The School Choice Portal Has Closed

I exercised my right to choose

Throughout October and November, I visited several private schools. I had the loveliest conversations with some private school administrators, finding a few that shared my education goals in ways that made me want to make them my best friends and have frequent dinner parties with them. I saw happy and engaged students at each school I visited. I met teachers who had autonomy over how they taught and what their classrooms looked like. I even found a school without desks and chairs, when my son Samuel would likely have thrived, particularly when I spotted the snow sleds by the playground door. I found schools that would have met our IEP needs and schools that would have met our financial limitations (we are quite poor, after all). I found a school that I have since recommended to others after having an intense educational philosophy discussion with the founder. Sadly, it is merely K-2 for now and did not fit our grade level needs.

None of the schools measure up to Campus International School. None of the leaders is quite like Julie Beers, though I think Benjamin Colas is an education leader to watch. None of the schools had the field trip range we have at Campus. None of the schools has an 8th grade teaching team as great as we have at Campus. None of the schools is putting their shoulder into extra math the way Campus is. None of the schools has the music and art teachers that can compare to Campus. None of the science lab classrooms match the quality of Campus. None of the schools, while having some great teachers, compared to the teaching staff at Campus.

None of the schools would offer my sons teachers skilled at getting them enrolled in College Credit Plus the minute 6th grade comes to an end. None had a math enrichment staff like Campus has with Muir and Grays. None of the schools could compare to the academic rigor Campus allows, so long as you request it. None of the schools had a parent organization that compares to what we have at Campus. None of the schools had the open door, no invitation required, policy of having parents in the school, every day, pitching in and helping out. I’m an active parent, the kind that the mayor’s Education Chief, Michele Pomerantz, despises. I am not ready to drop my sons off at school and be less involved.

That ended up being the most important school choice factor for me. Because of that, I choose Campus International and will continue to choose it in spite of the terrible leadership in the school district. I will choose Campus in spite of the terrible curriculum chosen by Selena Florence. I will compensate for 1111 Superior failures because Campus International is otherwise, absolutely worth it. Over the past few months, my sons have gotten to participate in a robotics program and a chess program, through Campus, but untouched by the bureaucrats at 1111 Superior. And I have gotten to do those things along with them. I wouldn’t have this at any other school. Campus has brought in so many new families, who want to be engaged with the school and the programs, despite the messaging of 1111 Superior. I choose Campus, again along with them, and there is almost nothing Dr. Morgan or his ELT can do to make me change my mind.

On the last Friday before winter break, we had special guests during Coffee With The Admins. It was the last day of the fall school choice portal. Our admin had invited the new Principal of Campus International High School to come talk to parents about the new leadership. You might remember that last spring, a CIHS parent used her three minutes of public comment at a school board meeting to beg Dr. Morgan and the school board to show some interest in the only International Baccalaureate high school in the district. The district later met with parents to discuss their concerns, which involved the constant churn of principals and the lack of focus on IB student recruitment.

The district responded by hiring Endora Knight-Neal to lead the school. She brought the CIHS guidance counselor, Dr. Flowers, to our coffee talk. I have met every principal worth meeting at CIHS since its inception. I even allowed myself to feel hope when they brought in James Reed to lead the school. That was silly of me. So, I listened to Knight-Neal with the brain of a skeptic and the heart of someone who really wants to believe. She said the right things. She said things that, quite frankly, Dr. Morgan should be saying about recruitment to the school. She has a grasp on what IB means and how it should be rigorous and as desirable as any of our John Hay schools. Maybe this time it will work? I do think Knight-Neal is limiting her recruitment areas and should pursue the IB respecting families from Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, whose programs are disappointing. All of CMSD should be focused on recruiting students into the district, rather than giving district families reason to flee.

Coffee Talk

Another thing I have been doing over the past few months is talking to teachers from around CMSD. The reach of this blog, the Publicly Cleveland Conversations group on Facebook, and meeting people at school board meetings has allowed me to have conversations with a wide range of current and former CMSD employees. Sometimes we get to meet in person for coffee (my favorite thing), sometimes it’s an exchange of emails and often it is long, wide topic ranging phone calls. Like brushing away sand and dirt to reveal hidden messages and meanings, it finally hit me like a ton of bricks - this school district hates teachers. And for all those people who think I only pick on the new administration, you’re going to love this - this district has hated teachers through the last administration, too.

Adding an important note here: I do not talk to teachers at Campus International. Not about this stuff. Not for my blog. I would never put them in that kind of position.

A few weeks ago, I was having coffee with a veteran teacher, and she said to me, “you loved the Cleveland Plan and as a parent, you should have loved it. But it was not good for teachers.” It wasn’t the first time I had heard the not good for teachers part. But it was nice to have it acknowledged that I could love it for what it did for families as long as I attempted to understand how it had affected the teachers. I then listened as they relayed to me horrific stories of principals and district administrators abusing the Procedural Protection process to torture teachers in ways that put me in mind Solzhenitsyn’s writings. It’s cruel and despicable and it didn’t start in July 2023.

