to write about and I am running out of steam tonight. Forgive me if I hit your inbox a couple of more times in the next week or two.

Finally, it is school board appreciation month and I wanted to make sure you know that our group remains committed to getting back to to an elected school board, even though the weather made us cancel our January 24th meeting. If you are on the email list for the Elected Board group, watch for a reschedule notice. If you are just waiting to jump in, watch this space and the Facebook group, Publicly Cleveland Conversations (1.5k members) for our next meeting notice.

Stay warm and safe. Enjoy the snow day tomorrow.