001This business meeting of the board of education of the Cleveland Municipal School District will come to order. Mr. Stockdale, will you please call the role? >> Miss Elicott, >> here. >> Mr. Phillips, >> here. >> Mr. Briggs, >> here. >> Miss Jones, >> here. >> Pastor Jones, >> here. Mrs. LeBron >> here, >> Mrs. Peak >> here, >> Dr. Shredar >> here, >> Mrs. Welchow >> here, >> all nine members are present. >> Thank you. I ask everyone who wishes to rise and participate in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. Thank you. We will begin with our public participation period. This public participation
002period will be for persons who have previously submitted the online request to speak form to address the board for up to three minutes each. For this board meeting, as we have for the last two meetings, we have increased the number of speakers who may sign up to 20 speakers increased from our usual 13 speakers. We will be holding each speaker to the three minute limit and we ask that speakers respect the limit. We will have the timer up on both screens here on either side of you as you're speaking. I also want to mention that since most of the public comment we have received over the last several meetings has been around the building brighter futures proposal and in particular around implementation and since we have added public comment during a work session which is
003not typical for us, we are adjusting our usual practice of providing written responses by the following meeting. Um and Dr. Morgan and I will be providing more informed responses after the vote has occurred. Um, people can expect their responses to come out in January. And as usual, we do post those on our agenda as well. And lastly, before we begin, I know these meetings can be quite long and it is a Tuesday evening, but I really ask everyone who's able to who's here for public comment, if you are able to stay for the presentation and discussion portion after or at the very least tune in online, our um meetings can be viewed online after the fact as well. Last time um at our last meeting last week, we actually had a really robust discussion around
004many of the um areas of interest and concerns that our commenters shared during public comment. Uh but nearly everyone left, which I also understand. Um I'm hoping that folks tuned in online, but again, um it is our intention that we are addressing concerns as we, you know, work through the meeting. And so for those who are able to stay after comment, um I would just say I appreciate it. But again, you can tune in online and and view the conversation later. All right, we'll go ahead and get started. We'll start with Cleveland Teachers Union President Sher O'insky. President O'insky. Good evening, Chair Alicott, board members, CEO Morgan. A foundational part of an educator's job is planning. We spend hours attempting to create the perfect lesson plan for each student in our class. We go through
005materials, IEPs, student data, our students strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes, all with the goal of creating a lesson that will not only engage each of our students, but meet them where they are and provide learning opportunities so that they're able to work to their full potential and ultimately grow in their learning and ability. And while we strive for perfection in that first attempt, rarely do we hit that mark. So after we teach a each lesson, we continue our own cycle of learning through reflecting about what worked and didn't for each child throughout that lesson, analyzing the student work products, determining what they got right and what they didn't, what we need to retach, often in a completely different way and where where and when we can move on. That's what the board, the
006CEO, our parents, our students expect us to do. Now you have the power to lead by example. No plan is perfect on the first draft, especially one that is so comprehensive, impacts so many schools, so many children, so many employees and families, so many neighborhoods. It is up to you to do the reflection and make the adjustments to that initial presentation. I've heard it said that feedback is a gift. Well, you've had that benefit of that gift through the testimony that you've received at each of these board meetings, the staff and parent meetings held at each school, the input meetings held last week with the CTU leaders at each of the impacted schools, and even the concerns that I am sure you've heard as you've conducted your daily life in the community. You have the
007feedback warning you about lack of space inside and outside buildings, leaving neighborhoods without a school, lack of parking, now particularly troubling with all of the breakins that we've had over the last couple of weeks, and lack of answers on the part of our district leaders with regards to next steps for implementing Dr. Morgan's vision. You have the feedback from several Louisa May Alcott parents imploring you not to take away their school community, the only remaining elementary school in our district. And you have the feedback from John Haye, Roads, Davis, Marshall, and the other high schools concerned about how their consolidation will impact the great things that are already happening at their schools. You have the feedback from the Uklid Park staff and families worried that there won't be a viable option for their families in
