Today is a great day.

It's February 3rd, and I want to call the meeting of workforce education training youth development committee to order.

Madam Clerk.

Good.

So one of the things is we have today is a hearing.

Yep.

One of the one of the most important things we have today as our very first workforce education training and youth development committee.

This is our first hearing of the year, and one of the biggest topics been going on is building brighter futures.

So, no other we have Dr.

Warren Morgan here today, who's going to be able to discuss this initiative with CMSD.

But before we get into the presentation, I will allow each council member to introduce themselves so the viewing public as well as everyone here can be able to understand who's on the committee.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone.

Stephanie House Jones, Councilwoman in the New Ward 8, uh Asia Town, Downtown, Rich Curtin Park, Glenville, Huff, and St.

Clair Superior.

Hi, everyone.

Councilwoman Deborah Gray Award, the New Board 3, Cleveland Shaker, Buckeye, Woodland, Mount Pleasant, and Sabak Village, which is um north of fleet to uh Broadway Tabassiner.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Um Councilwoman Nikki Hudson, the new Ward 11, which is Edgewater, Cadell, West Boulevard, Stockyards, Brookside, and Old Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Hi, my name's Chris Harsh.

I represent Ward, the new ward for the same old Brooklyn, um, and the proud parent of three CMSD scholars.

Good afternoon.

Uh, my name is Stan May Shah, and I represent the new West Side for the new Ward 12, which is Edgewater, Coudell, West Boulevard and Jefferson.

All right.

Um, I see a couple other members of council has come into the room.

Um introduce yourself, please, young young man.

Councilman Polentick, Ward 10.

And we do have our council president.

Good afternoon, Council President Blaine Griffin and uh Ward 6 Councilman.

All right.

Um, if for the viewing public, if you in and in the audience and you have any questions that you want during the later part of the meeting, please sign up with the council slab, um, our clerk, Inez, and she will be able to help us.

Um, I did prepare a quick opening statement.

Um wanted to make sure to thank CMSD Dr.

Warren Morgan, as well as the administration and my colleagues for this public hearing today.

Um, I want to thank you for coming here to discuss the Cleveland Metropolitan School District Building Bright Futures Plan.

Today's hearing is about being held at a critical moment in our city.

The decision to close, obviously, some schools is not just a budgetary or operational matter.

It is a decision that obviously affects our children, families, educators, workers, and their entire neighborhood.

Schools are more than just buildings, they are the anchors in our communities and pathways to opportunities for our young people.

So as the chairman of workforce education training and youth development committee, on some of our focus is to ensure that education system is aligned with student success, workforce readiness, and neighborhood stability.

While we understand the financial and enrollment challenges facing CMSD, we also have responsibility to ask some of the hard questions, but demonstrate transparency and ensure that the equity remains at the center of every decision.

So today's hearing is not about assuming blame, is about understanding the full impact of the Building Brighter Futures Plan and how decisions were made, how students and staff will be supported during this transition, and how the district plans to measure success.

So I look forward to hearing a comprehensive presentation from Dr.

Morgan, followed by questions from the council and public comments.

Yep.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Again, I'm just um my name is Matthew Moss.

I'm a senior strategist with the mayor's office.

I'm here to answer questions you may have about uh the engagement we're doing around the future uses for for these sites.

So I'm happy to answer your questions following the presentation and whatever questions you have for Dr.

Morgan.

All right.

And thank you, uh Chair.

Uh my name is uh Dr.

Warren Morgan, CEO for Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

Excited for this conversation.

This is my third year as the CEO, and uh I've been before this committee.

Uh I it was I was only on the job maybe for about five or six months and came before city council, uh, really just talking about some of the uh the issues we've are having.

So I'm excited to be back here in year three.

Um and what I prepared uh really for this first hour before we dive into questions is really just some context about how we got here.

I know I've presented several times before city council, but even before here was getting asked questions about context, what we're doing with staff, how we got here.

So I think it's important for the listening view, and even for those who still have questions and may have not been here to hear um how we got here today.

So hopefully we can uh uh get those questions answered and people uh can understand.

And then one second, um Dr.

CEO.

Dr.

Warren Morgan, just for our staff, as far as the committee, any questions that you have during the presentation, um colleagues, can you just write them down and hold them after the presentation so we can get through the presentation and therefore he can be able to highlight some different things that you may have.

All right.

Go ahead, Dr.

Morgan.

One of the things I want to share really from the onset, um, what's happening in our district is not only happening in districts across our state, uh, it's happening across districts across the country.

Uh we've been presenting and talking to colleagues across the country about the work we're doing through building brighter futures, because there's been a lot of questions to uh the people have been asking, saying, how are you expanding choice while at the same time needing to make some really difficult decisions?

Everyone's faced with enrollment challenges, building condition issues, and financial issues.

And um, we're not saying we have all the right answers.

We have plans that we uh have now got uh through our board, and we're in the process of implementing those.

Uh, but I'm saying that to say that everyone is really in this together.

Um, and I I uh collaborate with a lot of my colleagues, not only here within the state but across the country, as we're all faced with some of these challenging issues.

So, with that, I want to start with some context, uh, some history and context.

It's always great to start with history, uh, because if you don't know where you come from or how we've gotten uh here, you won't be able to learn from the future.

And so this timeline here is uh it's an abbreviated history of our district, but uh it you know, sitting here in Black History Month uh in February, I would be remiss if I did not say the work we've done in recent history has been about equity, justice, and access.

And when I say recent history, I'm not just talking about my 10 year.

So you see from this timeline here, looking from 1976, that's when Cleveland um public schools then first got the desegregation ordered that said, you know, we need to ensure that schools are integrated and that students have access.

And as you see on this timeline, there were many reform efforts from busing.

And I know people that may be watching this may have uh had to you know live through this time.

Bussing, uh different uh initiatives that have taken place.

Uh we since the early 2000s have been a district that uh has uh mayoral uh uh uh governance and in terms of mayoral appointed boards in terms of our governance and uh the board uh uh I I report directly to the board.

Uh but these were just many different reform efforts that have taken place over time.

Some that have had successes, all with their challenges.

Um we saw that uh in 2012, under the leadership of my predecessor, we passed the Cleveland plan.

Very transformative work that allowed us to have the portfolio model and choice options, and there was a lot of growth that took place during that time.

The pandemic happened, and not only challenges that happened in our system, challenges across the country in terms of academic momentum that slowed down.

Um at that point, enrollment was really going uh down, and then financial issues were really uh it was a real big challenge.

And so when I got appointed in 2023, I'll talk a little bit about some of those challenges I walked right into.

Uh, but I say this at this point because all these reform efforts were all about access opportunity to create more for students.

And that's what building brighter futures is about.

It's like how do we ensure that all students have access to a high quality education no matter where they live in our city, no matter where they come from, despite some of the tough challenges we're dealing with right now.

And so that's what we're gonna talk about.

Um, I would I always want to talk about the that our district is guided by the goals and guardrails that we have.

These are our board uh mandated charge that they get to me.

This is how I'm directly evaluated, and our three goals are on literacy, proficient, math proficiency, and college readiness.

If you watch any of our board meetings, they have shifted this year, where we are talking the majority of times about what students know and are able to do.

And uh our board is holding us accountable to see how we're measuring.

We have goals next week that we're gonna be talking about that's gonna be really important.

Uh the guardrails are also a charge that the board said while hitting these goals, you need to ensure safety and security in our building.

You need to ensure that there's opportunity and access in our system, and you must engage the community.

Now, through this time, we've been doing a lot of work.

Uh, as I mentioned, this is my third year here.

And we've also been getting results.

So there's um, I'm not gonna read through all these different things.

There's been many initiatives we've done.

Uh in this time, you know, in 2024, we reached a three-star rating for the first time.

Very proud of that.

Um, our credit rating, even despite this, I know people had questions about what we've been doing with our finances, our credit has been upgraded, and that's a hard uh bar usually for school districts to get.

We were upgraded twice based on the work we've been doing around our finances just in this time.

Uh we've also improved our cash balance um uh by 196 million of through the end of the fiscal year 28 by some of the efforts and reform efforts we've been doing with our finance before then, and we've also decreased serious uh uh safety incidents that have been taking place in our system.

Uh, this past report card, we increased academic proficiency in every single tested area.

This was a celebration that we've had.

Uh, was so proud, and in some cases we had double-digit gains, and we finally exceeded our pre-pandemic proficiency.

That means even before the pandemic, we have exceeded our proficiency in high school English language arts, algebra one, and US government.

So that shows that even with the efforts and the work we've been doing, the team has been working hard, our school leaders have been working hard, our teachers have been working hard, and we've been making gains.

I'm really proud of this work that has taken place.

But even despite the celebrations, this is our current reality.

Uh, and I know many of you guys have seen this.

If you've been to building brighter futures meetings, you saw this, but only 78% of our high schools offer college credit, only 59% offer career pathways.

And I'll stop there because I talk to people and they say, What do you mean only?

There, this these are great, these numbers are great.

They're great, but if they're not 100, that means we're leaving kids behind.

That means that there's some kids that by the nature of the school that they walk into that they don't have access to college credit, they don't have access to a career pathway.

That's work that you you know, myself, all of us who were looking around this table, we have to hold ourselves accountable because we're raising a generation that if we're not offering the college and career access programs, our students won't have the opportunities to do that.

Um, also in our elementary schools, only 38% of our elementary schools offer any enrichment course beyond art music or PE.

We've talked about algebra one, we've talked about band.

Um, we are not offering these enrichment courses.

And these are not luxuries, these are things that are the norm when you go to the suburbs or in some of our private schools, and we want to ensure our students have that.

We also talked about 70% of our buildings being upgraded, that's the majority, but it's still not all.

And a big cause of this is because we have low enrollment.

And that low enrollment is not only hurting the student experience because our students are stretched so thin, it's also hurting the teacher experience.

We can't have as many uh teachers in our buildings to offer the courses.

Um, these are all things we've talked about during Building Brighter.

We also know that um in 2024, when we reached the three-star reading, there were five categories we were we reached three-star on and we made progress on.

This past year in 2025, a new measure of college career workforce and military readiness was added, and only 36% of CMSD students are proficient in that, which is one of the reasons why the report card went down.

And so, even with all this work we've been doing and the celebration that has taken place in the system, 36% shows me that we are not preparing the next generation.

That's not even half.

Uh, and so that's work we have to do.

Uh, and you know, one of the things I presented on my personal core value is continuous improvement.

So I'm always saying, what can we do?

What can we do better?

Uh, and this is something we we can't just sit on.

And so when I talk to people, when they get upset about some of the decisions that were made, they're like, why do you have to make these decisions?

I say, status quo is not an option.

36% is not okay.

That means we are not serving all kids.

And so, this is work we have to do, and it is grounding in the work of why we have to do building brighter futures.

So, I want to break this down a little bit in a history lesson, first by looking at phase zero.

Um, so I I started in July of 2023, and some people think that this work of building brighter futures is new.

When I first came in, and you I know everyone was watching because I know when I was going through the process, it was a big process, it was a lot of people that were around, but one of the the things when I was interviewing for this job were our finances.

Uh, it was one of the things that we talked about, and um, even if it wasn't publicly, it was some of the things that the board said, you know, what are we thinking to do to really level out our finances?

And um I knew coming in that there was work we were going to have to do to move the uh move this work forward.

And so when I entered in, there was a perfect storm of challenges we had.

We had increasing costs, uh, we talked about losing those ARP Esser dollars uh that uh we received during the pandemic, but they went away in 2024.

So even getting a half a billion dollars, there were a lot of investments we were able to do in that latter uh part.

But right when I came in, we lost all those dollars on top of a lot of other measures that were taking place.

We entered into a bargaining year, so in 2024, right in that first year, we bargained all nine of our union contracts, we had the declining enrollment, inadequate building conditions, and then also the inadequate uh uh student experience across the board.

Um we've talked about our enrollment.

So in 20 years, we've lost over 50 percent of our enrollment.

Um, this is a dramatic decline, but this is also something that our peers are seeing not only across the state, but in uh across the country and other uh um cities.

And these are just facts that we can't ignore.

And we have enough buildings today to house 50,000 students.

And one of the things people often say is okay, you have about 34,000 students, you need to fill uh the building with 50,000 students.

Why don't you recruit uh to get more of those kids?

And the challenge is those kids don't exist.

What our data shows us is it's not that we're losing kids to charters and private.

Um our data shows that we're actually holding our market rate.

And actually, uh recent data that we had received showed that um in some cases we have more stable enrollment than uh some of our local charter partners.

Um but it's birth rates.

Birth rates are down historically.

They're not only down in our city, they're down in the county.

You guys know um just by how many wards we have now in our city that uh the population decline is something that's impacting the entire city.

This is happening across cities across the country.

And so this is something we must uh address.

And for those that do not know, student enrollment is the way we actually get our dollars in the system.

Um just looking at some of these enrollment trends.

We know to offer the robust experience in our elementary schools, we need about 450 students in our schools.

Currently, right now, there are only 11 of our 61 elementary schools that have 450 students or more.

To offer the robust college and career readiness programs we're talking about, we need about 500 students in our high schools.

And currently, right now, only three of our 27 traditional high schools, we actually have a little bit more uh uh high schools, but of our traditional high school, there's there are 27, but only three of 27 have 500 students or more.

Um so the majority of our schools are underenrolled.

Now we we said the majority of our buildings are upgraded or renovated thanks to uh everyone in the city of Cleveland, not only just for our most recent levy, um, but for levies over time, uh these investments have really helped us upgrade our buildings.

And this is a celebration.

A lot of districts say can't say that they have the majority of their students are in upgraded buildings.

But we still have buildings like this one.

Uh, and this was a building that we had to emergency close last year uh because after a harsh winter, uh not as harsh as this winter.

I think we did not see this one coming.

Um, but you know, was it's literally raining in the building.

And so this is work that we have to do to really make sure that we're um addressing our our buildings.

So uh, and this is something I presented to this uh council for because this like months when I first had come in, I was presenting on our forecast and presenting why we were in fiscal precaution right when I entered in.

Um but right when I entered in as CEO, we entered into fiscal precaution because these were our finances.

We were going to be losing ARP SR funding, and if we kept our staffing where it was, if we kept our buildings where we were where it was, this was before we passed our 2024 levy.

By doing nothing, um, we were going to continue to be in trouble with the state.

We had to submit a state deficit reduction plan to get out of fiscal precaution and also do some measures.

And so all this work we are doing is in response to the state.

Um, so I know someone asked about state audits that we've been doing, we've been doing a lot of that work because they're in response to the work we've had to do, and we've been doing that work.

So if you keep watching, you'll be able to see some of the work we've done.

Um, before I talk about the work we we've done, I do want to talk a little bit about state funding in our in our um state uh for education.

So over time, the formula relies more and more on taxpayers.

There was a time where the state share, and that dark blue uh line that you're seeing here on the bar chart is uh what the state contribution was each fiscal year.

And as you can see, each fiscal year that's going down, and what is being asked of the taxpayer is going more and more.

And so what you have are districts, not only our district, needing to rely more heavily on local taxpayers.

And you see this not only in our system, you see it across the board, which is one of the reasons why in 2024 we had to uh go out for uh a levy.

And we went for the first ever combined uh levy.

We went for both the operating and a bond, so that took care of both our operational expenses as well as our um our buildings.

Um and that was the first time we did that, and it passed at a historic margin.

But you see, other districts are in the same uh position.

And in some cases, a little bit of more challenging situations.

I don't know if you've been paying attention, what's been happening in systems like Akron, Columbus, Toledo, all of them are announcing major effort that they're going to need to do to uh address their finances.

And some of them haven't had quite a bit of the runway that we've had.

We've been talking about this for a few years.

It makes it challenging for a new leader when you have to come in and make a lot of decisions, but we've been talking about it for a few years, and a lot of other districts are just entering in this.

And if you look at the last column, you see when all of them entered, uh did their last operating levy.

I think Cincinnati did theirs in November of the time.

This is as of October 2025, but everyone has recent levies and still are in a position where they're running on deficits or we're running on deficits, and are in a place of running out of cash.

And so this is the work in terms of advocacy that we must continue to still do.

I know I I work with leaders at the state.

Um there are times I get a chance to meet with uh Director Dakin at the Department of Education and Workforce as well as Governor DeWine talking about the work we're doing at the state.

But one of the things I shared even with this committee, I wanted to ensure before we go out and do advocacy, we needed to take care of our own operations.

So people ask, why are we doing these these efforts?

We needed to take care of the the uh the extra expenses we had.

How can we go to the state and say, you know, we fix the state funding formula when we have as many buildings as we have and we haven't addressed them?

How can we go to the state when we have things that say we're overstaffed or have too many administrative staff and we haven't fixed that?

So that's all the work we're doing in this process to fix this, so that we can go back and say, this is the work we've done, now the formula needs to help us.

Uh and when I presented this to leaders at the state, they said this is bold, and they hadn't seen anyone really take this on, even across the country.

I was on the call last week, and someone said, even when Chicago closed 50 schools, compared to the number of schools it had at the time, it was only 10%.

We, with the work that we're doing through building brighter futures, taking on 29.

I want you guys to know that's pretty transformational, and it's tough.