These abuses don’t make for a better school district. They do not serve the families or the students. They don’t make the teachers better. They are sadistic and serve as fringe benefit to sick and twisted administrators who should be nowhere near the education bureaucracy. I’ve heard stories from other school districts, but CMSD is unique in the layers upon layers of sadists with administration licensure from the state. If the pay didn’t act as a repellent to potential new hires, these stories surely would. I heard things that made me sick. I heard lots of names that are not unfamiliar to the earlier entries in this blog.

The math doesn’t work

It feels like a lot of the district messaging has changed over the past month. We are back to more social media messaging focused on the students that CMSD serves, rather than Dr. Morgan hierographic posts. We should always be telling the stories of the students. The District Dish left Dr. Morgan’s comfort zone and started talking to students from John Hay. They didn’t address the elephant in the room of the instructional minute cuts that Dr. Morgan desires, but they were quite impressive talking about their medical internships and college futures. Other messaging seems to have taken on a more optimistic tone, with Dr. Morgan talking about what he wants to add, not just what he wants to cut. In fact. Dr. Morgan wants to make Algebra in 8th grade more widely available across the district.

This is a worthy goal, of course, after years of Algebra wars in which school districts took away Algebra for all 8th graders. However, in 2023, only three K-8 schools in CMSD had more than ten students take the Algebra 1 OST. Garfield had 87.5% score proficient that year. Campus International had 76% score proficient, while Orchard had 70% proficiency. It should be noted that Campus International is the only school on the east side of town on this list. I can wish for more 8th graders to be ready to take Algebra in 8th grade, but I have to acknowledge that CMSD doesn’t have very many 8th graders with the foundational math skills required to be successful in Algebra in 8th grade.

In fact, across all of CMSD, for 9th graders taking Algebra I, which all high schools offer, no non-criteria high school had more than 38% of their students score proficient on the Algebra I OST. Even amongst the criteria high schools, Architecture & Design had just 42% proficient, Davis A&M has 39%, Early College has 64% and Science & Med had 64%. It is more important to ensure that every child has a strong mathematics foundation before sticking them into an Algebra classroom. Without providing the foundation, they will fail. What is the point of that? A line on the resume boasting of increasing Algebra I access is what I fear is Dr. Morgan’s point. I prefer a leader whose point is having more students capable of doing all the higher mathematics.

There is one intervention that Dr. Morgan could try that is almost certain to provide a better math education to the students of CMSD - more instructional minutes

Adventures in Public Records

The federal government reimburses school districts for money spent to provide special education services that is above the budgeted amount allocated to these services. These are the so called “catastrophic spending’ reimbursements and they do not have the strict restrictions on how they can be spent that IDEA funding usually does. So, yes, CMSD can spend $2900 of the catastrophic reimbursement on a summer lunch for administrators, legally. But morally? That’s questionable. I am finally starting to get a trickle of requests fulfilled for specific contracts from the IDEA reimbursement funds. One would think that when one sends a contract number to the public records department, it shouldn’t take months to get a copy of the contract.

I can’t show you the details of the contract because they are proprietary to Valley Ford and not for public release. Suffice it to say, these trucks were fully loaded. These were also paid for from the catastrophic reimbursement funds.

In early October, I made a record request about a retreat from the Equity Department. I was pretty specific in what I wanted. It was fulfilled this week and while they did give me a copy of the retreat handout, they provided nothing else I requested, like invoices and expenses. The transparency of CMSD is lacking.

Over winter break, I plan to learn how to post links to the ridiculous PDFs that CMSD sends. But the first line of this Equity handout is a perfect encapsulation of CMSD record requests over time.

I also requested the same IDEA 516 Fund I had requested before but for this current year. When they sent it to me, the names of suppliers missing and it is lacking contract numbers, compared to the previous document that allowed me to see the spending for The Sister Accord and for Equity Matters consultants, and caterers and DJs and flowers… Why are they hiding it now if Kevin Stockdale says it isn’t a big deal?

More to come

I have a dozen or so pending record requests, and a whole slew of things I want to talk about concerning the function and spending in the Equity Department headed by Dr. Furniture Invoice. I finally got my requested records about Patti Choby and Michele Pomerantz from early September. I am hoping to have more coffee with more teachers over winter break. I am also hoping to find a lot of time to write.

The Publicly Cleveland Conversations group on Facebook has 594 members now and only a few of them are spam bots wanting to sell us boots at a discount. I realize that social media isn’t for everybody, but I do post invoices in the group, and sometimes topics that I want out there marinating until they are ready for a full blog post. Consider joining the conversation.

Thank you again to the now 390 subscribers to this blog. Please continue to share the posts when you find them worthy. I was wondering why I was getting new subscribers from Reddit and then I found a Reddit entry discussing CMSD issues that linked to one of my blog posts. That was pretty cool.

Remember that this blog is free and always will be even if you get emails from Substack that suggest otherwise.