008their area with the closure of their building. Most importantly, you have the feedback concerning our students with special needs and the haphazard manner in which they're being plugged into building brighter futures. rather than as a foundational component. I sincerely hope that whatever is decided this evening, our special education students are guaranteed a seat with their peers rather than shuttled wherever the district leadership decides to stick them. As I have consistently said throughout this month, this absolutely cannot be a rubber stamp moment. Your red pen needs [music] to be a red Sharpie. It is your responsibility to take all that you've heard and do what's right for our kids, our schools, our community. We are all counting on you. Thank you. >> Thank you, President Oberinsky. [applause] Next, Kesha Bullard. Kesha Bullard. Good evening. >> My
009name is Kesha Bullard and I have been a teacher at Bolton for 16 years. I want to share what this merger proposal looks like from the perspective of someone who has lived Bolton's history. Its challenges and the very real progress we are finally beginning to see. There has been 16 years of instability that has held Bolton back. In my 16 years of Bolton, I have worked under six principles with leadership change. With each leadership change, the priority shifted, the expectation shifted, and the support systems shifted. At one point, Bolton had a curriculum specialist, two assistant principles, reading and math intervention teachers, a dean of engagement, a computer lab teacher, and a full-time librarian. Today, we have one principal, one dean of engagement, and a structured literacy coach. I have also taught through five different reading
010curriculums, often without time to fully implement or refine any of them. And because of inconsistent leadership and the constant removal of support systems, phenomenal teachers have left us. Highly skilled educators walked away not because of our students, but because the instability made it impossible to do their best work. We lost the very programs and people designed to support our scholars. This is what set Bolton back. Not our kids, not our families, and certainly not our teachers. In moving us to Harvey Rice, it won't fix the systematic issues that we're facing. The merger does not address any of the problems created by years of instability. Instead, it introduces new ones. Harvey Rice enrolled has an enrollment of about 430 students. Their capacity is about 510 students. Adding Bolton's 209 brings the total to 639. That is
011129 students over capacity. Teachers and staff at Harvey Rice, there are some staff members that are working out of closets. There is no plan for the preschool or special ed spaces. And I would implore you to understand if you don't have an answer to these questions about special ed or preschool, then we need to wait. Um, transportation is only guaranteed for two years, which will push families without cars out of CMSD altogether. There is, this is not a long-term child- centered solution. Bolton is finally stabilizing and now we need support, not disruption. For the first time in many years, we have a full staff. We have a principal, Mr. Dorsey, who is providing the consistency and leadership Bolton has needed for a long time. Please consider visiting Bolton before you make any decisions. Thank you.
012[applause] Thank you, Miss Bullard. Next, Jose Feliciano, senior. >> Good evening. My name is Jose Feliciano and I'm chairman of the Hispanic Round Table and I'd like to uh remind you that there are and I know you know there's there nearly 50,000 Hispanics in the city of Cleveland. 20% of your school district is made up of City of Cleveland uh children. And we understand that there has to be restructuring, but our concern is that these mergers and closures may disproportionately impact Hispanic students, families, and educators. Um, the students rely on bilingual instruction, ESL services, and culturally supportive schools. And I think closures risk disrupting those programs, increasing transportation barriers, and widening academic gaps. And especially for English learners. And so we urge you um also to protect Hispanic educators and the bilingual staff. And then
013thirdly, uh the families, we'd like to ensure that the families receive clear information both in English and Spanish so that they have opportunities to engage in the process. and and we want to make sure that there's public tracking of the changes that affect Hispanic enrollment outcomes, staffing, and access to programs. And so, we stand ready to collaborate with you and hoping that restructuring uh will strengthen. Now, Mike, I I gave you all a a written statement there that's much longer and I've tried to summarize it. And in addition, I also then um have provided a a bullet point of the of my thinking on this thing. But I looking at this thing here, I feel like I'm in the court of appeals 100 years ago when I practice law. But but there are there are