And not a lot of districts across the country have done it.

And so you guys are part of this work that we're doing, and we'll be able to provide a better future for our kids.

So let's look at the the form of the financial picture for our district.

We've shared this alligator chart.

The dotted line was what it looked like before we did any measures.

The solid red line are some cuts we made in that first year, we cut 200 million from central office, we did some other measures, we passed the levy, that's the green solid line.

It closed the gap, but we still know that we have work to do.

Uh, and if we don't, if we didn't do any work through building brighter, we would continue to have that gap.

Um, this also just shows it's like a little waterfall chart here that shows just what that slope was.

So in that first year, you see that slope was a deep a uh uh steep decline in each year by the measures we've taken, we've been able to level off our expenses to twenty uh to the year 28-29.

We're still not at flat line um zero, and we're still not above the graph.

So as you can see, even with all these measures we've done, we're still not operating on a um uh we're still operating on deficit spending.

So this is why we have to do building brighter.

And I know for many of you you've heard this before, but I wanted to gain this context.

I know we have people that are watching, and it's always important to know the history and how we've gotten here.

Um, and I thought it was just really important to share it, even in light of some of the questions I got, even just from walking in the door.

Um so just know that uh building brighter futures is our opportunity to ensure that all students have access to a high quality education while at the same time improving our financial sustainability, and that's why we've done building brighter futures.

So, phase one, this is the work we've done with engaging the community.

Now, I met with city council, I know we have new council leaders, but I met with all the city council uh leaders before we actually kicked off our community engagement in the spring.

Um, but we officially kicked off our community engagement in March of 2025, but met with all city council leaders uh coming down to central office.

We broke up in groups um between east and west side so we can look at some of this information, and this is the information I'll say going, councilman.

Um we wanted to engage a community in the facts and the why.

Um, starting, of course, with our vision that we want all students to have a safe, engaged, and successful um experience, no matter where they attend school.

Uh I won't read through all of these, but these are all the types of engagements we did in phase one.

Uh, we did spring and summer engagement and we did fall engagement, um, hitting every corner of our city, reaching to every school.

Uh and when I say engagement, you can never do enough engagement.

And whenever I talk to leaders and they say you're gonna do this, they say, how will you know you've done enough?

I say you can never do enough.

You know, there's always more people you could talk to, there's always more work you can do.

But I do always want, I do want to share the breadth of the work that we did do in this time to reach as many people, and also explain something really complicated and passionate to uh people that um may not understand all the complications that go into uh some of the decisions we were making.

Um we did 13 regional community meetings, six district-wide virtual meetings, staffings at every school, student and uh parent advisory council meetings, uh presentations before city council, neighborhood uh uh CDCs, and also other community groups.

Um which resulted in thousands of pieces of feedback collected.

Um since we stayed at the fact level, and um most people understood the data case, uh, what they wanted, uh what people wanted at that point, they wanted to see what we were gonna do.

And so I think even once the recommendations came out, people said, why didn't we see this?

And it's like, well, you know, we we still need to make sure we hit the fact base, but in those meetings, we were not talking about scenarios and really just talking about the facts.

We wanted to ground ourselves in the primary data points, which were student enrollment, enrollment trends, building condition, building size and use.

But then all the other things we heard during the community meetings, such as how are you looking at outcome data?

How are you thinking about our special uh our special uh needs populations?

How are you thinking about retention rates, transportation safety, all of these things were things we heard from the community and factored in the work we were doing for our November 5th recommendation?

So now I get to phase two.

And phase two was the month-long engagement we did once we announced the recommendations on November 5th, um, up to the board vote on December 9th.

And so on this part part, I'll talk a little bit about that process, but I do want to review the final board approved uh Building Brighter Futures recommendations.

So this is the whole arc of the Building Brighter Futures timeline, even going all the way back to phase zero.

Phase zero kicked off when I first started.

Um, really uh, you know, thinking about summer uh 2023, but in fall of 2023, we had a public launch of Building Brighter Futures with a board resolution in January of 2025.

Then community conversations began.

We continued those community conversations through the summer and fall, and then the recommendations came out in fall.

And now we're in that process of the implementation planning process, which I'll talk about, which is phase three uh towards the end of this.

It is the hardest part of the work.

I tell I told my team, as hard as we thought it would be just getting to the vote.

Planning this to come to fruition, it's tough work.

Uh it takes a lot of work of the team, and the team has been working really hard to ensure that uh we're ready for the start of the school year.

Phase two, these were the different types of meetings we did.

Uh we held family meetings at every single transitioning and welcoming or moving school.

Um, and that was from November 12th through December 4th.

We had staff meetings at all of those schools.

We also did smaller briefings with um our union delegates.

Uh, we also did all staff meetings because we know central office will be impacted as we're doing some work with central office right now.

But there were over a hundred meetings that impacted schools over that month.

Um, these were some of the other engagements we've done, as I mentioned, um, there were other meetings we did.

We did board meetings, we had let's talk submissions.

Uh, the mayor and I did town halls.

I know some uh city council leaders were here as well.

Um, so that was really helpful when we were just going out and hearing from the community.

Um, and then there were just times I just popped up at schools.

Uh, you know, I would hear from a board meeting, uh, you know, someone coming from Alcott and saying, come out to our school.

And I, you know, in my first year, I one of the things I did was I visited every CMSD school, and that helped because I got a chance to get a feel for it, see it.

I had worked in the system before, I supervised schools primarily in the central Glenville uh neighborhoods and some on the southeast and the west side.

Um, but I wanted to get in all of our schools to get a feel for them.

But during this time, I just will pop up to schools and say, Let me see what's taking place, let me see what you're seeing.

Um, because all that I wanted to know if it informed if we were gonna make any uh decision changes.

Through that, um, the recommendations, there were slight changes in the recommendations based on some of the things we heard, but the number of schools uh or the impacts of the schools did not change.

So if you as you look at this, this is the board approved recommendations.

In fall of 2026, that's coming up.

Uh, we will have 29 fewer schools that were operating, going from 61 uh pre-K-8 schools to 45, and going from 27 high schools to 14.

And these are a review of those recommendations.

Um, this is also all posted on our website.

So when we think about our high schools, uh, those uh are the ones that were um uh you know recommended to have some action.

We have the six campuses that have multiple schools on them, and as you know, the recommendation was to consolidate campuses that have multiple schools into one, and you can see where the future names of those high schools are on the far right column.

We also have some schools where there are some schools that will be ending instruction at the end of this year and going to a welcoming school, and you see what those five schools are and where their welcoming school is.

And then for our K-8s, uh you can see here there are 16.

We still kept the strike marks where you can see where there were changes that we made during the time of uh phase two based on the recommendations that we uh heard.

And so uh Dyke School of the Arts will be renamed to uh Mound uh School of the Arts, and those two schools are merging.

So Dyke and Mound are merging together, and the new location for Mound School of the Art will be at the current mound location.

And you can see the specialty school moves, because we we made a commitment to keep some of our specialty schools, or actually all of our specialty models, arts, montessori, um, IB, um, uh single genders, these were all the specialty schools we decided to keep, but many of them needed building upgrades.

And so you can see where we are we're doing that and the new names for them.

One of the other things we heard during this time was around name changes.

The board owns the process of name changes, and that's always a slippery slope.

People, I get the amount of questions I get around names and what we're gonna do with school names, uh, it's it's a lot.

Um, and the board intentionally said this was not a time we were doing a school name change process, but we did take this opportunity based on feedback we heard from the community during phase two.

If there were buildings that were coming offline and it was better suited to keep that name within the system, we would.

And so we already talked about Mound School of the Arts being the new name for the uh Eastside Elementary School of the Arts.

Um, and then Warner Girls Leadership Academy is being renamed to Mary B.

Martin Girls Leadership Academy.

Mary B.

Martin was the first black uh uh board member uh for the Cleveland Public Schools.

Uh and uh we have a current school, Mira B.

Martin, which is being taken offline, and that name will go to uh the East Side Girls Leadership Academy.

Uh, well suited.

And pretty much since I've come in, I don't know if uh my predecessors will get letters from Douglas MacArthur, but I know I've gotten several letters from students at Douglas MacArthur uh girls' leadership academy saying, why is our school named after a uh a male?

And um, this was an opportunity since Mary McLeod Bethune was coming offline, and we all know the great work of Mary McLeod Bethune and the great leader that she is to keep that name within the system and also um uh incite that vision and inspiration into our girls' leadership academy.

So excited to um make that recommendation.

All right, so let's talk about the future benefits of building brighter futures, and then I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of the implementation work we're doing before opening up to questions.

So the system wide benefits.

Um of the things we shared is status quo was not an option.

And uh when doing the plan of building brighter futures, this isn't just about cutting and taking less, it's about giving kids more.

And so for students in all the impacted schools, if students are in a school that is ending instruction, with the plan through building brighter futures, 100% of students will have equal or expanded academic extracurricular opportunities that we cannot provide for them today.

And so one of the things I shared during phase two, I said, I know it's uh we're uh you know there's a lot of passion behind wanting to keep a school online, but show me a plan where we can either keep your school online and still achieve the savings where kids get more and also the financial savings without us needing to make tough decisions.

And there was no, there were no suggestions, there was no feedback that that was given there.

Um and so 100% of our students uh in these impacted schools will have equal or expanded academic extracurricular uh opportunities.

96% will attend a school of an equal or higher star rating, and 95% will attend a school of equal or better condition.

And so the students will have access to more opportunity.

Now, the caveat here is they're welcoming school, if that's what they choose.

And we're now in the process where students are actually choosing whether they will choose their seat at the welcoming school or choose another school.

Um, but the school that was destined for them in terms of the the receiving school that they would have, these are the benefits that uh uh for those impacted students, and also this plan saves at least 30 million dollars every year.

Now let's talk about the east-west uh uh situation.

I know that we get lots of questions, and there were questions even during the town hall about what's happening on the east side, uh, is this impacting the east side more than the west side?

Uh, and we want to ensure that through building brighter futures, all students have a high quality school within their neighborhood.

So we want to get, of course, we have a east side of the city, we have a west side of the city, and my hope and dream is that kids can go to the school within their neighborhood if they choose, and they can still get a very high quality education, they don't have to go across town.

Um but let's look at our current reality of where we are.

So, currently, right now there are 34, and these are just looking at our elementary schools.

So there are 34 elementary schools on the east side.

And our enrollment on the east side is actually a little less.

Uh we have just under 10,000 students on the east side.

On the west side, we have 27 schools and almost 11,000 students.

So there's a little bit more enrollment on the uh the west side.

Through building brighter futures, this allows us to make it a little more equal.

We'll have 45 elementary schools.

Through building brighter, there will still be one more elementary school on the east side than there is on the west.

So we still will have more uh school uh schools on the east side than the west, even though the population is a little higher on the west.

Um so we'll have 23 east side elementary schools and 22 west side elementary schools, making it much more balanced.

And the average distance uh in terms of where a student lives to a CMSD school when we look at it in proximity, uh, is still under a mile.

So students still will have a school looking at where we we put a dot of where all the kids live.

There will still be a school with uh under a mile from where every kid lives.

Now we're open choice system, they can choose wherever they want to go.

That doesn't mean that every kid's school is under a mile from where they live, but they have a choice uh of a school that's under a mile from where they live.

All right, now let's talk about the large system benefits.

The first chart I showed were for students who were in impacted schools, but for all students in Building Brighter, we will now have 100% of our high schools offering college and career readiness programs.

100% of our elementary schools offering at least one enrichment course beyond art music or PE.

And eventually we'll get to 100% of our students being in newer upgraded buildings.

This will not be something that we achieve in the fall.

The first three will.

We will achieve this fall.

100% of our high schools having college and career readiness programs, and 100% of our elementary schools having at least one enrichment program beyond art music or PE.

It will take us time to get to the upgraded buildings.

We're building some new buildings.

We just had a community meeting, our kickoff meeting for the new Lincoln West.

I'm excited to begin the planning.

I know there's a lot of planning underway for the future Glenville high school and community.

And we're you know still underway with the work we're doing at uh Seltzer in terms of the the that's a new building that we're building.

So that's work we're doing there.

And even for some of our current buildings, there's some work that we're doing to bring our buildings up to par.

Some of that work will take place over the summer, some of them will take place over the next couple of years.

Oh, and this plan does help us address our enrollment issues.

The majority of our schools, when we look at the average elementary school, the average elementary school will have an enrollment if students choose their welcoming school could have an enrollment of over that 450, as well as our high schools, if students choose where they will go, the average enrollment will be over that 500.

Now, phase three.

This is the part we're in now.

Um, and it's the hardest part of the work.

Uh, ensuring that enrollment is up to par, building the programs, the staffing.

I know there are lots of questions around the staffing, and we're just entering in the budgeting season.

This is all the tough and the challenging work.

Um, in order for this program to come to fruition, there are there are things we must do to in order for it to uh take place, and we're in that process now.

So let's talk about choice and enrollment.

Um to date, uh, just looking about where we were uh when the you know the choice portal now has been open for about a month.

It opened on January 5th, and we are significantly up from where we were last year.

Now, note when we open up the choice portal in 2024, it was in November.

Um, but in that first month from November to December, we were nowhere near where we are now in terms of the applications we have.

So we're up.

Uh we have about 4,000 students that have made a choice.

Um there are about 5,000 students who were impacted through Building Brighter, and then you have uh almost a little under 3,000 eighth graders that need to make a choice to get to high school.

And so we're looking at about a total of a little under 8,000 uh students or so that need to uh make a choice during this time.

Um so more than 35% of CMSD eighth graders have made a high school choice so far.

Um, more than 40% of uh preschool families have made a kindergarten choice uh for next school year.

Uh we have 33 school choice navigators are assigned to the schools that impacted Building Brighter Futures uh schools to help families make a choice because our deadline is on February 27th, and we want to make sure students are making a choice.

The city has been helping us with just getting the word out, um getting information out, so that's really helpful.

Uh and the the goal is for our navigators to make at least three attempts to ensure that our families are making choices.

Other things that are not on here that I want to highlight are new students to CMSD applications are up.

When I looked at that data, there are families that are new to us who have never been in CMSD or they they they once were when they're coming back that are up, they're interested in us.

And so that that is a testament to the work that we're doing in the city, and it should be praised that if we're trying to ensure that all kids have access to high quality options.

I don't know who could argue with that.

And so we're excited that and welcome those families that decide to choose, and we're we're glad that those are up.

Um, one other thing I would note that we're working on, even though our eighth grade applications are up, applications overall are up, new to CMSD students are up.

One of the things we're closely monitoring are ensuring that our families that are in the building brighter future schools are actually choosing their welcoming school.

We have a lot of choose families choosing, some of them may be choosing other schools, which is good, we're open choice uh system.

What that does is if you choose other schools, it creates a lottery in a competition system in schools that um either are already competitive or some they may not.

Um, and we also just want to ensure families are saying, hey, I I like my welcoming school, I want that seat.

We want them to make a choice.

So if there are people that are watching and you are in one of those impacted Building Brighter Future schools, make a choice by February 27th.

Uh, we want to ensure that.

We know that we said that after February 27th, you could still choose to go to your welcoming school.

That's what we will assume.

But if that's not the school you're going to go to and you're gonna make another choice, all it does for us in the fall is it doesn't allow us to plan for staffing.

We have something that's called fall adjustment, and we want to ensure the staffing that we're doing now is just as accurate as possible.

Because if there if the enrollment is not where it needs to be in the fall, every year we do fall adjustment.

And what that means is some somewhere within the first few weeks of schools, we have to level staffing, and there are teachers that get moved, their teachers that sometimes get moved from the system.

And so we want to ensure that that doesn't happen.

And so we're working hard to ensure every family makes a choice.

So choice and enrollment, we've been doing the marketing plan.

Lots of marketing that uh took place right after the vote has taken place, but we're doing this continued marketing that has been taking place.

Uh our social media work that we've been doing, uh, we've been doing some paid content uh that has been going out, and then also just media briefings that we've been doing.

Um there's also been school choice tool kits uh that we've worked really closely with the city.

Uh we're we're grateful for the work with the city uh communications department as well as city council.

Uh and then also our our brilliant, amazing CMSD principals, as well as educators and teachers have been really getting the word out and been helping with this as well.

Transportation.

So one of the things with transportation, um, and I'll get a little closer.

I hope that you could hear me in the first uh uh parts of it.

Uh but with transportation, one of the areas that we want to make sure that people know is that our transportation policies are not changing.

And so some things that are true about our transportation policies.

When students live between one and three miles of their school, they have access to uh transport uh transportation uh from their school.

So if you live between one and three miles from your school, you have access to transportation, we will continue to do so.

Uh if you live under a mile, uh you don't get transportation, you can walk, um, and that will be the same.

We offer a specialty school uh district wide transportation for for some of those schools, whether it is uh you know, some of our arts programs, some of our other programs we offer our single genders, we do offer that district wide transportation, we're gonna continue to do so.

Um high schoolers who live more than a mile away uh will still continue to receive receive their RTA transportation uh with the safe passage support uh that we're working uh to ramp back up and uh even uh make even more robust as we're planning for next year.

Uh and then students with um uh accommodations within their individualized education plan, uh those are we you know the all students receive transportation uh if they receive those accommodations, and that is something that we will continue to provide regardless of where they live.

Now, there are some special allowances for students who are in an impacted school for building brighter futures.

So for students who are in a school for building brighter futures, even if you live beyond three miles and you're in a school that is impacted through building brighter futures, we are giving you transportation for two years.

So even if you live beyond that three miles and you're in a school that was impacted through building brighter futures, we will give you transportation for the next two school years.

That's the 26-27 school year and the 27-28 school year.

There are also some other allowances around sibling preferences that we do around transportation as well.

Um, all of that's included on our website, but there are some special accommodations we've made for transportation, and all of that takes planning and preparation, which also is the challenging work of this time.

Safety, uh, and uh we have chief dots in this here as well.

Uh but we've been working really closely in ensuring that there are safety measures in our school.

There were lots of questions that came up, not only during phase one but phase two about ensuring safety when the buildings come together, uh, and also uh safety during um when students get to and from school.

Um we have continued to see a decline of safety incidents in our schools.

We actually just presented to our board in our last board meeting about where we were with safety incidents, and we're we're uh flat compared to where we were in the previous year.

Um so we're still doing those measures to ensure the safety in school is uh top priority.

Um, but we are also working with our partners in the city of Cleveland to ensure that there's safe passage to and from school.

Uh, we still have those crossing guards that we get um through the city of Cleveland.

Uh we do have lots of safe passenger support that we work with through the city of Cleveland.

There's a collaborative task force where our um CMSD police department meets with Cleveland Police Department, uh, meets with RTA and the trans uh the transit police meets with Cleveland Public Library to ensure that we have a coalition of supports to ensure students get to school safely and that there are safe uh safety guards around the schools.

There's also work that uh is taking place with the city of Cleveland around the gang uh task force uh work that we're doing to really ensure safety.

Uh and we're just about to be uh ramp up our planning again for our summer work.

Uh we work really closely with our city partners on ensuring that all students have a plan for the summer.

Transition support.

So one of the things we know that uh transitions are hard, change is hard.

Um, so it is a time that even though there's a lot of opportunity that is here, it is hard.

And I acknowledge that it is hard.

It is these are tough decisions.

And um, so during this time, we really want to make sure there's a lot of support for our schools, um, whether that is at the social emotional level support, uh, the welcoming schools, the choice navigator supports that we've talked about, the work we're doing around community building, the honoring of the the past legacies, and then also um the professional development.

We have a professional development day that is coming up um next week where um the welcoming schools as well as the transitioning schools get a chance to plan together and actually begin to uh you know build some of their new community together.

So a lot of this work we're still moving forward and ensuring that there's a lot of work taking place at the school.

And then more work is coming with transition supports at the central office because most of this work is uh we've talked about this this the school work, but as we're entering in the phase for central office, there's work we're doing at central office as well and changes as well that will take place.

Staffing.

Um so in December, uh we've been doing we've been working with our school leaders all this time.

And so there was a question around administration.

We've already done a lot of work around administration.

Uh we named all the principals for the 26-27 school year in December.

So we did a lot of work.

Um there were principals that were displaced in uh December.

Um in January, we renamed our uh assistant principals, and there were some assistant principals that were uh displaced in.

Uh we just uh did some work in uh around our deans and campus coordinators, which is another group of administrators, and we're now in the process of um uh starting our central office budgeting as well.

Um and this, you know, the student enrollment window closes on February 27th.

So I know there's questions around educators and school-based staff.

We won't have a really good sense in terms of what's needed at our schools until we close the choice portal on February 27th.

Um, and then the process really for staffing will kick into place.

Um, because we have retirements and resignations, we have vacancies that we have.

There may be natural attrition that moves to allows for staff to uh to be where they need to be, but they're new programs that we're offering.

So the certifications must match uh must match as well.

So we do have a plan.

I know there was a question about what's happening with educators.

There's a uh a plan that's in place with that, but at the same time, there's also work we have to do, and we won't know that for sure until the choice um portal closes, and we're working really closely not only with all of our educators, we're working with our um our union partners of all staffing groups to ensure that our staffing um uh is done in the best way possible, given all the challenges we're facing.

And then I just want to close with just improving financial sustainability.

So we started out talking about the context of where we are through building brighter futures in this year alone, we cut five million dollars, even just what we did in the fall.

We just cut uh five million dollars from our budget just from some measures we've done.

And then building brighter futures will save 30 million dollars each year.

So that's at least 35 million they'll carry year over year over.

So if you look in about the fourth column of this chart where it says um not column, fourth row of this chart where it says uh savings target, you can see the savings target um starting in this year, which is fiscal year 26, where we've cut that five million and that five million carrying over year over year, and then you see building brighter futures, the work we're gonna do is gonna save at least 30 million.

That's 35 million that carries over year over year.

Um now, if you look a couple of rows down from there, the deficit, we're still uh uh operating on a deficit.

So there's still a deficit that is there.

But the final row, that unencumbered cash, that's what the state looks at.

So when they determine what districts are going to go into fiscal precaution or watch, they're looking to see if you're in the black for the current year or two years out.

And as you can see for the work we've done here, uh we're we're we're gonna be okay with the state for the next couple of years.

As you look at fiscal year 29, there's still work we have to do and measures we have to do there.

Um, and that's even with all the challenging work that we're doing through building brighter futures.

Um, but that's where the advocacy work comes in thinking about the state funding formula.

Um and so this is uh the work that we've been doing.

Uh it is challenging work, it's not easy work.

Um, but this is why I I came here to lead to do great work with our our system, and then also to ensure all kids have access to a high quality education.

So even though that this is tough work that we're all in right now, I am inspired by what we're collectively doing to provide a better future for our Cleveland kids.

And with that, I'll take any questions that people may have.

Thank you, Dr.

Morgan, for that presentation, very in-depth and informative.

First, I'm gonna ask the clerk, do we have any um questions from the viewing public clerk?

If you, if anybody wants to sign up for any QA, see the clerk so you can get your name down on the list so we can make sure we um have you come to the table.

I would like to add a view in public ask some questions first since they heard the presentation, and then I'll be open it up for questions from the committee as we dive deep into it.

Um, but one of the things I asked, because I have a few questions, obviously from the presentation, which is very in-depth.

One of the things that open for me is you stated in 2029, we're gonna have to make some even more tough um decisions as far as the budgeting and balancing the budget.

And currently we're saving five million for 2026, and then your goal is to save 35 million uh reoccurring from 27 to 28 and even 29, but we're still gonna be operating as at a deficit.

So, one of the things I would like to understand is even if we make this this sudden change, come a couple years later, we're gonna have to make another tough decision.

I mean, we possibly might, if we don't have enrollment or anything, we might be closing more schools.

Back to the matter through the is that something that you predict or looking at the finances.

Um, there are a lot of things that can take place, and this this happens over over time.

So, even when I um uh I you know, I wasn't here in the seat that I was in, but looking at previous uh forecasts, there were times when you if you looked four or five years out, it's like, oh, it's gonna be challenging, but then things happen, you know.

Um, no one knew that ARP SR dollars were going to come.

There were times where things like race to the top dollars came in from the federal government, different uh things that take place.

Formulas may change with um new leadership that come in uh that look so there's a lot of things that could change that can help that that outlook.

Um there also we are saying a minimum target of 30 million.

We know there's work we have to do.

Uh, and so um we're working on that now.

Um, some of those things right now, the plan of building brighter futures is is public.

Um, there's more work that we're doing, and we're working uh we we we see what's happening in fiscal year 29, and we're working on those measures as well.

Okay, from the savings that you're looking for to make with all these decisions, um, how will the savings be tracked?

And how will the public know that they are reinvested directly into the student outcomes?

Yeah, great question.

So uh a few things we have.

One, we do budget presentations as a matter of fact, Chief Stockdale, uh, who's here, Kevin Stockdale, my chief financial officer, he'll be presenting on uh update on our budget uh in February, actually, yeah, this month.

Uh we'll do another one, I believe, in at the end of the year.

Is it is it February this year?

Yeah, February and then May.

Um, and we do these presentations throughout the year.

I think there's gonna be another one that comes up in August.

It was in October before, but we do these budget presentations on a regular basis.

I know there was questions around what's happening with the budget.

We do these regularly uh and and sharing these information.

So that happens uh publicly.

Uh we also are doing uh uh along with our our board goals and guardrails presentations, we're starting to do building brighter futures updates.

And so uh we canceled our last board meeting due to the wonderful Cleveland weather that we have.

Uh uh but we were supposed to have a board meeting a couple of weeks ago, but in our next board meeting, I'll be sharing some updates on building brighter futures, and that's also where I'll be sharing with the community how the programming is going, how many programs we have in our schools, where we are with the enrollment, and also some of the savings targets.

So uh the board has charged us with this when they actually pass the Building Brighter Futures plan.

Uh a part of that was writing in measures to hold uh the district accountable uh for the savings target, but then also above all, really the impact that the plan um plans to make.

Thank you.

And from that standpoint, definitely with the changes and the building bright futures plan and this initiative that is that is going to currently happen.

One of the biggest concerns that I do have, and I believe some of my colleagues do, is how many current facilities that you have that CMSD owned that is currently closed?

Um, and the building's just sitting there.

Example, Central Middle School in War 5, it's been closed for about at least eight, maybe 10 years.

Um, and what is going to happen with the current um plan as far as those um additional buildings when you close these additional ones?

Because I believe there's 29 is not sites, it's 29 changes, but it's 18 locations.

So within the fact, how many buildings does CMSD own that are currently closed, and what are your plans for those buildings before we close other buildings?

What are your plans with the current buildings that are closed right now?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Um I'll get you the number on the total that we have right now.

Uh I'll I'll get back to you on that one.

And you are right, it's 18 that we have now through Building Brighter, even though they're 29 schools that are closed.

Some of them are lease spaces.

You know, we also have co-located campuses, so um, that helps with that.

Um great great question.

And I was just talking to a council uh member yesterday about this.

And you know, one of the biggest questions people may have is like, why close more when and I use the same example of Central.

I drive by it all the time.

There, they're buildings we pass by.

I, you know, Iowa Maple, you know, name them uh South, even though there was work we've done with South there, you know.

There, you know, uh these are examples that people are like, what happened and why more?

Um, which I could see why there may be concern with that.

What I could tell you is different uh that we're doing now that we didn't do before is the intentionality we've been working with the city.

Um we have been working intentionally with the city, and even prior to where we are today with the recommendation, really figuring out what is the work that really needs to take place in the collaboration so that we have a plan.

The district has about a year to really come up with their uh, you know, plan for buildings once they close, um, and whether that is, you know, if it's gonna be you know used by the district, if it's gonna be repurposed, if it's gonna be up for sale, we have a year to do that.

And we've been there's been a committee that's been working now for months on really making sure there's planning and intentionality.

Uh, I know that there are listening sessions, and I've been led by the district, really led by the um the city uh that are starting to go underway.

This is a board process.

So the board, you know, will approve this process and um approve the plan, but the intentionality already to get in front of this to ask the community to start thinking about seeking options, these 18 buildings will be different.

Now, what I could say for all the historic buildings, and many people don't know this, in our spring meeting, it was either our it was our June board meeting, our board passed a resolution uh a resolution really around our segment plans that included some of those old buildings, and they they they approved for them for demolition and for other measures to take place.

So the board is already taking action on some of those other buildings.

Now there are some clauses here.

I don't have my chief operations officer Karen Thompson here, where there still allows for before we go straight for demolition.

If there are some um offers that we have on buildings that we've had up for sale for years, uh we can do that.

Um to that last point, I will say building reuse if you're just looking to sell a building is really challenging because there are many people that will come to you and say, I want to do this with the building.

I can imagine this.

And then the minute they realize how much it costs, how much the operation uh it takes to maintain it, uh, it's not sustainable.

And so these plans take intentionality, and it's not something the district can do alone.

And so we're really grateful for the partnership of the city and also all the partners that have come around to really figure this out because it is about reimagining community assets, and we must do that together.

But it's not an easy process.

Um, it's not just like uh actually I had a colleague that said, you know, selling your home and you put that for sale by owner home, uh, you know, signed in front of the house.

It's not uh that simple of a process, it's pretty complex.

Yes, and that's very important because no member of council or members of the community want to go through the neighborhoods where they see a building as an eye sort, it become a nuisance property.

Um people break in, squatters, all types of different challenges efforts.

So we want to make sure we get those old buildings addressed, but then also anything that you're planning to do with the new buildings, please work uh with the city, but also the council member of those neighborhoods so they can be informed as to what is actually um taking place with those um locations.

Most definitely, and the the other thing I would say there are buildings like when I think about MLK, um there are you know, sometimes offers that are going through or different works that are taking place with different um buildings, and so sometimes uh there are things that are underway or uh things that people are exploring.

Um so it doesn't just because people aren't seeing anything happen, it doesn't mean that there are things that are are being worked on or trying.

Um, but one of the things we're committed to is ensuring that the public and that you are aware that uh our board, uh, you know, because they're the ones that make that decision that they are aware and informed, and then also that our mayor is aware and informed, and then part of the process so that uh the community just knows where we are in the process for these.

Yeah, I just got a couple more questions, then I open up to members of the committee.

Um staffing and the changes.

And I know through your presentation, you've been working on some of this since last year, um, and had to make some tough decisions already in January as well as in February.

Um, what I would like to understand is from as a CEO as the leader of the school districts, how have you came to make those decisions for which principal is staying, which principal is leaving, which pair professional is there, which dean is leaving.

How does that actually go?

I know everything is usually contracted out year by year, and we understand some of those challenges, but when you close 18 schools, and therefore now um, you know, I'm I'm I'm heavy involved in the schools, I'm getting calls from deans and neighborhood and schools that I have represent, where I have a dean that's possibly leaving, and I know he's been the muscle of the community as the school who's possibly not going to be retained for whatever decision.

So before those decisions were made, what went into it?

Did you have any consultant or how are you making that decision to determine which staff is staying, what staff is displaced, how is that decided through uh for for CMSD?

How is that decided through for CMSD?

Yeah, uh, thank you so much.

Um, first I'll say you I know you mentioned pair professionals.

We haven't gotten to any of our um our teacher union positions.

So the teachers, pair professionals, our our nurses or any of those, those are we we have to wait until the enrollment uh uh portal takes place.

We've been working specifically with administrators now.

And so, and that's you know, a call that we we know we had to do.

It was something I charged our team with in terms of looking at our administrative uh staff.

It was one of the things I wanted to have looked into when we um when we when we worked with the state to say, you know, I want to see some areas that we have.

And so we know that by having 29 less schools, there are certain positions.

If you're the only one at that school, that means that there's there's no um there's no role for that.

And so these they're tough decisions.

And then the work I've done, I've been an educator uh for years.

I've you know, I've worked in policy both uh at the state house with the white uh house, and I've seen these uh tough decisions that come uh across many different times and have that experience, and they're not easy.

So I will say that it's not an easy decision whenever you're looking to see how a decision needs to be made.

But when we put a plan in pro uh and um we put a process in play, we want to make sure that the decisions are made consistently, uh equitably, uh, and with a um some type of a decision framework.

And so I won't get into all of the you know, you know, all the personnel decisions, because I know personal decisions are personnel decisions and not necessarily up for the public.

But there was a process uh that we follow consistently for our school leaders um and for some of our other positions to really ensure that uh we did that uh in the right way.

Uh and we try to ensure that there's communication that we do with our leaders.

Uh, I value the work of our of our leaders um and administrators.

Uh, they're the backbone of our system.

If our if our teachers and our educators are the people on the you know, daily in in the in the grind with our students there, they're the front faces of the of the students every day.

Our educator, our our school leaders are the ones um uh that are the backbone.

Uh, and I thank them for their leadership.

So we've been working through those.

We have a lot of other decisions we have to make.

Um we're we're doing work uh with the central office as well and all those things we're making really strategically while also keeping in mind the goals we have to um and thank you, thank you for that, Dr.

Morgan.

Um that's very important.

And it's important to the community, it's important to the schools, supporting to the parents that we possibly don't hear from often time.

Um when we see them in the neighborhoods, they bring it up to our attention.

And last but not least, you know, East Tech.

You know, I'm I'm always keeping my eye on what goes on at my high school that I attend.

And one of the things is I'm hearing that the holder culture and the animal science potentially being eliminated at East Tech.

One of the biggest challenges for me is going to a school called East Technical High School.

We don't have the tech programs there.

We need those programs at East Tech.

We need to have trade as an option.

And I know through your presentation, um, I believe you mentioned that we have, I believe, a graduation rate is a 78% or yeah, our graduation rates in the 70s, and um, yeah, but the the college and career readiness portion, that's where we're at 36% that are prepared for college and career readiness.

Yes, so from my mindset, if we we're having um 78% of our students potentially are graduating, and only 35% of them are prepared for career workforce, military services, that's a challenge.

And I believe we need to have, especially at East Tech, yeah, especially all, especially on the East Side as well, to have that trade program.

I remember when South High School was open when people were getting their cosmetology um license and credits, and then they were transitioning, taking this test.