014three main areas. Uh the Hispanic students, Hispanic educators, and uh the parents. And so with regard to the students, our concern is the loss of delusion and delu uh delution regarding bilingual education, ESL and culturally responsive uh support systems and displacements in neighborhoods and uh the longer commute for families uh and especially for English learners. Um, and there's a risk to the educators as well because our concern is that there not be a disproportionate layoff of Hispanic educators because that would have a significant impact on bilingual staff and also uh making sure that uh the staff gets properly trained in Spanish and and and bilingual issues. So there there also of course is this the second key area is Hispanic uh families and uh we want to ensure or ask you to consider that all
015of this be done in English and Spanish and that clear guidance be provided to um the community and what you're doing. And so um let me just conclude with the big thing that I think is really important is that there be um communication on what you're doing that um the results be communicated that the community get an opportunity to know what you're doing especially if it hurts especially then and so we stand prepared to help you and I've identified the issues there. I wish I had a little more time to go through them. >> Mr. Feliciano, I'm going to ask you to wrap up. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Famica Se Bonner. Grateful evening board members and Dr. Morgan. My name is Famika Bonner. I am an
016educator at Marian Celzer. I'm a parent of a child at Davis High School. I am a grandmother of a um some grandson at Miles and I'm a Cleveland resident of Ward 11. I am here to express my concern regarding the ongoing transportation issue and lack of security measures at our school. These matters impact the care and well-being of our students and staff. First, let's address transportation. It is December and yet we are still talking about students not getting picked up and parents not getting through to the transportation department. I continue to email the proper people and yet nothing is changing. Our children are standing outside in the cold waiting for buses that never come. We have parents frustrated with the school and we tell them to call transportation and they never get through. We have
017parents who want to track the bus, yet the bus is not moving from the depot because it's the wrong app. I mean, wrong bus on the app. Equally concerning, I am increasingly alarmed by the state of security in our school. Despite having to raise issue a couple of years ago, it feels like deja vu. Currently, we have security present during the morning arrivals. But what happens when a student pose a threat? Just today, I encountered a student wandering the halls without a pass. When I approached him, he agrely reply he he agre um aggressively replied, "Shut up or I'mma slap you." What if he would have acted on that threat? Who would have be there to assist me in a situation like that? Also, with all the breakins going on in the district, we need
018to have someone monitoring the parking lots. Today when I came in, I was surprised to see Cleveland police station with their lights on helping them out. Can we get that in our schools? I'm just saying. It is essentially that we implicate the stronger security measures in our schools to ensure the safety of both staff and students. Before I end, I want to acknowledge my fellow CTU sister and co-orker, Mon'nique Martin, who has started a GoFundMe project to assist the staff in the district who was um affected recently. Thank you guys so much for listening. Have a good night. [applause] Thank you, Miss Bonner. Richard Grayson. [applause] >> How you doing? My name is Richard Grayson. I'm from Bowden Elementary School. I feel my heart that the children in Bolton they need the education they continue
019going on with now the teachers is very beautiful the staff the principal the dean they're good people I mean you moving children to different neighborhoods that they don't even know nothing about but then when you find out something go on in them schools with them children that you schools. So when you talking about confusing children, you can't cuz you won't confuse your children because if you move your children to other schools, they'll come home and tell you we don't know them people and you can't do nothing about it but look at it. See, you keep kids where they can manage that and grow up right, they will they will success. You close the schools, making sure that people is really unnecessary can get there, the buses don't show up. You all you all don't know
020nothing until you see it. You don't want to see it because when you notice I I live around children. I've been on buses with kids. I have I look at kids every day and and these are elementary children. And I'm saying that's for every child in the Cleveland public system. You don't need to confuse them. You don't need to move to different schools because they don't know nothing. They they number kids one to seven years old. The the high school kids may know more than elementary children. But preschool, kindergarten, first and second, they don't know too much. But see, it's like this. You all have to care. Okay? Mr. Morgan. That's the first time I ever seen him, but I was at the meeting one time. I wanted to talk to him, but you all