Um, I believe we have to think outside the broad, but we gotta make sure um East Tech has to have the career trade programs inside of East Tech because it helps those individuals.

And what I mean from that, the neighborhood that I represent, the central area, um, there's only 10% that goes on and get post-secondary college degrees.

Yeah.

And if you're talking about a massive program, this is uh even lower number.

So creating a system where we can get those skills can help with the fact that we know we're doing everything to graduate them, but they gotta have more skills once they graduate.

So I definitely want to work with you, yeah, your team.

Um, me and Leo done talked as well.

He does a great job, by the way.

Yeah, that's amazing.

To be able to figure out how do we make sure we have that tech program inside of a um schools such as East Tech and what it looks like with our partner.

So a few things I'll respond to that.

Yeah, East Tech, one of the schools I used to supervise when I was here before, so always near and dear to my heart, the scarabs.

Um a couple of uh things.

Um one with the horticulture, I've gotten so many emails about horticulture and animal science.

The pathway, the state approved pathway is called agribusiness, of which those classes are part of it.

So you know, the horticulture sales, we want to continue to those, you know, keep going.

A lot of the classes that take take place with uh animal science can still take place.

The pathway, a lot of our schools do not have state-approved pathways, which is why we're at 36%.

We need to have the state approved pathways, and the program is called agribusiness, of which the classes are allowed.

So I want to make sure, you know, I we've shared it many different times.

I know the educator has reached out many different times, and everyone needs to know that we need some follow the state-approved pathways and what it is called, but the programs will still be there, and then the extracurricular activities that go along with that will still be able to be maintained.

So I think everyone there needs to uh ensure that that is still going to uh be taking place.

The other thing, uh, and also we have to get the enrollment up in that pathway.

Um right now in those those those courses.

I think there's only about seven students.

So in order for a pathway to be maintained, we need to get the enrollment up.

Um so that's something we're we're charging all of our schools and doing.

Um now to your point, I do agree getting some of the technical uh programs back.

We are uh bringing cosmetology back, it'll be a John Adams uh in the fall.

Uh so if there are scholars out there that are looking to do uh cosmetology, it'll be at our John Adams schools.

And where we're doing with building brighter futures, this is a start.

It's not saying that this is where it will end.

Uh, there's still the potential for more programs to come.

Uh, when we're building the new Glenville High School, we intend to add some of the technical programs that are at Max Hayes in the new uh Glenville High School and then other programs to come.

What I'm excited about for uh East Tech is the ability for the award-winning MC uh uh MC Squared STEM uh program to be combined with East Tech.

And one of the things when we were looking at that, I said our kids in Central deserve to have a high quality STEM education in Central.

Uh and that's an investment we're making.

And so really excited that that program is underway and we're working now to make sure that the facilities are all up to par.

We're building out some of the uh the labs in there so that that program could be moved there.

Um, and it can go along with already the award-winning robotics uh club that is at East Tech.

So thank you.

And don't forget, trade is needed at East Tech.

Ah, I'm not gonna trip, and we're not gonna go back and forth um about John Adams getting something because the the seriousness of the residents, a lot of our educators felt as if this building bright future plan at East Tech, we got the shorthand of the stick.

And and I have to champion and have to advocate for stuff that I know that's going to help those residents, and and that is going to be a tough question and decisions that need to be made.

But definitely I understand what you're trying to accomplish.

But one thing I don't understand if we're trying to get to 450 students and K to A buildings, and we're trying to get to 500 students in our high school buildings.

If I got open enrollment, that don't mean I'm necessarily going to either building that you think I'm gonna go to.

That's true.

Yeah, so have the district thought about creating some type of platform where we say no open enrollment for a certain time period to ensure that we build capacity in our home schools and our community schools, or we're going to continue to say offer transportation.

Meanwhile, RTA is making cuts to different transit lines, bus lines, rapid lines.

How do we expect our kids to actually get there, even if they got the choice to go across the city?

So that's something to definitely think about.

Um, but I definitely am going to open it up to my colleagues.

Um, I do have councilman Mike Polenzic, he asked for time first.

Is there anyone else on the committee?

Dane Pelinsick.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, my honorable colleagues and to the Dr.

Morgan and his team that is here.

Um I specifically wanted to come today, even though I had some other pressing issues in the neighborhood, because with the most recent announcement that CMSD made, um, I will tell you it's probably one of the most troubling announcements that I've ever heard in my time in here at City Council.

When I come in, when I came in 14 terms ago, I was confronted with four schools being closed.

Here I am today coming into the new War 10 as of January 5th, and I'm confronted again myself and Councilman Conwell with four schools being closed again, on top of the 29 that have already been closed that have impacted our community.

So when I look at the and I've attended all the presentations, as you know, and I've met with you one-on-one.

Um what I've come to um uh refer to as building um brighter futures, what it looks like to me is building brighter futures in the suburbs for my families and in the charter schools, the 11 charter schools that surround my neighborhood, uh, which you are proposing in your new plan uh with the four schools that are being closed, two of which, which are relatively new schools, Hannah Gibbons and Euclid Park, uh Hannah's Hannah Gibbons Nottingham and Euclid Park Elementary, for the first time in a hundred plus years, there will be no elementary school in the St.

Clair corridor and in the Euclid Avenue quarter.

Think about that.

The first time in a hundred plus years, no elementary schools.

Um I'm concerned again about families moving and the chairman, and I want to thank the chairman for conducting this hearing because I know how passionately he feels about education and what it has meant and how it has impacted our neighborhood.

But on your page nine, and the chairman indicated that, when you look at your 24, 2024 graduating class, and only 36 percent successfully demonstrated college career workforce and military readiness, as the chairman indicated.

Tell it's an indictment of a school system that's not working.

It's an indictment.

And when I look at what this system once was, and I'm a proud graduate of Collinwood High School, proud railroader.

Uh, my youngest son, because I practice what I preach.

My youngest kid, my youngest son graduated from STEM in 2012.

Um, and what I have seen is a total disinvestment on the east side of the city in our schools.

When I say disinvestment, I mean curriculum, Mr.

Chairman.

I look at what was at Collinwood High School, the outstanding vocational technical programs, maybe the finest junior ROTC program in the city of Cleveland, arts, science, again, all the industrial and um manufacturing um programs that were there.

I look at the STEM program, which I worked to get at Hannah Gibbons because as a result of my son going to STEM, what I came to realize as an involved parent that there were no feeder schools for STEM, not East Side nor West Side, elementary, K through eight.

So I worked to get a STEM program at Hannah Gibbons, only to find out that it's been removed from Hannah Gibbons.

So I could go down the list, but my my the chairman and I think other members um have mentioned it, and I will mention it as well.

When I drive this city, I look at the abandoned school buildings, it's an indictment, an indictment of a failed system.

The goal past um Wilson on 55th for what was it, 20 plus years, if not longer.

Um, to look at other schools, I look at Iowa Maple, and I begged CEO Gordon not to close Iowa Maple.

It was a good school in the East Glenville neighborhood, begged him not to close that good school building.

And what happened, not only did they close it, but then they did not secure it, so the vandals got in, and look at the number of families in East Glenville that left the community.

Um to Dr.

Morgan and to his team that is here, and to the viewing public.

You don't have to be a uh a statistician to figure out that we've gone from 33 wards to 15 now.

And that hit home to me the night of swearing in.

When I look back and saw the empty seats between my colleagues, the number one reason for families leaving this city has been a dysfunctional school system.

Just talk to the number of families that have moved from Glenville into Euclid, South Euclid, Richmond Heights.

What are they all cite?

The schools, schools, schools.

So here we are again now.

We're confronted with another 18 schools being closed.

And I I continue to ask, and I'm gonna state this to the mayor and to the administration.

I I what is the game plan for the east side, the overall east side?

I don't see a game plan.

And I will tell you right now, as I've said to the mayor, it's gonna be a cold day in hell before I remove the historic status of Collinwood High School.

A cold day in hell before I take away that historic status.

The once the largest high school in the state of Ohio, and where a hundred and eighty-five students and alumni gave their life during the second world war.

The largest life, loss of life of any high school in the city of Cleveland, and you think I'm gonna let that happen, and then add insult to injury, you're gonna take away the name Collinwood, you're gonna strip the name Collinwood, willfully strip the name Collinwood from the new high school that's being proposed on a site none of us know where it's gonna take place.

I will tell you what I'm seeing already.

The charter schools are mailing into my ward right now.

They're mailing into the ward right now, looking for students.

I've met, and I'm gonna I'm gonna meet, I'm planning, I'm being meeting with the charter schools one-on-one, and I'm gonna plan a world-wide meeting with the charter schools and a parochial schools.

I'm gonna do what I can to assist those parents.

I am not about to lose any more families from my neighborhood.

Can't can't can't anyone see what has happened here in this city?

The number of families with children who have fled our dysfunctional system because they want quality education, and I've come to the realization that there is there is a great lack of concern for children on the east side.

When I look at your own documents, the the best schools have been east of I mean west of the river, west of the river.

And the teachers tell me that.

And I can't understand why the teachers union just has been silent, and they've had lotshaw.

Why program after program has been moved out of east side schools.

So, Mr.

Chairman, you know, I uh I know what I have to do.

I'm gonna fight for my neighborhood.

I'm gonna fight for my kids and the parents that are there who've concerned greatly.

And I'm not giving up on my kids, I'm not giving up on the schools.

But Hannah Gibbons and Euclid Park are new schools.

New schools.

And not only that, I say to the to the representative of the mayor, those are the only places to vote.

So not only are we losing education, you're disenfranchising the voters in those communities.

Where are people supposed to vote?

We see what's happened in Washington and in Columbus with efforts to disenfranchise our voters, and here we are in the City of Cleveland doing the same doggone thing.

So you know, I um we are prepared to do whatever we have to do in the Collinwood neighborhood to fight for our schools, to fight for our kids.

But I want to know what the game plan is for the East Side, Mr.

Chairman.

Um Dr.

Morgan indicated that um the ARP, Esser funds.

How much did we receive, Mr.

Chairman, to the doctor?

We received uh about uh half a billion dollars.

Half a billion dollars.

Yep.

And Mr.

Chairman, for the life of me, I can't figure out where it went.

I can't figure out where it went.

We have school buildings that need to be repaired.

We have some school buildings that could have been added on to meet the 400, one or two classrooms to meet the 450 or 400 requirement.

Um I can't for the life of me figure out where it went.

The the real insult to all of us should be in the city is when the school system renewed the lease for their um offices downtown for what was that, two million dollars, Mr.

Chairman, to the to the good Dr.

Morgan?

Yeah, that's roughly what we pay a year, and that was, yeah, it was we're we're in the middle of that now.

So that was done right before I got here.

Um But I I I have but again to the viewing public, as the chairman, it's called closed school buildings all over the city.

And we couldn't go into a closed school building that we already owned and save taxpayers' money and provide opportunities, free parking.

I mean, just one bad decision after another, and again, your own predictions and your own graph tells me there's the student population is gonna continue to drop right today's date down in time.

Families are gonna continue to flee the east side of this city, they're gonna continue to move out, or they're gonna put their kids in charter schools, unfortunately, Mr.

Chairmanable colleagues into Dr.

Morgan and his team, and in some cases, underperforming schools, underperforming charter schools, because they believe that's the closest building to their home.

Um the numbers that you're predicting the students are gonna transfer to, I believe you're totally off base.

And what I found interesting in the numbers that you presented to us, um, in 20 years you've lost 50 percent of your enrollment.

20 years you lost 50 percent of your enrollment.

You gotta ask yourself why.

If I was running a business, and I lost 20 percent of my customer base, I'd have to ask myself, what in the hell am I doing wrong?

What have I done wrong?

What not what have I not taken into consideration?

And then the choice high school.

You didn't mention how many kids, students have asked to transfer to the choice high schools.

That number has been interesting, it's been left off.

So we need that figure.

And then, Mr.

Chairman, I'm also gonna ask through you.

We need to know how many people, how many staff are at the at the headquarters and at the uh East High uh Arnold Pinkney facility?

How many administrators at both of those buildings?

I am I'm totally frustrated.

Um I'm angry.

I look at the fact that this whole neighborhood will not have an elementary school.

This whole neighborhood will not have an elementary school.

And so, Mr.

Chairman, I'm here to work with you, your uh my colleagues in the council.

This we all we talk about the issues that work in front of us and to the viewing public.

I want to say this again.

Council does not run the school.

Some people think we do.

The mayor appoints a school board, and by the way, Mr.

Chairman at the Dr.

Morgan of the school board members of the is uh it's nine, correct?

Yep, but how many of them have kids in the school system?

You know, you know how many?

How many of the nine?

And one one second, one second, Dr.

Margaret.

We're gonna wrap it up, Dave.

I'm wrapping up.

I'm done, baby.

Oh, I'm more than done.

So definitely, and also before we wrap it up, uh staff, you do got some of the questions um to be able to work reach out to CMSD to get those responses back to council.

And I would say people that are making the decisions do not have kids in the system.

Do not have kids in the system.

Do not forget that.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, and I look forward to getting that information.

Yes, and I'll Dr.

Morgan.

Thank you.

I want to respond to a couple of points.

Well, uh, actually, quite a the majority of our board members either have a kid in the system, either are a product of the system or have kids that have graduated from the system.

So some do not have active school age kids.

So just wanted to make that note.

Um, but you know, Councilman Politic, a lot of what you share, we talked and agree about in terms of what we need to be doing to provide a brighter future, which is why I don't know.

It sounds like you're on board for why we need building brighter futures.

Uh and let me finish here.

We need to do something.

In action does not create more opportunities on the east side.

In action does not ensure we have a high quality system.

So we agree we need to do something, and that's our plan to address it.

And I would say that you know, the system has been addressing issues for years.

That's why I started with the chart.

I don't think anyone in any of the efforts that have been taking place in the bo uh before have been meant to harm a neighborhood or hurt a system.

Uh but this is our work to ensure that we can instill uh more programs on the east side and ensure every kid has a high quality option.

You know, we were talking in the last one.

We have to start somewhere.

So I hear you where you're saying we need trades and ease tech, and uh there's probably even more programs we need across all of our schools.

Um and we're starting somewhere, but we also have to start why, you know, even looking at you know the example of some of the programs we have in some of the program schools we have only small enrollment in those.

So there's work we have to do to ensure our current families are getting the access that they need, that they're attending school, um, all the work that we're doing through our board goals and guardwells to improve the system.

Because I think everyone would agree our kids are brilliant, bright, and beautiful.

Uh, and so when language matters, so when they hear things about their system is a mass or a travesty, that's not also instilling the brightness in their future.

Um, so I want to state the record here.

Our kids have all the potential, they're beautiful, they're bright, and they have excellence in them.

And it is our work to ensure they have the programs so that they can thrive in our society and be the leaders we want them to be.

So we agree on that, and there's a lot of work we can do.

Building brighter futures is the first step.

In action or us keeping our buildings, living on life support with not enough students in in them, not enough teachers to fill the programs, buildings falling apart, that is not gonna build the brighter future.

So we can agree on that.

Also, with the ARP Esser dollars, yeah, that was a big investment for a lot of districts, and there were restrictions in terms of how it could be spent.

It had to be spent in a certain time, and then it went away.

And so um, you know, we we presented many times when we had to do the state deficit reduction plan of what happened with that.

We don't have that.

That was money that we lost right at the beginning of me coming here.

And I've also talked about 1111.

We are in the middle of that lease to break the lease early.

You have to pay that out a little bit more, but by doing this and by having buildings that are open, we have the potential that our offices don't always have to be there.

And those are things I've always said, even when I first came here before you guys, even months coming in, that's something that's work we could do together.

So let's work together.

We have work to do moving forward, and there's a lot of alignment.

And there's a lot of alignment.

I know there's a lot you have seen, and I respect, you know, when we sat in and met and you told me how long you've been a leader in our wonderful city.

I respect the work you've done and all you've seen.

I know your wisdom.

And I I don't even want to pretend to understand what you've seen and your passion that you've seen come and go and how this has hurt uh the community.

So I agree with that, and I and I I see that.

But we have an opportunity now to do something and to do it together.

And I look forward to working with you as well as uh this committee to ensure uh we do something for our community and our kids.

Thank you, Dr.

Morgan.

Um Chairman recognizes vice chair, councilwame, Stephanie House Challenge.

Thank you.

Um to the chair, uh to the CEO team that's here today.

Um a couple of questions that I have.

Um first uh to just talk, I know in the presentation.

Did you share what's the percentage of um the school funding?

So what percentage comes from federal, state, local, that time.

Do we have kind of like a general breakdown of our overall if we don't immediately we'll get that for you?

We'll look at that.

I'm sure we can get that for you.

Yeah, that that isn't yeah.

I think that's really important for people to know what percentages of funding and what their sources are.

Um, and particularly for the state of Ohio, which for people that just do not know the state of Ohio is just not meeting its app obligation when it comes to properly funding public education, which they are supposed to be doing, which has led in led into a lot of uh some of the financial challenges that we have had and being able to share that with people uh is really important.

Um secondarily, I I will say uh just a question of because we're going through this transition of uh repurposing schools, building enrollment up, building programs up through building brighter futures.

Can you um can you share like in a little bit more detailed of the process for the school buildings that are going to be left?

Um you're talking about like the repurposing process that we're doing.

So um I'll start at a high level, and then I actually I'll uh kick it to uh uh Matt if you have any um things that I miss or things you want to add to it.

So it really started with um the coalition that we have, which are members of our team, we have members of the city team of really figuring out where are our our programs uh or where are the schools at, those these 18 um properties, and even some of the ones that um have already closed.

Um the land around it, who owns the land, whether it's the district, the city, you know, other entities, um, and what could be possible.

Um, and then we also talk a little bit in terms of what is is needed in terms of use.

Um, so some of that when we're talking about what is needed in terms of use, there is some of that committee that is uh talking about some of the things that are needed, but that's also the process of hearing from the community in terms of some of the things that are needed.

There are also a lot of restrictions and laws around what we can and cannot do.

Um, you know, there we work with the facilities commission of the state, which we need to be ensuring if these were you know, properties that were built with uh facility commission dollars that we work with them and that there's a process through that.

Of course, all of this needs to go uh be put as a recommendation that the board needs to vote on, and then there's also restrictions in terms of what the state says um timelines and also what can be used.

So all of those things are part of the process um to simplify it.

I don't know if there's anything else you would add.

Yeah, Mr.

Chairman to the councilwoman, I'd just be happy to speak about the process we're initiating right now in terms of in terms of listening to the community.

First and foremost, uh our goal in partnership with the school district is to go out and listen.

And part of that was done through uh in advance of building brighter futures vote through the town halls and other sessions, uh focus on the plan itself.

But right now, we want to engage residents and particularly those that live around these sites.

So any sort of stakeholder is welcome to come to any of the open houses or listening sessions that we're having through the month of February.

Uh, but we're particularly uh reaching out to residents who live proximate to these schools.

Uh we're hanging door hangers with the meeting dates and locations.

We have an online survey available for people to submit questions or comments or feedback.

Uh, we'll be present at the meetings with common cards.

I'm happy to pass this around if you want to take a look at what this looks like.

Uh and we'll be we'll be there to listen.

And we want to hear ideas and opportunities and what people feel like these sites could provide.

Uh, I've already heard from some residents, for example, that uh uh they've always wanted to have like their block club meeting at this their neighborhood school, and for operational reasons, that wasn't feasible or was a challenge, and so they see that as a potential opportunity in terms of reuse.

And so again, our first and foremost goal is we're going out here just to listen.

We haven't made any decisions in terms of what these sites could be used for.

I think like uh like Dr.

Morgan mentioned, there's opportunities to look at some administrative uses through the CMSD, some public uses in terms of city services for these sites.

Uh there is a legal process that the city and the school district, mainly the school district will be following, and we will be supporting through that.

But again, through the month of February and into early March, our primary goal is to listen.

And so we're hosting these sessions.

We're happy to work with you all uh to have additional listening sessions or go to additional meetings if you wish.

If you all was to host your own meeting, we're happy to show up and support that as well.

And so uh again, our main goal is to collect feedback, to collect comments concerns, but also uh hopefully positive ideas about how these could be uh sites for opportunity for what people might feel like they lack in their neighborhoods.

So I I'm gonna I threw the through the chair to the team here, um listening sessions while they are okay.

There are plenty abandoned schools in many of our neighborhoods, and I I just think we gotta be very real with people about the money that it actually takes to run these schools, even with the process that the state has laid out.

Who has the money?

You know, I I think I and that I think that's the uh for me is we have to be very upfront with people about the dollars that it will take to even operate these buildings, and very few people, if any, have those dollars today or even in the near future, hence why many of the abandoned buildings, if you have them in in your school in your area, why they don't come to fruition because people just do not have literally the millions of dollars of capital investment needed to repurpose and actually operate and maintain a building.

Hence, that's the one of the reasons why we have to consolidate because we don't have the dollars.

So I you know, while, like I said, the listening session, you know, that's cool, but I just can we start from a real place with people like be for real, you know what I'm saying?

And when you do have the resources, it's going to be a level of prioritization for all of the communities that are experiencing the same thing.

Somebody gonna go first and somebody gonna be last, right?

And even trying to understand what that process could look like, right?

And so this is one of the things where if I were offering a suggestion based on um the map of you know who may be suffering the most loss.

I don't know what that is and what that looks like, but based on that, maybe there can be a prioritization of that community to prioritize development there.

You see what I'm saying?

So I I mean again, it's uh some type of unifying process that people can understand if I'm making sense with what I am saying, but I think no, I know from my experience in four years, based on my experience, people are exhausted of going to listening sessions, talking, talking, talking, but we do not have it coupled with the doing.

Take it for what it's worth.

Okay, and then um I did have um uh how much time I gotta uh um to the team here.

Um I I do want to just talk through just I would just encourage just communities, like stop waiting for somebody to give you a plan from your neighborhood.

It is really important.

Uh I'm encouraged.

I know in my neighborhood, uh, we have like the heel initiative, the health expanded access to learning, where there's work being done by community groups to even think through where Mary B.

Martin is merging into Way Park.

We know we're gonna be welcoming the uh scholars from Mary Mary B.

Bethune into Dale New E.

Morgan.

And so there's intentional work that is happening now to work to bring families together, think of programming, really trying to figure out how to we create expanded learning opportunities at the schools, and again, we're not waiting on the school district.

Well, we love y'all or whatever, but you gotta have a plan for your own people.

You see what I'm saying?

This is offering, take it for what it's worth.

Um and building upon that to be in partnership and to tell the district this is what we want for our families, and how can you help us make this a real thing?

Because we will be understanding because people are doing the analysis when just this morning.

I heard that in our neighborhood, we have 647 scholars who have already missed 18 plus days of school.

647.

That's a problem.

That's on all of us.

That's on all of us.

If you are listening to this, if you go to the school, 640.

We're talking about K through eight.

These are our K through eight babies.

That's crazy.

That's on all of us.

And I don't care about your title, nothing.

We all have to be a part.

If we want to see Cleveland have a different trajectory of success and excellence, we none of us should be sleeping well to when you hear information like this.

So you know, my office, like I say it, we we in in our health neighborhood, we're doing the work that we can to ensure that people know that you are going to have excellence.

Oh, it'd be hard, we be fighting.

But that is the goal, and we actually have a real plan, and and I would encourage other communities um to put forth some real plan that others can you know have buy into that they are part of so that we can truly set our our families up for success.

And I'll leave that there.

Woo!

Look at her.

Thank you.

I just want to respond through the chair to the uh councilwoman.

Thank you for that.

And that you know, that last point that you just made.

I I completely agree.

I mean, we can't the the district can't do it alone.

And so when we think about plans or there, there are already groups and uh organizations that are taking place.

It it helps when um uh we have partners that come alongside of the work because these are all of our babies, and so I I I concur with that and appreciate your statements.

Thank you, Dr.

Morgan.

Um definitely that was great, Councilwoman.

Um past but Kyle is not here.

Recognize Councilman Shaw.

Thank you to the chair.

Uh good afternoon.

I appreciate all of your time.

Uh had a few questions.

Um, but before I um kind of get into some of the um details I was wondering and wanted to focus on, uh I I wanted to, I think, just talk about the bigger picture that I think I've had and trying to understand and I think some of the accountability that we as elected officials have as well.

And you know, I I hear um Councilman Palency uh talking about how in the time frame we've lost this enrollment.

I I also do not lose sight of the fact that in the same time frame we've lost over two-thirds of our population as well.

And I think that's just as much an indictment of the elected officials from the mayor's administration to the city council over the last few decades, as much as it is of CMSD.

And there's limited things that CMSD can control within its four walls.

Um there's a lot of things that we can control that goes on in the city.

So there really has to be a bigger comprehensive approach.

And once again, for me, it's uh understanding of what is the economic system here that is incentivizing the exploitation of our neighborhoods.

That's led us to this point, and how do we start making investments in our neighborhoods that can get us out of it?

So that's really gonna be my focus.

But I want to start talking some more details of um as you were going through the presentation, um, Dr.

Morgan through the chair.

Um I had a few questions that I jotted down to a few.

Uh we'll just entertain just um what right now, what is the average commute time for students who are using public transit.

I can get that for you.

I know when I first came here, there was we did some work on that.

I actually rolled public transit in my first year with some some students and understanding that.

Uh and the student I rolled with actually uh uh graduated from Garrett Morgan, I think he was a 2025 uh class, uh in the 2025 class, but he was a junior at the time, got up at like five in the morning and had to take two or three buses to get over from Garrett Morgan.

In our most recent analysis we did through Building Brighter Futures, there are most students attend schools either within their neighborhood or within the side of the city that they're on, even at the high school level.

But I can get the commute times and also our most updated data.

Uh, because I anecdotally, I remember having that, and we may want to say, like, oh, many of our kids are taking four and five buses, but I want to give you the the average or the majority.

There are some that are.

Um, but I do want to give you that most recent.

But I'll follow up with you on that.

Yeah, thank you.

And you know, through the chair to the CEO, that yeah, that's helpful.

Um, once again, my perspective and my desire is to start understanding, okay, what are the other investments we should also be looking at as a city um into public transit for our students?

Because once again, these are this is a cost of poverty that we're asking children to face and as elected officials, that's not lost on me.

Um I was also wondering how how many students are you expecting to opt out of CMSD in this process?

Do you have any um projections of kind of what to expect?

We don't have a projection.

I will say in any given year, we roughly retain about uh you know 70, 75% of our of our students in any given year.

Um and that's just you know, on average what what we do.

Um what we are looking at now, we are tracking uh retention.

One of the reasons why we have these in enrollment targets is you can see our choice enrollment is open is up when we're looking at how many students are choosing, uh, eighth grade applicants are up, new to CMSD are up.

We are closely monitoring those students in building brighter future schools because there could be that students are saying we just want to go to our welcoming school, we're gonna do that, or they may not be.

They could be saying I want another school, they could be saying I'm going out of the system.

And so during this time in February 27th, it's really important for us to know because that's gonna be the best option at this point that we will know.

In any given year, we don't even typically have a process like this.

We just wait until the fall when they show up, or you know, uh, we don't even formally do a registration process um for uh current students, they just roll over.

And so uh there are some benefits to this because it allows us to plan and understand um and also allow for that staffing uh pieces.

But I'm gonna take that question more specifically because I think that that's an interesting question in terms of what we're projecting um out, but our best estimate will be based on what we're getting in the choice enrollment window.

That makes sense.

Thank you.

Um I I understand you know the desire to have uh more students in each class, especially because we've seen these declining enrollment numbers to have you know resources for the teachers as well and the staff to work with each other.

Um with the new numbers going forward, um, what is the expected student teacher ratio?

So uh through Building Brighter, uh our plan was built around our contractual class size.

And so I I don't have that exact number in terms of where it goes up.

I think contractually can go up to 29, maybe 30.

And so within this, that's the contractual uh class size.

Now, most uh most classes now are either overcrowded because there's only one teacher per grade level.

So you have some classes that are way overcrowded because there's no place to put the kids in that that class level, or they're so under enrolled.

Like I was just looking.

This is a celebration, but 100% of Alfred A.

Binish eighth graders have made a choice.

So I'm proud of that, and that's in central.

100% of them have made a choice for high school.

They got my email.

They got my email.

Yeah, and so I'm I'm excited about that and knowing that for Bennish, and that's a school that's closing, but they're only 13.

They're 13 eighth graders at Finish right now.

13.

13.

So I'll say that again, 13.

100% of them have, but 13.

So 13 to 1, that's an awesome class size ratio.

That's right.

Private education class ratio.

Um, we're not tracking 13 to 1.

Uh, we're tracking those contractual limits.

And so I just want to be realistic about some of those things we see.

We also have class sizes where that teacher that came to the um to the board meeting earlier this year, uh, art teacher uh John Adams, who says she has 44 students in one of her sections.

And it's because they're not enough electives currently at John Adams and kids just take art uh, you know, and not just, but it's one of the few electives that they have options, so that the you know the class size is really large.

And so those are the the drawbacks.

And when we say it hurts the teacher experience, it happens with building brighter.

Um but we're tracking for the contractual limit.

I can give you the exact numbers for those contractual limits.

Um, but that that's what building brighter futures is uh planned on.

That helps, thank you.

Um wondered also one of the last questions I had um Dr.

Morgan through the chair was um talking about the teacher experience, and um, you know, I know we have uh teachers union that's uh had has just gone through the contract negotiations as it stands now.

What is the average teacher pay and how does it compare to the surrounding public schools?

Are we are we retaining our teachers?

Um what's that look like?

Yeah, I'll get you the average.

I will say, so we just did part of one of the things we wanted to look at was a a state audit, and when we looked at it, our pay uh uh we we pay um uh higher in terms of our teachers uh comparatively to other systems, not only just locally within the state.

So we're we're on par with that.

Um and our negotiations each year have helped, well, not each year, every time we come up from it has is helped um maintain and be pretty competitive uh for that.

So um, but I can get you the the specifics of that in terms of what the pay is, but it is it is above.

That was one of the areas that they they looked at and said it's above, um, as in other areas where they said it's above.

Um, but I'll I'll get you exactly what that average is.

No, thank you.

And I I hope that continues to stay true.

We want to make the investments not only in our students, but also our teachers, because we know they're the first line of defense and that care for the students.

So um that that's much appreciated.

Um I wanted to add a few questions for um the administration through the chair as well about the plan for what's gonna happen afterwards.

So I understand you know that there's these listening sessions, which um I've I've gotten the notice of.

I plan on being there, um letting my residents know about it.

Um just more detailed specific one initially was so I'm actually gonna have three schools that are going to be closing in the new Ward 12, and I think that might be one of the highest ones across the board.

Um, we're gonna have Louisa May Alcott, uh, Mary Church Terrell, and New Tech West that are gonna be closing.

So there's a lot of concern and interest in making sure that these public assets have input and residents around that feel like they're empowered to understand what's going on in their communities.

Um but I saw on on that um pamphlet that went out.

We were referring to New Tech West as Brooklawn.

What was the reason for that?

I haven't heard that yet.

Um, and there was a lot of confusion of if you could just speak to that um through the chair.

Yeah, I I I think that that was the name of the school at one point.

Like that that building was the Brooklawn building, and I'm I okay.

I'm looking like I'm looking at my my some of my uh uh I was gonna say OG staff, but uh my uh my experienced veterans um uh by the um but yes, the the building was called Brooklawn, the Brooklawn building.

I see that yeah, that sparked a lot of confusion.

Uh folks who were wondering, you know, why it wasn't called New Tech West, it took some figuring out.

So um and I wanted to ask about so beyond the listening session, what is there any plan to actually explain to the communities on what are the ways we can use it?

I understand there's restrictions at different levels.

Um has the administration come up with a plan of how we're going to do that public education piece and provide a realistic opportunity for folks to get involved.

So, you know, uh one or two month time frame is just not enough for people to actually understand what their options are to weigh in.

And it sounds like we have a year to actually decide.

Um so could you speak to that to do?

Councilman through the chair, I'd be happy to expand on the process.

And I know I also want to be respectful of your time, so feel free to ask me, continue to ask me follow-up questions if if they generate more ideas uh or thoughts.

Uh I want to be and and also um taking note of councilwoman House Jones's questions about the education side.

Uh, I want to provide a little more detail.

We're we're bringing a lot of development department, development cluster staff to these meetings between the city planning department, community development, department of development, to really talk about what you just said.

Like, what does this process actually look like?

How does this happen?

What are some of the constraints and challenges?

It's not going to be city staff uh lecturing to residents.

We're not having a detailed presentation.

We're having the time for residents to engage with staff.

Uh cabinet members are also being invited, so department directors and chiefs will be there as their schedules allow to engage with residents and answer questions about that process.

We want these to be conversations that people have uh with staff to ask those types of questions so we can provide that information.

It's difficult to communicate it in a format like like this or a format where you might have saw the town hall where there's a presentation.

It's much easier, and we we find it we can connect and have more nuanced conversations in in a conversational format.

And so um it's not necessarily meant to be a passive, just talk to us and we'll write everything down, even though we do want to gather that that feedback.

Um we also want it to be conversations between city staff, elected officials like yourselves uh and residents to to have that conversation.

And so what we're doing is we're we're compared to previous partnerships with the school district about site reuse.

Um we haven't done it quite this way before.

We've gone out to the community first to hear what are your thoughts, what are your concerns?

Part of that is lessons learned from previous work around reuse and reuse of old or or vacant sites.

Uh and part of that is because of the opportunities that these sites specifically represent.

Um there wasn't necessarily this focus, but I think in in previous reuse opportunities because of the nature of those buildings and the resources available to developers to other partners that they've tended towards historic uh renovations, housing conversions, things like that.

Um what we see as an opportunity with these sites is much more flexibility in terms of of what they could be used for.

Uh we're not we don't want to communicate to anyone, and we especially want to use this opportunity even today to say we don't want our expectation is for any sites that would be repurposed that they'd be torn down and rebuilt as as housing of any kind or other types of uses.

Um we want uh opportunities, we want to communicate to to anyone in the community, whether you're a developer, an organization, that if you see yourself fitting into this space in whatever way, please respond if there is a request for for qualifications, request for proposals, because uh that's what these sites represent.