021would let me talk to him. So, I left. But now, I'm I'm expressing to him, Mr. Morgan, you're a good person. You're doing your job the right way. And that's all you all staff. Y'all y'all doing good. Y'all y'all doing a good thing for these children. And I want y'all to keep it up and make sure these kids go the right direction, not the wrong. And y'all closing schools, I can't do nothing about that. But y'all understand Balden is is a beautiful ch children and a beautiful school. And please would you keep Bowden open? I'm I'm after y'all. Please see my children the school and they grow they growing up right. They're not growing up wrong. I got I got I got I got to >> Thank you, Mr. Grayson. We appreciate you. >> [applause]
022>> Wendy Eckert. Good evening board and CEO Dr. Morgan. My name is Wendy Eckert and I'm a CMSD school psychologist. Our department is the office of psychological services or ops and ops is unique in that we have staff who work in all of our CMSD school buildings. So, this gives us a unique kind of wide lens to interpret some of the BBF issues and concerns that we have. Last month, our staff completed a BBF feedback form. Most all of our concerns fell into one of three main categories: school climate and safety, special education, and logistics and space. While the former topics have been addressed at previous board meetings, tonight I would like to focus on speaking about logistics and space concerns. First, let me start by telling you some of the things that we do
023on a daily basis. We meet with parents to discuss their children's needs and how their desires fit into policies. We maintain compliance with state and federal laws that protect our special education populations. And we document services for Medicaid reimbursement. We are first responders. We respond to threats of violence and crisis events that impact students and families at individual and schoolwide levels. We might be in an SST meeting. We also, some of us provide individual and group counseling. Most all of our work is dependent upon us having a private and confidential workspace. And this brings me to our major concern, logistics, and confidentiality. Based on our recent experiences across the district, the these are some of the things that we predict we might be doing in the fall instead of servicing our kids. Wandering. Wandering around
024buildings trying to find a confidential workspace that isn't a hallway, a crowded lounge, or storage closet. Leaving. Leaving the building to go somewhere else to work because we don't have space in the building that day. incurring legal risk because confidential student records can't be securely stored in a lockable space. Dealing with basic inefficiencies like making tech tickets for printer access or Wi-Fi connections, waiting, resubmitting, and then waiting again. Repeatedly emailing, calling various CMSD departments to solve basic logistical moving situations only to to be told that's not my department. and wasting time driving around trying to find parking, lugging heavy test kits and materials from several blocks away, or trying to help administration figure out what to do during building mergers because clear policy is absent. Every minute that we spend solving logistical puzzles or finding
025a private room is a minute that we are not serving a student. We need dedicated functional office spaces across all of our buildings to meet our professional standards. OPS is committed to the well-being of every student in this district. Addressing our logistics and space concerns isn't about our comfort. It's about our capacity to serve students safely, ethically, and effectively. We want bright futures for our students. There are a lot of dim realities that we anticipate if our issues and concerns are not addressed. >> Thank you, Miss Eert. [applause] Kelly D. Good evening everyone. My name is Kelly Dia. I am the community college and career center coordinator. I've been part of the Mooney family for 18 years. I started as the parent volunteer. I was the parent ambassador and now I'm the 5C. Uh we
026are supposed to merge with Dennis and unlike everybody that that is here, we don't want to do that. Um currently we have eight special education classrooms at Denison. They're not going to be able to hold our students. We have a sensory room, cafeteria, an auditorium, a gym, a working full kitchen, and many more spaces for our special education students. Unlike Dennis, unfortunately, they don't even have an elevator where we have two students that use it daily. Our biggest um hope is that if we do merge, you would move Dennis to Mooney. we have um enough room that we could have 1,200 plus students as well as all of our staff to stay as well as Dennis's. So in conclusion, we really hope that you would consider moving Dennis to us where we can not have
027to worry about our staff moving and being separated from our students as well as our parents being concerned of where their students may go. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Thank you, Miss Dia Anelise Coleman. Miss Coleman, if you have materials for the board, please give them to Mr. Bzoff. Thank you. Hi everyone. I'm much shorter than the other people. Uh my name is Anelisa Coleman and I'm one of the 81 school psychologists that works in the office of psychological services. Good evening members of the board CEO and community stakeholders. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I want to begin by emphasizing how deeply committed the office of psychological services is to the success and well-being of every student in our school district. Our mission is clear to create safe, supportive, and inclusive learning