These schools are some of them are relatively new, some of them have been renovated, some of them are smaller, some of them are larger.

Uh and so we want to be as as open-minded as possible.

And I want to be want to be really clear too that that you know, we're we're planners, we're development professionals, we're city staff, we have a lot of thoughts and ideas.

And so uh we're not here to say, or even at these meetings to say we're finding as many developers as we can, and that's the goal, it's really not.

We're we want to find the best uses possible, and what we're committing to, at least for now, and and this is an evolving process, and we want to be as transparent as possible, that we will follow up with the process.

And so, what I mean by that is we will have these sessions, these these meetings through February through early March, and we will follow up on what the process looks like next.

So uh we want to be respectful of the board, we want to be respectful of state law in terms of what has to happen for these properties.

Um, but we also want to be clear with the community that we will come back and let you know what we heard and what that looks like in terms of what sites would potentially go out, what sites would go out, what that process actually looks like, what the feedback was that we heard in a consolidated format.

Did we get it right?

Are we missing anything?

And why we're starting early is because we want to have enough time to follow up with people.

And so again, our earnest effort here is to try to be as honest and transparent as possible to gather as much input as possible.

And this won't be the first or last time yourselves or residents in your wards are going to hear from the school and the city in terms of of how we want to share this process with them and have it be co-led with residents.

So I hope you see that and and hopefully we follow through in those expectations.

Oh, I appreciate that.

And I know I'm a little over time, just wanted to uh briefly wrap up, and you know, I look forward to that, and um my residents do as well.

And you wanna, I think what you said, opportunity, I think is the exact word.

Um, this is I think a generational opportunity for us to invest in our neighborhoods and to make sure that we get public asset, public control over these public assets.

Um, and you know, we've seen historically how when we've rushed these things to the market, uh, how we can turn these quickly into more exploitative things, but how can we actually make the long-term investment?

So we're not just looking at the short-term profit gain, but saying, look, what can actually center these communities and provide these as an anchor institutions, and that's how we should be looking at.

So I really appreciate that.

Final um request would be that um the data that you guys are collecting through this process.

Um, I think me and I'm sure my council members uh would appreciate that that being shared with us as well, so that we can also understand what is it that the residents are asking for.

Absolutely, we'd be happy to do that.

Thank you, Councilman.

And the chair recognizes next um Councilwoman Gray, Hudson, Councilman Harsh and Conwell.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you for uh see um you know and thank you for coming to the table to open you know to be open and receptive so we could understand the Brighton Future process, which uh I'd had several meetings with you already.

So we knew the process was happening.

So um to say the least, times are changing.

Times are changing.

So I know this uh process has to be difficult for you and your team to get this far.

So to say the least, um, we can't keep comparing what was and what's now, because I actually think you took the initiative to do the harder work than the other CEOs.

Because this should have been done a long time ago.

I'm just saying this because I am a product of the uh public school system too.

I am from East Tech before my young colleague over here that brags about himself and never recognized me at all.

So say the least okay.

At the hallway dedication.

Okay.

You better give it to me now.

I guess you're gonna be able to do that.

Stop ignoring me at the table as you do all the time.

Oh, but I came before him.

Okay, so I'm gonna put that out there, councilman's car.

Okay, we East Tech.

Yes, we come from East Tech too, but I'm not, but I'm from the O East Tech, and we were the second class that graduated, a full class from the uh East Tech in 1973, and we had a full class of 575 students.

Now to say that, I noticed in your uh uh I noticed in your um in your presentation that you started with uh 1976.

So that's when so that's when the problems start occurring.

Under that, under that, all the classes preceded that, we had over 500 students graduating every year.

And East Tech had to agree with councilman star.

East Tech was the tactical school, because a lot of my peers who have recently started retiring from the 40, 50, 60 year old jobs, they left East Tech with a leg of skill, went right into the workforce, was trained and living a great, better fruit of lifestyle from going to East Tech.

So during that time in the urban community, we had that support.

Whether we were aware of it, and we lived in an urban community, that we did not recognize that we were poor.

A lot of the urban schools and the students graduated with honors, went to college, didn't go to college, attained labor jobs, and been successful from a public school system.

So yes, over time that system started decreasing.

And I see that in your presentation started in 1996.

But I can say this.

So that's difficult.

So I can't imagine how difficult this decision that you become the CEO had to do it.

And it should have been considered from other CEOs along the process.

Okay, so and the kids are in the system.

I uh support them.

The school that I had was Charles Dickens when it was Ward 4, and I visit Charles Dickens up chair to the CEO.

I visited Charles Dickens quite a bit.

I uh joined the uh the principal that was there before, uh Miss Gray Phillips, who's there now.

Uh I had a great relationship with her, and uh and uh I uh uh visited the schools.

I love the kids.

I embraced them and uh uh and learned about what was going on in that particular only the only public school system in Ward 4, and I embraced that uh once I realized that, and then I also embraced a Leo uh Leo, or was my community uh engagement person, Miss Director.

I don't want to pronounce your name and correct Primers, she embraced me too.

Uh, we had a lot of meetings together, emails constantly, where they assist me to understand uh the agenda of Charles Dickens and how we embrace, and I'm just gonna put this out here for all of us.

We also embrace and work with Home Depot and Home Depot, you know, um donated a wash and dryer for the kids uh to have only when they came to school untidy because the wash and dryer that was there at the school was for the school, Lennon, those type of things.

But I came into the school with Miss Gray Phillips, and we were just having conversation, and to see some of the kids come to school untidy, that was uh concerning to uh to us.

And it was just a conversation about how we can take care of the kids, keep them clean, mindful, because that's to make a difference when the kid comes to school clean, fed, they can think better, be better, and uh, and uh um and um and be relatable and not being assist being bullied.

So that conversation came up.

How can we take care of that?

And we were just talking, and I went to Home Depot.

I know that either Home Depot or Leo's give donation to schools.

I just went to Home Depot down in the steel yard, had a communication with Nicole, the community engagement person, and we just I just had an open conversation with her.

She said, yes, we can do that.

So she said, let me investigate.

I went back to Leo, gave Leo her card.

I stepped back, and the process happened.

And it happened within under six months.

Nicole called uh Leo and uh Primer Grant, they were all on the emails.

I'm sorry, but they took care of that, and sure enough, uh Home Depot donated a second washing and dryer to Charles Dickens.

So doing that, we have to step up to what we can do to assist.

And I like what I like what our colleague Mike said that we're not over the schools.

We can't make final decisions.

So, but we are here to support not only as councils, but as parents, because a lot of us are parents.

A lot of us has uh nieces and nephews in school, and we support them, and we support our uh parents.

So to understand what we can do to assist to help the process.

And this is the most difficult process that you got in the seat that you had to take care of and make that decision.

Whether uh whether our parents uh understood it or like it or not, it has to happen because we don't have enough kids in our schools now to um you know to operate.

And uh and we have to do something.

The schools have not been maintained uh properly uh from the over the years, and they just became an assist of too deplorable for the kids to have you know, you know, be safe in the schools.

We see it, we can't do anything about it, and as my colleague uh House Jones said, you know, where's the money?

Where's the money?

There's no money to do that, so we have to understand this is a difficult process of the agenda that you presented to us.

We have to embrace what's going on today.

Times are changing, and we have to embrace and understand how we're gonna keep educating the kids that we do have in the city in Cleveland that we can support and give them a great educational system that's gonna be different than what we had when we had uh when we had what we had, but we got through it, and most of us at this table, probably public uh school system, and look at us, we're council people in our own neighborhoods that we still hear.

So I'm just I I don't have a lot of questions for you.

I just want to let you know that by me being in the meetings, you called the meetings and and you kept counsel abreast of what's going on.

I know this is difficult, and whether we like it or not, and uh we lose in schools that we don't want to lose.

That was productive.

Things happen, you know, decrease happened in our school system, and we couldn't stop it.

We just couldn't stop it.

And I think that Mike, I I feel his passion all across every time he speaks him and Conwell, when they speak, they are passionate, passionate, they speak for all of us.

But the point of the but the point of the matter is, you know, it's the money.

There's no money, and I'm gonna uh close this on my end.

Give me just one more second to close.

I am myself been working with um working with the, I think I brought it to your attention just for a minute, that I've been working with community development, the schools that already been closed prior to the 18 schools that are, you know, you know, that are closing now, the other schools been sitting for as as councilman star said, 15, 20 years in our community.

And I've been working uh with uh community development to uh incorporate uh Audubon and Ma Auburn school to turn them into housing, single veterans and also to family units.

And unfortunately, we have four or five different developers that I've been working with over the year and a half uh ready to do uh uh you know, ready to do their proposal and send it through.

But unfortunately, what I found out today that I don't know which house bill that passed uh uh in in the state house, whereas they eliminated the tax credits and the historical tax credits for these developers to get to help uh uh get these schools, you know, for the state to put out the RFP.

And uh and that has been the hell up since last year.

And I think a couple of buildings was able, a couple of developers able to get that on the last tell of it.

But now, since that House bill uh uh passed that against developers to get the tax credit and historic tax credit.

It's gonna be difficult for us to invest in those schools that can be turned into something uh uh economical housing for singers, veterans, and family to move into them.

Uh uh, maybe that's something that can be looked at because as we ask, what is going to happen to these schools now since they're gonna be closed?

How they're gonna invest more in our community because we don't want those 18 buildings sitting.

But since I'm in Ward 3, Mound School's gonna be turned into the art schools.

Yeah, going to turn to our school, and that was one of the schools now in Ward 3, and Charles Dickens gonna be kept as well, correct?

And Charles Dickens gonna be kept as well, correct?

And that's going to be in Ward Two.

But saying the leaks, we need to know every avenue that we can also assist to say not only the buildings that we're sitting for years, but also you know, the buildings that's gonna be closed and what we're gonna do with them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman, for those wonderful statements.

As a proud East Tech graduate yourself.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh definitely, I believe we recognize we have Hudson Arsh, Carwell, and I believe we have two people from the audience from the view in public.

So Councilwoman Hudson?

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh, through the chair to Dr.

Morgan.

Uh it's nice to see you here today.

And um, so there are two uh elementary schools that are closest to where I live.

One of them you know is Marion Seltzer Elementary School, which I had the privilege of working on the redesign with you and your team.

Um, the other is Marion Seltzer Elementary.

I'm sorry, is Louisa Mayalcott Elementary School, uh, which is in Councilman Shaw's ward Ward 12.

Um, one of the concerns I've heard from neighbors about the closing of Louisa May Alcott is the last K through five school, I believe, in the city.

And uh there are a number of students who attend that school who have IEPs or individualized education plans.

Um, what is the plan through Building Brighter Brighter Futures to deal with students who have IEPs?

Thank you for that question.

It's so great to uh see you in in uh this capacity and work with you in this capacity.

Um so yeah, Alcott was we we heard a lot from the Alcott community during uh phase two of the Building Brighter Futures uh plan, and it was a school I went out and visited because I was hearing so much about it.

I've been out there before, but I said I just had to go out there and just see some of the things.

And some of the the uh teachers and also uh parent representatives, I worked with them in other avenues.

So I had known them, they had come to parent meetings, and so when I was hearing their passion, I said I worked with them before, so I had to come out there and see what was taking place.

And it is a very uh beautiful and special community.

Um walked into a music classroom there where there's a music teacher that is doing great work.

I did uh you know, visibly see some students who you know have um uh disabilities or different challenges uh either physically and then some they have mentioned also with some learning uh as well.

And so it was really important during our time that for our students and families uh or families that have uh students that have an individualized education plan um or physical disabilities that we were working with them to understand what their options are.

And so um right after the vote took place, uh we had um communication that went out to our families.

We also uh hosted um different meetings that we had with the families, and those are ongoing uh sessions that we're doing.

And then also uh we communicated our plans for our students.

Um depending on what classification the student is designated within their individualized education plan.

Uh, there are some students that receive like push-in services so they get that tier one instruction.

Um for students who get that tier one instruction and uh maybe get us uh a support or aid that pushes in, the majority of students will were able to go to the school, the receiving school or the welcoming school that um was designated for them.

In some cases, if there were certain needs that the student needed in terms of their uh a classroom specification or things that the building needed based on what they needed, um, there were other recommendations that were made from our special education department and enrollment department, and we ensured that families knew what those choices were, as well as the other choices within the system where they could choose.

Um so we really wanted to make sure that this was a um a population, like all of our population that we had a lot of care for, um, but that there was communication, and we're still continuing to do that ongoing communication.

I know our special education uh department that is led by Jessica Wiseman, uh, they are tracking very closely the enrollment and also the communication that is taking place with families to ensure families understand their options.

Um, and then thinking specifically of Louisi Mel May Alcott, because it is our only K-5 and grade configuration was a uh a big, you know, uh thing that I heard earlier on in my listening tour.

Um part of phase zero when I first came in.

I did a listening tour throughout the entire city, and I did hear from people that said, why don't you go back to K-5 schools and then middle schools and then high schools?

Uh and it was something we explored.

Uh it didn't poll really well because when we did uh you know some just different uh polls when we were um getting ready to do our levees.

So that was something that families weren't necessarily that excited about anecdotally, I heard, but I also did not hear that that was something across the board that families wanted, and also some of our partners who had mentioned things that didn't uh work in the past.

Um so it was something we didn't explore, and also our buildings, we don't have the buildings necessarily that would be able to fill up the enrollment of those schools.

So it was something we couldn't do in this time frame.

It doesn't mean something we won't explore in the future.

I do believe that we need an education model that's consistent across the board.

Um so I don't want schools where there's some schools that has this great level and some schools that have other great levels because it becomes hard when we're supporting the curriculum and instruction across the board.

Uh so I am proud that through Building Brighter Futures we'll have uh majority pre-K8, so only be one of our elementary schools that doesn't have pre-K, but otherwise all the other ones will have pre-K and they'll go up to eight, and then we'll have our nine and 12 programs, so we'll be able to support them.

Um, but that the uh Alcott family, as well as all of our uh families across our our system are our um great uh families with great uh communication, and we want to make sure that we're uh serving them well as they head over to Joseph Gallagher.

The other thing I'll share really briefly is there was a question as to why wouldn't we choose seltzer?

Uh, because we know that the new location of seltzer is actually going to be a little closer.

And maybe once we get there, that will be the case.

Um, right now, as you know, where seltzer is at, and I was just there.

It was one of the stops I made on the the first day we opened uh last week after the the deep freeze and was welcoming students there.

Uh but it's on it's a little bit further um from where Alcott is right now.

It's sitting at a little bit off of 65th and Lorraine.

So that isn't the best option right now.

Um in the future, uh, once the new Celter opens up, that may be a better option.

Um, but by that time, the students who are currently at Al Cott uh will be you know in high school by that time, most of them will be.

So thank you.

Um, just to just to clarify, so will all um of the 45 pre-K through eight schools um be able to accommodate students with an IEP?

Oh, yeah, all students to yeah, every single by law.

Uh if a student has an IEP, uh, we have to uh provide those accommodations, and every school has to.

Now it depends on the the specification and the the needs and the accommodations that are in there and what is in there.

Not every school can accommodate every um uh every accommodation that is within there, but all of our schools must accommodate students with uh who learn differently.

Thank you.

Um I have one more question.

Um Ward 11 is um one of the most um diverse wards in the city.

We have um students who speak many languages.

So um in a similar vein, I'm wondering about the ESL program and um the effect that building brighter futures has on your ESL programs.

Yeah, very similar to our students with IEPs.

Uh, we have students who uh receive um English uh language support, uh, and we have a multilingual department that supports them.

Um and there are um certain schools where there are higher populations uh of support where we have you know FTEs or teachers specifically designated for them, or uh sometimes we have push-in services to support them.

So it's in a very similar uh vein.

Um, our special education department and our multilingual department sits under the student supports department um in our academics team.

So both of them are supported by the same uh leader, um, Jose Gonzalez, and um you know, in the same way we had those services for our uh families who have students with IEPs.

We also had fan uh meetings for students um who uh are either either English language learners or need uh multilingual support.

Thank you.

And one other uh thing, Chair that I wanted to answer it was a question that um uh councilwoman House Jones and uh asked about just the distribution of funds.

I do have those percentages uh of our entire budget, about 11% is federal funding, uh 31% is state funding, 50%, yeah.

I'll say it a little bit slower.

Uh 11% is federal funding, 31% is state funding, 53% is local funding, and 5% is other um, and those could be grants, other things.

Can I have a follow-up question?

Yes.

Thank you.

Um, through the chair to the CEO.

Can you talk about um can you give the historical context?

I know that is what it is today.

It would be very enlightening if you actually shared that information since even just doing the the milestones five years ago, 10 years ago.

Because what people will find is the reason why there's been an increased share of our local tax increase has been increasing due to the decreases from the federal and in particular the state level.

This is the narrative and direction we actually need to share with people.

That is why the press is so hard on property taxes, because it has been tax shifting because of the regressive state tax state tax policies, right?

But if you all could really bring that up to to to share, this is important when we are talking to people while people are always blaming you know what's happening at the city.

People don't care.

You're not doing your job, not realizing the city of Cleveland actually has been shouldering the burden because we actually care about our children.

We we believe in public education at the same time where we have a federal and a state government that do not care about public education.

Please share that information so that people can actually know what is happening.

So that then they would might happen to join us in partnership, register to vote, exercise their right to vote.

As right now, we actually will be voting for a new leader of the state of Ohio.

And for people that care about the city of Cleveland and schools, my oh, by jolly, it would be wonderful if we had somebody in the governor's mansion who actually cared and will invest in public education.

But if people don't know this information, it is easy when you are dealing with the hardships to blame the people right in your face and not understand in the full context of who has led to this time.

Thank you.

Yeah, we'll share that historical context.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr.

Morgan, and thank you, Consulwan Miles Jones as well as Consulwoman Hudson.

Well, Councilman Harsh.

Uh thank you, Chairman.

I appreciate the opportunity to uh have this conversation today.

I appreciate you bringing Dr.

Morgan to the table for us.

Um I've often said that as a Cleveland City Councilman with children in CMSD, it's my most frustrating experience.

I can't vote for the board.

We don't even get to approve appointments to the board.

Um it's complete mayoral control, and uh it's it's it's been a source of frustration to say the least.

And Dr.

Morgan, I I'm not enviable of your position through the chair.

I think when we first when you first came on board in Cleveland, I told you that you have the hardest job in this city.

I believe that your heart job is actually harder than the mayor's.

Um dealing with urban education and the difficulties that urban school districts present, I believe, is confronting 500 years of history uh that has not been going our way uh or going the way for a lot of our scholars and our students and our kids.

Um but this is personal.

Uh, these aren't the our babies figuratively, uh, these are my babies.

These are my actual flesh and blood in the school, um, and their friends that I've grown to uh know and and and care about as well.

Um and I will say off the top that uh my students uh my kids get an excellent education at CMSD.

I could not be more proud of the education that they receive, the knowledge they come home with, the work assignments, they are all in music, they all have instruments.

Um I do know a number of friends though who pulled their children from CMSD after eighth grade, and I will say it's a backhanded compliment to let you know that all of those eighth grade students who went to CMSD from K through eight who went into the well-known parochial schools in the area, all achieved uh honor role within their first semester because the education they received at CMSD prepared them at the same level as every other school district in the area.

And I I I put that out there because I think it is something to be proud of, even though we weren't able to retain those students.

Uh I myself went to public school, and I would wager that the majority of the people in this room probably went to public schools and graduated from public schools.

And I would also say that everybody in this room is now doing very well and is a successful adult uh with a public education.

I would then even go a little bit further to guess that most of us went to a middle class school district.

The majority of us probably didn't.

I know lots of people that graduated from CMSD that are doing very well.

Um but my public school graduated 500 kids, uh, 95% college admission rate.

Uh they're scattered across the country doing wonderful things.

Um, a couple of us uh didn't go to college and and still manage to get out there into the world.

Uh and I bring this up because the success of public schools is unparalleled in the history of America, everywhere except where you have dense poverty.

Public schools in the suburbs are fantastic.

Public schools all over this country, 90% of public school students are doing wonderful throughout America.

It's only where we have dense pockets of poverty where we really really struggle.

And that can be urban poverty in Cleveland, it can be rural poverty.

Poverty, and I would say high minority population.

High what?

High minority population.

High minority population, which also tend to be overlapping in America.

Um I know that in my school district, we were mostly a middle class school district, and we had a population of middle of uh lower income kids who we were able to absorb and rise them up, and I can tell from experience and from a lot of people that I've talked to that a big concern amongst middle class parents is that if the school district is overwhelmingly low income, that their kids are gonna be lost in that shuffle and be dragged down instead of dragging up a few kids.

And that's why a lot of parents choose to send their kids to parochial schools and other schools, and we all know people that do that and understand it.

It's it's really really hard.

Um, also for for the benefit of anybody, uh, I before this job I worked for the teachers union.

I'll put my cards on the table.

I was an organizer for the American Federation of Teachers.

I organized charter school teachers, spent a year getting to know the charter school teachers and their experiences, and and it's one of the reasons why I'm not a fan of charter schools.

Um my wife is a school teacher at CMSD, as is my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and I think they have a combined experience of over 50 years of classroom experience, most of it this century.

Um it's not from a place of ignorance that I speak on public schools, and it's not from a lack of personal experience.

I do wonder through the chair to Dr.

Morgan, how many students last year were held back in CMSD and asked to repeat their grade?

I can get that for you.

Yeah.

Okay.

While while while I go on, if somebody from your team could look that up, I'm sure it's a number that sits on a computer and a spreadsheet that's readily available, the number of students asked to repeat their grade last year.

Okay.

That's something we regularly track, but we'll get in.

We don't have someone from academics here, but we'll get that.

Okay, well, somebody I hope watching, because I don't want the people that are watching this to have to dig this up later because I think I know what the answer is.

There is something about the third grade reading guarantee, the promise, the expectation that students have to learn to read until third grade, and then after third grade, they have to read to learn.

Um, through the chair to Dr.

Morgan, what percentage of third grade students uh achieved proficiency in their third grade reading exam last year?

Yeah, I think we were roughly around on that proficiency.

I think it was like 33% around this.

Yes, yeah.

That's my expectation.

Um, and I would argue that and suspect that we did not hold back two-thirds of the school district.

Um, and this I think is really what I want to talk about.

There is something that we've heard called the bigotry of low expectations.

And I worry that if we don't start holding our kids to our standards and our expectations, and we pass them because they have an IEP or because we're gonna give them extra uh attention the next year, but we don't actually ever get them up to speed, then we are just pushing them off and shuffling them into an adult world where they are not gonna have the opportunity to succeed with the kids who graduate from the public schools on the other side of the street in some in many, many cases.

And and I worry greatly about this because when I ask parents who take their kids out of CMSD why, they tell me one of two things.

It's always one of two things.

Academic rigor isn't there or safety, security issues.

Those are the two issues that I always hear.

I ask every parent that pulls their kids why.

And it's one of those two every single time.

And I know that I've I've had this dream of grade 3.5.

Grade 3.5 is the grade you go into if you didn't pass the third grade reading guarantee and you need to go back and try again.

It cuts your graduation in half.

Half go into fourth grade, half go into 3.5, where they get the intense rigor that they need and get a chance at fourth grade a year afterwards, so that they're not left behind.

I worry that no matter what we do with buildings and what we do with student classroom size, if we don't address the very real fact that students are not learning at the rate that we expect, and all we're doing is reinventing the wheel, or dare I say, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

And and that's what bothers me the most about the school district in Cleveland.

I know that we have great high schools, I know that we've got great grade schools, but we don't have enough, and I worry that if we don't start upholding expectations, we're not gonna get there.

I do have actual questions though.

So I appreciate your indulgence.

Um currently there are about 17,000 students enrolled in charter schools in Cleveland.

It's about half the decline that we've seen in the last 20 years.

We've got 34 kids left in Cleveland, 31, whatever.

About 17,000 are in charter schools.

Um so it's not just the case that people stopped having babies.

We've we've lost uh one third of the city, and then I don't even know what the parochial school numbers are.

I I I was only able to pull it I I have the total, so we are probably about 36,000.

I think there are 57,000 students, school age kids in the Cleveland, inclusive of charter, parochial everything.

That sounds right, and then the rest are in parochial in the charter.

Yeah, but then 240 schools.

So still when looking, I was just talking with someone from Florida in Broward, where they have uh like 240,000 students, had about 40 high schools.

We have 31 high schools for 35,000.

So I just want to let you know, even per mass here, we still are holding the majority of share, but still not enough to go around for the amount of schools we have.

Okay, and uh thank you, Dr.

Morgan.

And through the chair, I hope that your team is grabbing that number of children that were held that were asked to repeat their grade last year.

I'm coming back to that.

Okay, okay, okay, great.

Um of the reasons I despise charter schools is that they are allowed to reject students.

They are allowed to softly tell the parents that their kids don't belong here and that there's a better fit for them at some other school and that they're not gonna be allowed to enroll.

And public schools cannot do that.

We must accept all of our children, all of our students have to have a place in public school.

But if those charter schools were to collapse financially or academically, as many of them already are, would CMSD be able to absorb 17,000 new kids if those charter schools were to shut down through the chair?

Currently, right now?

Yeah, the 17,000 kids, the 15,000 kids that are currently enrolled in charter schools in the city of Cleveland, if those charter schools shut down because they have no legal requirement to actually offer education, and those kids were to bounce back into CMSD, would we be able to absorb them?

Um, you know, in terms of the buildings that we have now, uh you know, potentially, but not with the plan that we're we're going to do, but we still have buildings that are still around.

So yeah.

Uh I mean, we we've always, in terms of what we have always had to do, we have to educate the kids that walk across.

So whether that is staff up, do the you always have to figure it out.

Okay.

Um through the chair, one point of information that I'd like that uh Dr.

Morgan to get, and no, it's not gonna be on hand.

Uh I'm curious.

Uh we know the number of kids that are enrolled in east side versus west side schools.

I'd like to know that the percent the where the kids live.

Um there is a perception in old Brooklyn that a lot of the kids that go to ro roads uh are from the east side.

I don't know if it's true or not.

I know that a lot of kids do actually live in the area, but I'd like to know overall, we got 10,000 kids enrolled on the west side, 9,000 enrolled on the east side in schools.

The population itself, where do they break down in terms of where they live?

In the the the area.

So we have that.

Yeah, I'd like to get that number.

Um because it leads me into oh, uh another question through the chair.

I know we got into this a little bit, but I didn't quite hear the number.

How many um principals, administrative folks were dismissed as a result of the uh closing of schools?

And I just have one more question after this, Mr.

Chair.

Uh displays, I'll get you the whole number.

Uh we have principals that were, we have APs that were, and then we just did the deans and campus coordinators, and we're about to uh uh do central office budgeting.

So about 50?

Uh it's above, uh above, above.

Above.

Okay.

Um, last question then.

Uh in terms of reutilizing new schools, which is why Mr.

Moss, I believe, here is sitting here.

Um Mr.

Moss said that you uh didn't have any plans already set up, but uh Dr.

Morgan said that the committee's been working on this for months.

So uh I would like to ask um what state laws factor into how we can reuse schools.

I know that we're supposed to offer some to charters and give them the opportunity.

So through the chair, could you let me know what guidelines dictate the actions that we can take and and and the options that we do have?

I mean, yeah, uh I'll start.

I mean, state law uh one uh is is is really important um in terms of looking at the state law and then also our board uh policy and governance.

Um I would say that those are two uh major factors.

Um then but what are the state laws?

I mean, what like more specifically?

So I think more so for clarify the question is what is in place that requires to have to offer the buildings to charter schools first, as opposed to getting rid of them.

Or are there things we can't do?

Are there just like blanket laws like we can't just bulldoze tomorrow?

Is there laws that we can't bulldoze?

Yeah, there are lots of yeah, restrictions on that, and those are state law, you know, you have to.

And what are those restrictions through the chair is what I'm asking?

I mean, we can get those more specifically for you, but there are some that actually talks about you know who um won the timeline that is needed, who has rights first.

Um there are also laws around um, like I said, we work with the Ohio Facilities um uh commission, um, that there are uh policies regarding um, you know, depending on how the buildings were funded, what could be uh done with them, uh, and those are where we have our segment plans through, of which uh uh what's the planning that's happening with the building, whether it is a new build, whether it is construction that's taking place on it, whether it's demolitions that take place with them, there are all these um regulations that go into that.

And then there's board policy, of course, that the board at the end of the day have the jurisdiction over the the buildings.

Yeah, all I would add to that, and with the extreme clarity that not only am I not a lawyer, I'm not the school district's attorney, I am not an attorney for state uh law regarding school districts, but um what we are aware of that we are looking at both the school district and the city in terms of that state law allows is the the school districts administrative uses and city public uses, so public services like safety, fire, things like that.

And so it's not appropriate.

We we we'd be happy to have a conversation in terms of um with our with with Chief Toon and operations in terms of where we see the city's needs for those types of public services for our neighborhoods and our communities.

Um but I'm again want to reiterate that while we might have uh thoughts or ideas of what our our needs are from whether it's the school district side or the city side for public uses, um, we're really going through this process in terms of gathering feedback from residents.

We we want that information in order to make the best decision, even if we have a notion or a sense of what our needs are, in terms of what that means for the sites themselves, we're going through that process, and you all are very much a part of that, and we want to hear from you too.

Yes, and um Dr.

Morgan, if your staff can send some information over to our staff, um and I think um Ava Cole has got most of those questions you asked.

Um, so she can be able to reach out so we can get that information.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

And did anybody by chance get the number of students that were doing that?

I wanted to respond to that.

So it's really, really important.

And what's really important, and we're aligned to it.

So I don't know if you saw at the beginning of this our board goals.

So for the very first time, we have very rigorous board goals.

You need to see what those are, because I will say this starts with expectations.

And everyone I talk to, it starts with expectations.

Um, when people say, you know, don't close the school or don't um, you know, what's happening at the school is good enough right now.

No, it's not.

So I agree with you in terms of the alignment.

We have work to do.

Where I would argue with, because for years, even when you look at our graduation rates, which improved through the Cleveland plan.

Before the Cleveland plan, we were below 50% in terms of our graduation rate.

It improved.

We're at a place now after the pandemic and went down, we've been growing every year from that.

Students have been held back.

They weren't graduating.

They also weren't proficient.

Holding our kids back, black and brown kids holding them back, has not been something that has inspired inspiration.

So that's not expectations.

Expectations are what's the rigorous curriculum?

Do we have 100% college and career programs in them?

What are we expecting of our kids to say that they actually can finish a program and achieve at a high level?

That's what our board goals are about, and that's where we're holding ourselves to.

Not just holding kids back.

Like I agree, I agree.

I agree that that's part of it, but also part of this.

Their kids have been held back for years, particularly in the black and brown community.

It has not changed the trajectory.

We still have a generation of kids that are not prepared to meet the demands.

And so this time of leveling up, which you have heard we've been talking about leveling up, it's all about our board goals.

And it's all about this work, because now we have the opportunity to have the programs.

The rigorous programs that we expect for our kids, as you mentioned, you know, your your kids are part of our system.

So I'm not speaking directly for for you, but for as we expect for our kids in the state, we expect for them to achieve these high quality college and career programs.

And that's what building brighter futures is about.

And I'll get you that number in terms of what we're doing for holding back, but I'm more concerned about the proficiency rates, which you are too, and how we can actually increase that proficiency rate and actually do the work to move students to our proficiency, get them into school.

If we have 600 something kids and uh councilwoman House Jones, Worth that are chronically absent, and we're not even halfway through the year, that's the work we need to do to level up our expectations.

And Dr.

Dr.

Morgan through the chair, through the chair.

I'm I I understand, but I feel like we're putting the cart in front of the horse.

I'm not talking about high school curriculum.

I'm talking about getting kids at the third grade.

I'm talking about like one, two, three.

Like that's the point where like if we don't have them up the speed by fourth grade, it won't matter what high school they can't quality.

One second, one second, one second.

So just for key context.

One of the things the councilman has talked about when he opened his statement was the third grade reading score.

Yeah.

And making sure we figure out how do we address that issue from the third grade.

If we know that only 35 or 33% of our kids are proficient with reading or ELA, and 80% of them are advancing to the fourth grade, when are they actually getting the help and the resources they needed to be able to advance?

Exactly.

Not talking about the fact that we also have them in K to eight buildings.

So sometimes they might fly under the radar of not getting that skill, and then we find out when they get to high school that they are behind four for five grade.

So that's one of those things.

Well, the reason why I went to start with the board goals, and I get where you're saying I went to thinking about the college and career programs, but college and career programs start with the curriculum you're getting from the moment you get in.

So when we talk about a high quality curriculum, which we implemented, year one I was here, we had a high quality ELA curriculum in all of our schools.

If you look at our board goals, it's early literacy.

We're tracking K through three, exactly what you're doing.

Watch our board meetings.

And you know what where we are?

We're not where we need to be.

But we're tracking what's actually happening in the classroom.

A team of uh uh, our team, we went to Harvard this summer to look at that specific problem of practice.

How can we move students with the high quality curriculum we have?

We know the majority of our teachers, 80% of our teachers were actually implementing the curriculum.

What was happening though was with this high quality curriculum now that we have in all of our schools, we're not doing all the elements.

We're not asking the rigorous questions.

One of the things we're finding out, we're skipping parts of the lesson that actually gets them to that part of the curriculum.

Now, the the problem I tasked our team with when we went to Harvard was what are we doing to actually instill those supports to ensure that's taking place?

That's a leveling up of expectations.

Yes, we do need to start with, you know, the accountability.

And I would put the accountability on myself, which I put very hard on myself, and our team and also our city first before we go with just holding kids back.

And so I agree with you.

There's a lot of alignment.

I want to let you know that we're passionate about it.

Read our board goals and guardrails.

Early literacy is actually where it's at.

College readiness is one of ours, but early literacy is right where it's at.

Our math proficiency is thinking about algebra one, where we're tracking our current fifth graders who are gonna be uh fourth and fifth graders who are gonna be in ninth grade by the time uh we hit this goal.