028environments where all students, general education, and special education alike can thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. I want to share why school psychologists are essential to CMSD success. Here's some important context. In 2000, in the year 2000, we had 70,000 students and 84 uh00 in special education. Today, enrollment is down by 30 thou is down at 30,000. We still serve 8,679 special education students. The need for specialized support has grown even as the overall enrollment has declined. We urge the board and the district administration to approach these mergers carefully and ask that they are spread out over a couple of school years and not rush and complete them all at the same time. Research shows large class sizes and inconsistent education hurt both general and special occasion students. We learned this lesson when a large amount
029of our students did not return to CMSD after CO restrictions were lifted. School psychologists help prevent. We are mental health leaders, crisis experts, and advocates for students and families. Every CMSD school psychologist is trained in the comprehensive school threat assessment guidelines or otherwise known as SEAG and we work closely with safety and security and building threat assessment teams to meet statemandated requirements. This became a mandated requirement um about four years ago uh that we've worked closely with safety and security um to get our district on board. We also help facilitate suicide prevention and education programs which became mandated last school year um for all students ages six sorry grade 6 through uh 12th grade support students returning from psychiatric care. We run social emotional groups are active members of SST and coordinate with social server
030agencies just to name of a few things we do. Our office has maintained 99% compliance. two of the last three years. That means only one ETR for one year was missed. That's it. And we're doing anywhere from 3,800 to 4,000 initial re-evaluations and preschool evaluations, meeting all 60-day timelines we did once in the past three years. That means zero out of compliance with that many ETRs to do while we do all the other parts of our job. School psychologists are not a luxury. They're a cornerstone of healthy, high-erforming district. By investing in these services and listening to our families and staff, we can uphold CMSD's commitment to safety, mental health, and academic success for every student. Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Miss Coleman. [applause] Lisa Araj. Good evening members of the board. My
031name is Lisa Araj. I am the chapter chair of Charles Mooney. Charles Mooney staff understood that building consolidations were coming as part of building brighter futures. However, the announcement that Mooney would merge into Dennis shocked our community because the data simply does not support this decision. When comparing the two buildings, the facts are more than clear. Charles Mooney has triple the square footage of Denison, more than double the number of classrooms, more floors, and more than double the building capacity. Mooney can comfortably accommodate all Mooney and Dennis students, including every student with special needs. Denison cannot do the same for Mooney. For a true merger, the larger capacity building should receive the smaller, not the other way around. Dr. Morgan stated multiple times on November 4th and 5th that there will be a seat for
032every student at the welcoming school. Yet, families of students with special needs soon received letters suggesting their children may be reassigned elsewhere with no clear answers. Merging Dennis into Mooney directly solves this problem. Mooney has the space to keep all IEP students in one location, honoring the district's promise and ensuring stability for our most vulnerable learners. Mooney is also centrally located in Old Brooklyn. It is structurally sound. It holds a higher building score than Dennis. We had a score of 60. Denison had a score of 57. Rather than closing a building with a strong foundation, the district should invest in Mooney to continue improving its condition. Mooney is also ADA accessible and has an elevator. Denison does not. Mooney also has a full-size gym, cafeteria, and auditorium. Dennis does not. Dennis has only a small
033multi-purpose room, meaning meals, gym classes, and events share only one space. Moving Mooney students there would overcrowd this area, while merging Dennis into Mooney would allow all students to use appropriately sized facilities. Mooney also offers more encore classes, more sports, and more high school credit opportunities than Dennis. Finally, we urge the district to maintain all preK classrooms. All prek classrooms. PreK is the gateway to long-term CMSD enrollment. Mooney has the space to keep every prek room from both schools and we need our preks. Another advantage of merging Dennis into Mooney. In closing, the data, the logistics, student needs considerations, and capacity realities all point to one conclusion. Dennis [music] should merge into Charles Mooney, not the reverse. Thank you for your time and consideration. [applause] Thank you, Mr. Raj. Next, Rosemary Roman Caban. Good evening.
034My name is Rosemary. I'm the proud mother of a brilliant, resilient boy with dyslexia and ADHD. He attends Valley View Boys Leadership Academy, a school that hasn't taught him just how to read, but has taught him to believe in himself. Now, the district is proposing a merger. On paper, it looks efficient, but efficiency is not equity, and it's not education. Unless you preserve what makes these schools work, you risk erasing the very things that help our kids thrive. At the meeting held at Valley View, district leadership made it clear they don't care about smaller schools. They even said, and I quote, "We can't have CMSD public schools providing private school education. But what value provides is not private school education. It's public school done right. It is equity and action. It is the very mission
035of CMSD." The district points to declining birth rates as justification, but birth rates don't erase learning differences. Fewer children does not mean fewer children with dyslexia, ADHD, or trauma. In fact, smaller cohorts make individualized support more feasible, not less necessary. And this merger raises profound concerns about the well-being of children with individualized education programs. Families are being asked to make critical school choice decisions without the most basic assurances whether the receiving schools will have the appropriate resources, staff, and support to meet our children's legally mandated needs. This lack of transparency is not only unfair, it is detrimental to the education and emotional stability of our most vulnerable learners. Children with IEPs require consistency, specialized services, and environments tailored to their unique learning profiles. A merger of this magnitude disrupts established relationships with intervention specialists, therapists,
036and support staff. It risks dismantling carefully coordinated systems that parents and educators have worked tirelessly to build. Without clear information about how services will be maintained or expanded, families are being left to guess whether their child's needs will be met. For children who who rely on predictability, trust, disertion, anxiety, and loss of progress. Meanwhile, the district's current approach seems to elevate gifted programs at the expense of IEP learners. Let me be clear. Gifted students deserve support, but research shows that they are proportionately more likely to thrive after high school, succeed in college, and access opportunities even with fewer interventions interventions. By contrast, students with IEP without early and consistent intervention are far more prone to struggle, disengage, and even drop out. So, I ask, is the district intentionally creating dynamics where gifted students are positioned
037to succeed while IEEP learners are being left behind? Because if so, that's not equity. It's systemic neglect and it risks playing out on a larger scale under the very laws and policies CMSD claims to uphold. It is clear the CMS is being run like a business. Our children are our commodity. Their education is the product. Test scores and success metrics become your profit margin while taxpayer dollars are your investment capital. But when education is reduced to a transactional framework, the humanity of children, especially those with disabilities, is overshadowed by efficiency targets. Families of students with IEP are not asking for special treatment. We're demanding recognition that our children are not commodities to be managed, but individuals with rights, dignity, and unique needs that need to be honored. In closing, our children's futures depend on more
038than efficiency. They depend on equity, dignity, and the unwavering commitment to meet their needs, not your metrics. >> Thank you, Miss Roman Kaban. [applause] [cheering] [applause] Reena Rice. Reena Rice. >> Good evening. Good evening everyone. >> Evening. >> How are you guys today? >> So I'm here on behalf of my grandson DeAndre is a special ed education student at Bolton. This year has been a challenging year for him from the start. He was unenrolled from Bolton without us knowing and enrolled at a school he definitely would not be attending only for us to have to spend two weeks downtown at the board of education trying to get him in somewhere because he had nowhere to go. only to end up back at Bolton. And now this happens. You aren't ready for the outcome when you
039weren't ready at the beginning of the school year for at least special education. All classes filled is what they told me when it was time to reenroll him. Oh well, parents will have to figure it out. That's what was said too to our face. Not this time. I'm not going for it. If you can sleep comfortably and tell me things will work out when it's time for enrollment, then that means you are comfortable with passing your names, phone numbers, and emails for me to contact when things go horribly wrong. I own my home. I pay my taxes. I pay for the levies. I pay everything you guys ask. You have say so. So should I consider what you're doing for all the kids, not just general education. Because special ed, they're your children, too. If
040you had a special ed child in the CMSD programs, you will reconsider what you're trying to do. [applause] >> Thank you, Miss Rice. Next, Kimberly Richardson. Kimberly Richardson. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Kimberly Richardson, and I stand before you not only as an educator, but as a teacher of neurologically diverse students in a self-contained classroom. You know, those students who need stability, predictability, specialized instruction, and environments that honor both their challenges and their strengths. See, Bolton is not just a place where I work. It's a safe haven for students who often struggle to find places where they're accepted, understood, and supported. When you talk about closing Bolton, you're not simply making a structural decision. you're disrupting the delicate ecosystem that allows my students to thrive. So for many of my students,