We're doing this work thinking about the elementary work, but we're holding ourselves accountable to have the high expectations, and it takes all of us to say our kids can do it in the hard work that's happening in the classroom.

Mr.

Chair, I I thank you.

I thank you so much for indulging my time.

I I will simply wrap up this way.

I don't think the 12 years is enough time for kids to be able to achieve what they need to achieve, given the struggles that we have in our community.

And since we can't add grade 13, I think letting kids run through it again is our only option in order to get them more time in the classroom.

Thank you, Councilman Harsh, and thank you, Dr.

Morgan.

Last up, we do have Councilman Conwell, and we have one guest who signed up for public comment.

Consident Conwell.

Thank you very much.

Um I want to follow up with a question because you know, I like to keep my neighborhood clean and um I took a building that was um the Davis, Harry E.

Davis, and we have a um a hospital.

Yeah, that's right, right.

We have University Hospital in Harry E.

Davis, and we're developing behind it another um with the May Dugan Center right behind it.

So that's one of your most successful buildings that you didn't close it, but uh it was closed.

And I'm inheriting to the chair.

Um I will make one.

I have to figure that out.

Do we raise it or we um try to bring some resources in that benefit the um community?

You know, because I look at schools, I look at schools through the chair is being underutilized.

And it's not your fault.

When we when they built the schools, you should have had um resources in there, like libraries and rec centers.

So when they go to the schools one stop shopping there, and that to me that's very, very important.

But what scares me about the plan also, I don't want to see these schools left like you just narrated, Mr.

Chair, uh, trash and debris around them.

You know, when I drive the neighborhood, I always had to call in about Empire School or the schools were abandoned.

And we talk about safe routes.

But when children pass by these schools and these schools are closed, it bring down a whole neighborhood with trash and debris there.

Someone from CMSD should have the decency to drive that area or that neighborhood around there to make sure that the trash in it and the debris is cleaned up.

And the right colleagues, they should, because what you're doing with this blight, you're taking down a whole community, and we don't want to do that, and that's not what the schools is about.

You want to be good neighbors.

You see the trash and debris, and people dump tires there, and uh, and some of the schools are open, unsafe routes to and from schools, and and you could pull someone inside the school and and do whatever the case may be.

It's just forgotten.

And when you leave, and that's what we don't want in the community, do the chair to the um CEO.

No, I I agree, and I would love to partner with I think that's a community effort.

We can be doing that.

I want to uh ensure that we're doing that, and we're doing that note, and we we would love to partner with you guys because I'm sure that's also works that you guys do to ensure your wards are um are uh kept up.

I know many of you reach out to us, uh you know, reach out to uh to to Leo when there are questions that uh take place or things you see.

Those are uh things we'll do, but it's a it's an effort, uh, you know, because these are uh it's it's all of our community efforts, and so we'll love to figure out what we can continue to do uh to partner to work on on those.

Um but I I I hear the larger sentiment of what you you're uh talking about, and yeah, have seen the the location.

I talked to you about the times I was driving around a lot of the Harry E.

Davis um uh neighborhood, and that uh that community fell really heavily on my heart at the start of this year, just hearing uh some of the history that is taking place um in that neighborhood and meeting uh uh legends in your your ward like Dr.

Pointer, and um, but just seeing now what the community has done with that.

I think that's a uh uh a great asset, and also it shows the potential of what's possible.

And we we have lots of things across the city that we see what is possible, um, whether it is uh you know the old West Tech, which I'm not sure.

Is that in your uh is that in yours, Hudson?

It is yeah, it's right, right, right, right.

So, you know, there are many different things that um that uh show promise of what could happen as we do this together.

I would say few and far between, given how many are still vacant.

Um, but I am uh looking forward to see what we can do to uh work together and see what's possible for the assets that we have.

You know, when you when we push a levy, because you know I opened up a campaign office to push the levy, you remember that.

And and so the residents, when they see that, they think that you don't care.

They get us to clean it up, so we do work in partnership through the chair with the school CMSD, but you're taking down a whole neighborhood.

You hear gunshots around empire, all of that.

And when they when the residents see this blight, they think you guys don't care, and the community don't care, and you hear all of that, and you have unsafe routes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a it's an effort that we have to do to work together.

And you and I work uh together long enough that I hope that if a resident would say, you know, then I personally don't care that you will be sharing the work that we've done together, because that's far from the truth in terms of my personal belief.

Um, so I think it's work we have to do together, and that's one of the reasons why we're here.

We have a long way to go.

Uh there are challenges in our community.

Um our job here is to ensure we have the best schools and we're educating the future workforce.

And then we're we work together as a as a city to ensure our our our communities are safe, that they're beautiful uh spaces, and we work together on that.

And I feel like that is work we do collaboratively collaboratively together.

And the important reason why you know we have meetings like this today in terms of messaging because messaging uh matters, and it is you you guys are the most close to your your residents.

I know you get the calls.

You you I know you you call me a lot.

I was Stonebrook as well as the mighty mighty top letters.

I was in Glenville.

Yeah, you both you get those you those questions, and so people will ask that, and I realize you guys are the um uh the messengers for your community, as you should be.

Right.

Uh, and the only way we'll we'll achieve this is through continued work and partnership together, and I look forward to that.

Well, you know, the partnership that we that we could do through the chair is that when your people miss say yes or whatever, drive around, you talk about safe routes, then you look at what houses need to be boarded up, and when you look at the high grass, high weeds that surround your schools, you should also, because we do it, the council members drive in the neighborhood, but you put down a checklist and say, you know what, we can't have the high grass high weeds around whatever school roads, um high school or Glenville or whatever the case may be, or illegal dumping.

Because here's the thing.

Children, some of them go to school, and um they go to school just to get a meal, or they go to school to take a shower.

But when they see unsafe routes, and then you ask about the test scores, and you try to compare and contrast the test scores with Beechwood, you can't do it.

Because they see that, and they already it's already at their house, already at their homes.

Yeah, councilman, yeah.

Let's figure out where we can work together.

You know, with with all due respect, one of the things you share is you guys aren't in control of the schools, I'm not in control of the the streets.

I'm not um and one of the things we but it what it does do is partnership.

Where you know, where we think about partnership and how we can figure out, because our our kids live in in our community and they're our babies, they're your babies, and so I would love to see what we can do in partnership.

Um we don't, you know, the that is not in the the job description of anyone who is an educator in terms of the work we're doing, but through partnership, we can see what we can do to ensure not only just the safe pastures, but also ensure we have beautiful communities.

When you're safety forces, they don't just stay in the schools, they do drive arounds, the community, and what is unsafe is an open vacant and ventilized house.

So if they had a checklist and you meet with the mayor, how often?

We meet at least a monthly.

All right, so council gives the mayor money to hire people like Sally O'Toole and and the rest of them to do quality of life issues.

Isn't that right to my colleagues?

And you meet with him, you can have the safety forces when they drive around, because that's part of safety, looking at the exteriors.

How do we do prevention for our children and safe routes to schools, and you can let the mayor know.

And then he is the boss, not councilman Conwell, not councilmember Mike Palency, but council member Mike Plinstick always say we don't hire, fire, train these the workers in the city of Cleveland, but the mayor, once he give us a transmetal, he does.

And you can give it to him, and he'll give it to his people.

He'll be glad to do that, because we have to do prevention.

Now, here's another thing.

We because we gotta keep those buildings clean.

Here's another thing that I wish we would do.

I used to be a PTA president in all my children's schools.

I met you in the schools just by visiting them.

The only way you're gonna succeed with anything, even when you were pushing the levy, is have an engaged parents.

Engage parents, you hear all the grades.

When when kids go to school, the school teachers have to manage their classroom.

But if the parent do not know the way, and if that parent, our father, the mother, if they're not engaged in their children's education, the teacher will spend forever, forever trying to manage his or her classroom.

We gotta bring back PTAs, parent teachers association.

We're working together for the good of the whole.

And then when you talk about battling this down state about them cutting property taxes, then they know the way.

A lot of them don't know the way.

Through the chair, and I'm sorry, uh chairman, but a lot of them don't know the way.

But when you have the parents engaged and parent and and uh parent-child bonding, now that's cool beings, man.

You gotta have that.

And they don't mind walking the exterior so they can see what's going on.

Or if you have fathers engaged, fathers and families together and those things, but you gotta have them us all working together for the good of the whole.

Thank you.

And I'll listen.

Thank you.

Thank you, uh, Councilman Conwell for that.

We did have one, a couple guests signed up, but one is still here.

Timothy Roberts, I'll allow you to come to the table.

You guys quite a couple questions, I'll give you um three minutes to discuss some different things.

Or you gotta come to the table for the view in public and get into the mic.

Just make sure the mic's on.

We'll get the camera on.

Uh press the button until a second.

Just talking to the mic.

First of all, thank you for giving me this opportunity, uh, Chair.

Uh, you know, I've been in this game for quite some time, and I've had conversations and seen uh our our council people at the meetings when we were looking for a CEO.

And so I was at all of those meetings to make sure that we chose and made sure that we tried to find the right one.

Uh, and uh uh the work that you're doing uh is to be commended.

Uh my question, uh, a couple of questions that I have is are we competing?

You know, I always bring this up.

Are we competing?

Are we competing for the right educators?

And how are we gonna go by going to our institutions and finding those young, brilliant minds that are gonna be coming to our city or looking to educate our city that we are concerned about our young people?

So that's one of the questions.

Where are we going to find these young people?

Because young people need to be taking the place of those that are retiring.

And I'm uh a former uh employee of Cleveland School District, uh, 20 years that of uh a law enforcement through safety and security, my great friend is behind me, uh, and that of a linkage coordinator through um the closing achievement gap initiative.

So, my question is first of all, how do we compete for those for those brilliant young minds that are coming?

How detrimental is the retirement going to be for us when it comes to safety and security, number one, because safety and security, all of us remember those safety and security officers that got us through and got our schools through.

It is extremely important that those safety and security system is in place to make sure that they're working hand in hand, especially with this merging, right?

Especially with the the new administrators, right?

Uh, and so the retirement, how are we competing for and to bring young people in?

And then what are we going to do to hold people accountable for failure?

Right?

Uh rigor is part of it.

We have to come to understand that.

Now, I left the district and went to a high performing charter school.

And what is happening with that is we need to make sure that we hold those charter schools accountable.

And I know that when last time that we talked, that we talked about those that you had let go due to the fact that they went upholding their responsibility under the leadership and under our umbrella with the school district.

So again, CEO, I know this is a tough job.

Uh, I will say to my councilwoman, uh, she is a strong believer in community taking care of community and not holding back and waiting for someone else to take their place.

And so if you could speak uh to the competition, uh the retirement, especially in those areas of safety and security, uh, it would be uh very important for me to get that information.

Thank you so much, um, uh Mr.

Roberts.

Uh, and that was yeah, really appreciate your question.

It really goes back to councilman Harsh, you know, really thinking about the expectation.

I get so passionate about that part.

And so I know when we we were talking, because that's like riding the zone that we are, but in order for us to compete, we have to have a world class system.

And so I know that was the heart of what you were saying.

Like, how do we have that world class system?

How do we have the expectations and these goals that we have?

This is the first time that we've gone through a process where we have such rigorous goals uh that are so public and displayed, those are my goals.

Like that's how I'm evaluated on.

So every time we're presenting and we're showing, like, oh, we're not quite on track, I tell my team that is me.

And uh we for the first time in the system, everyone's goals are routed up through that.

So we are evaluated that way.

And I do that because if I expect something in the classroom, if I walk in a classroom and I remember just from being a classroom teacher, even being a principal, and you observe a classroom.

If I'm expecting something in the classroom and things I'm observing, how can I expect the level of rigor in a in a classroom that I'm not holding myself accountable for?

So I hold myself accountable.

Um is one of my core values, and that's something I continue to make sure that we have.

And so the the plans and the ambitions, uh, the ambitious board goals that we have, uh, not only do I believe in them, but we're working hard towards that.

And this plan of building brighter futures is ensuring that our kids can compete.

Um, you know, I'm excited to see that new students to CMSD, those applications are up.

Um I don't hear many other districts actually uh, you know, uh, you know, publicizing or making it uh well known that 100% of their high schools will have these programs, or 100% of the elementary schools will have enrichment programs.

Those are draws for us to get families in, and we want our students to compete.

But once we get them here, the rigor must be there.

It can't be that they're just they they they that we're not um uh challenging them.

And one of the things I've realized, I've worked in many systems uh across the country, but I remember when I was a principal supervisor here in Cleveland before, and I was talking to my principals, and I said, I would one of the things I saw, one of the biggest challenges I saw here in Cleveland was apathy in classrooms.

Uh apathy.

Uh meaning that I've been in classrooms and other systems where it is hard to manage it because maybe chairs are being thrown across the room, their behavior management issues, and I'm not saying we don't have those.

We do have some of those challenges.

But when I walked classrooms, and I had some of the toughest schools, East Tech was one of my high schools, Glenville High School was one of my high schools.

I walked in some of the tough schools, and I walked with Jackie Bell and Dr.

Sam Scavella, or at the time uh Dr.

Temujin Taylor and Paul Hoover, and we walked the classrooms.

And I will walk into uh classrooms and see students sitting there, and sometimes a teacher behind the desk.

Or I would ask the principal, what is the academic rigor?

What are the goals?

How do we show this?

I saw I saw kids waiting to be taught.

And so this level of expectation starts with us in the system.

Our kids are waiting for us.

And so I get very passionate about this, and I guess I get passionate when we talk about building brighter futures and the challenge, the changes we're making, and people say what we're doing is enough, or it's it's good enough.

No, it's not.

And I'm not saying this is all the answers, because we are definitely still gonna have a lot of work to do, but that's where it starts when it comes to competing.

And then quickly, I'll share on the retirements.

This is something we're we're uh tracking as well.

Um, when thinking about the future workforce development.

We have amazing educators within our system.

Um, and there are you know, future pipelines we're continuing to look at.

We have partnerships with Cleveland State that for some of our paraprofessionals that want to become teachers, that they can have that pathway.

Um, we're we're looking at other partnerships to think about the future, teacher workforce.

We have uh an aspiring assistant principal program that has had high success rates for teachers that want to be teach uh leaders eventually, uh, and many of those uh have come on and either become assistant principals.

We used to have an aspiring principal program, and some of our higher performing principals currently came through that aspiring principal program.

So I think it's about building pipelines.

Chief Dot and I were just checking in today, and we were talking about uh pathways for even some of the displaced members now of while how we can think about safety and security and think about um how those can be routes for of employment for uh for people that may be losing uh jobs in some areas but could uh look for jobs in other areas.

So these are all the things we're working on, um, and it's all part of the plan that we're doing.

But continue to hold us accountable, we have a lot of work to do.

Can I tell you to take a look at our HBCUs as well?

You know, especially those that are within our state.

Uh, and some of them have some of the best educators that are coming out of.

And so I would truly like for us to look into our central states, our world forces, uh, you know, and those neighboring um HBCUs, you know, West Virginia State is a couple of hours away.

You know, I'm a firm believer because, you know, through my program, I've sent uh, you know, 20 young men to Morehouse College, and right there is Spelman College, and so and they're from Cleveland.

And so, how do we get that talent to come back here to give us what we need when it comes to us developing these young brilliant minds as well?

We need to have a way of connecting with them to bring them back here to become the educators uh and those workers because this is the moment for Cleveland when it comes to education.

And I thank us, thank you for giving us the opportunity to sit here.

But this is the most critical moment in the history, I think, in our lifetime when it comes to educating, because with education, it's our economy as well.

And all of those things need to apply under, and I like to see us lead the way as far as Cleveland and our school system.

And so thank you again, Chairman.

Uh, and for our CEO.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Mr.

Robertson, for that.

Right on queue.

Um, as we wrap up, I definitely want to make sure all questions that we have asked for CMSD, um, gets to our staff and work with your staff, Dr.

Morgan, to get those questions answered.

Also, one of the requests I definitely would like to put out as we get ready to go into the next school year, um, as we wrap up this school year and you started to do the Building Bright Futures Plan.

If we can possibly have some type of quarterly updates, rather you can send over data, what is going on with the actual buildings, what has been in some meetings conducted, what is the attendance, um, any information that you have as far as flyers about meetings that are going on, I I urge you to get that over to uh council so we can be able to get it out in our communities if there's any ways that we can collaborate to make sure the residents are informed of what is going on.

So, any communication, please get that over to Council so we can get it to each council member.

And also, I would definitely want to make sure council members um understand that Leo is one of the executive directors of institutional advancement.

Um, if you need anything dealing with CMSD, I know Dr.

Morgan always has his phone available, always reach out and answer emails.

Um, but I know in order for you to get things on a quicker, quick basis, get with Leo or Chief Pomerantz, so they can be able to help you on anything you're dealing with rather than something you hear from a school, a parent, um, any kids work with those two to be able to help get you some response so you can be able to do something.

I definitely want to say thank you, Dr.

Morgan, for coming today.

Thank you for the view in public.

Thank you to my colleagues for having this hearing.

I know we've been here for over three hours, but I know it's that much important for our kids to understand what is going on with CMSD, and I appreciate your leadership and each and every last one.

This meeting adjourned,