041sudden transitions are not minor inconveniences. They're traumatic. Changing buildings, routines, teachers, peers, and supports can trigger regression, anxiety, and behaviors that set back months or even years of progress. What feels like a logistical adjustment on paper becomes a lifealtering upheaval for the children that I teach. And if Bolton closes, many students, including mine, will be pushed into sto schools already stretched to capacity. Let's be honest, overcrowding doesn't just decrease academic quality. It strips away the space, the calm, and the structure that neurologically diverse students require to learn. Our children deserve classrooms where they can breathe, process, and feel safe, not environments that mirror that historical cruise where our ancestors were packed into spaces without regard for their humanity. CMSD has long promoted itself as a school of choice, a district where families and educators could
042select environments that best meet students needs. But we must ask if closures force our students into whatever building has room left. When did families lose that choice? When did educators lose the ability to ensure that vulnerable students are placed where they can succeed? See, many parents are already prepared to withdraw their children from CMSD if Bolton closes. As a teacher who works closely with these families, I understand them completely. Their actions are acts of protection. For generations, black parents and all parents of vulnerable children have done whatever it was necessary to shield their sons and daughters from environments that threaten their well-being. That legacy of fierce protection continues today. And I feel that same responsibility every time I walk into Bolton and walk into room 118. I'm asking you to understand that this decision is
043not just about buildings or budgets. It's about how these children whose brains process the world differently. They rely on stability to grow and who need consistent support to flourish. My students cannot afford to lose the community we have built. They can't afford to be scattered. Please keep Bolton open. Keep our most vulnerable learners safe. Keep our community whole. Thank you. [applause] Thank you, Miss Richardson. Andre P. White. Andre P. White. Debbie Gregory. >> [clears throat] >> All right. Um, good evening board members and Dr. Morgan. Um, my name is Debbie Gregory. I am an intervention specialist and the union chair at Waverly School. I am currently in my 35th year of teaching. I've taught on the east side. I've taught on the west side and not planning on going anywhere anytime too soon. I was
044also part of the 2000 or the 2016 merger when the district chose to merge Waverly and Matter Lake together as we waited for our new building to be built. It is based on that experience of a merger that we have concerns with the current proposal of Waverly, Alcott and Gallagher all merging into one building. Waverly is asking the board to only approve the merger of Waverly to Joseph Gallagher for the upcoming school year. Enrollment of both Waverly and Gallagher schools will be approximately 1,020 students for a building that holds a maximum of 1,115 students. Adding Elcott to the enrollment would increase the student population to almost 1,200 students over the maximum limit. And if you look at the page that I passed out on the bottom, highlighted are all those rooms that will no longer
045fit and that will be teachers that we will be losing if all three move together. Um we also want to ensure um and the numbers show that Gallagher has increased from where they were last year to the new building 200 students which is a huge amount that has been added. We also want to ensure that all of our students identified with disabilities will move with their peers. There needs to be classrooms in Gallagher to service all students. There need to be space for all students. We don't belong in the hallways working with students. We belong in resource rooms if that's what is needed. We can't move backwards. We need to be move forward with our special education students. We are asking that Louise May Alcott remain in their building and allow them the opportunity to
046either become a specialty school or allow them to eventually merge with the new Marian Seltzer is completed. Waverly understands that change is inevitable and although we have not been in our building very long, we understand that Tmont is in need of a new home. The Waverly staff is excited to work with the new administration and to have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues who teach the same grade and subjects, something that we have never had the opportunity to do with only one of each grade level. We are asking that the district stand behind their reason that they chose mergers over closures. It was to keep more current staff and students together. And this will only be possible if Waverly merges alone with Gallagher. I hope you will support the staff, students, and families at Waverly
047School. Thank you for your time. [applause] >> Thank you, Roger Sykes. Uh good evening uh to board chair Elad uh board members and CEO Dr. Warren Morgan. Um uh my name is Roger Sykes. I live over on Hey Caroline. I live over on West Hunter Fourth Street right across from Louisa May Alcott Elementary School. Um, I'm here speaking on behalf of Clifton Baltic neighbor, uh, Clifton Baltic Neighbors. We're a neighborhood association. We represent the area from West Boulevard to West 117th and in between Clifton and Detroit. And so therefore, Louisa Malcott is in the heart, literally and figuratively, of of our neighborhood association. Um, last night our our organization voted unanimously. We want to keep Louisa Malcott open. Um and uh you know focused on the Louisa Malcott. It it it serves an important niche.
048Um it's a it's a smaller footprint school and and those with special needs and students that thrive in smaller environments um really have a special spot at Louisa May Alcott. For me um the reciprocity between the school and our neighborhood is powerful and palpable. Um, some of my best moments is waking up, having a coffee, and I get to see students taking a lap, taking a lap around the block in singles and pairs and triples, and there's joy coming off those students. Um, there's a little lunch area right adjacent to the school and there will be staff and students out there having lunch, sometimes having lessons, and you can't quantify the joy that is emanating, you know, from that school and from those interactions. There's love there, there's trust there. the crossing guards. We got
049Frank at West Hunter 4th and Baltic, um Sabrina at West 110th, and then Renee at Clifton and West Hunter 4th. These crossing guards, they know us, they engage our neighbors, they know the students, um they they share that love with our neighborhood. All of that, all that helps to build trust, y'all. So, the I mean, Louisa Malcott, this this entity, it builds it builds real trust in our neighborhood, and we need that so so desperately. Um, I I wanted to make sure that that the board is aware and other folks in this room uh who are interested in Louisa May Alcott specifically and and standing in solidarity with with any groups advocating for their schools. You know, we have an organized group of residents, we we we represent the sentiment, the real specific sentiment of
050neighbors who live in that area. So, if we can be helpful, if we can help to organize and provide that input, um, Clifton Baltic neighbors, we want to do that. I do have a a letter uh from our neighborhood association. And I'll let to leave it uh for for a point of contact to anyone here. And then again to anyone uh that's here tonight, I'd love to talk with folks if you're interested in Louisa May Alcott to see how we can um collaborate. Um thank you so much. >> Thank you, Christopher Salery. If you have documents, please give them to Kevin Bzoff over to my left. Thank you, Christopher Salery. Good evening board members, CEO, and CMSD leadership. My name is Christopher Salary, and I'm a parent of MC2 STEM student. Thank you for the
051opportunity to speak. We understand that the district faces real challenges, declining enrollment, budget constraints, and the need to streamline resources. Tonight, our goal is not to fight the transition, but to make sure it protects the high quality of STEM education our children were promised. MC2 STEM is not simply a school. It's one of the district's few officially designated STEM schools recognized by the state for meeting uh strict requirements. Community partnership, trans uh disciplinary instruction. We have uh STEM uh staff STEM exper uh expertise project based learning and strong business postsecondary collaborations. This designation follows the school structure emissions and is not just the students. It cannot be assumed to transfer intact in any building without intentional planning. We respect East Tech. It has a strong robotics program and it has a credit to the student
052and the staff there. But robotics experience alone does not equal full STEM designated program. The question before us is not whether East Tech has strengths. It absolutely does. The question is whether MC2 STEM full STEM model can survive and maintain the state's designation inside such a large comprehensive high school. Tonight we want to offer a constructive alternative. Not resistance but alignment with the district's own building's bright future program. If MC2 STEM must relocate, the most logical and academically aligned pairing is with Davis Aerospace and Maritime. The reason why is MC2 STEM and Davis share a close alignment of mission, curriculum, and culture. Both schools are built with STEM foundations, engineering, science, technology pathways, innovations, and real world learning. A combined STEM campus between MC2 and Davis would strengthen the district's ability to maintain the MC2
053STEMs designation. Both schools already operate in environment that meet many of the state STEM's requirements. Also, this merger would not dilute either school's identity. Instead, it would enhance both creating a powerful unified STEM hub in Cleveland, supporting the district's commitment to preparing students for their future ready careers. In contrast, a merger with a traditional comprehensive high school losing the unique culture, class size, structure, partnership, and project-based environment that's earned MC STEMs and a STEM designation in the first place. We respectfully ask the board and the leadership to consider what MC2 STEMS STEM designation culture and rigorous projectbased model survive better as a D uh survive better as part of Davis and school ready being structured around innovative and future focused career paths rather than being absorbed into a larger traditional high school model. If the
054answer is yes, we urge you to explore the option. And if the district ultimately moves forward with East Tech merger, we ask and guarantee that the MC2 STEM designation will be preserved with fieldy staffing community cohort structures and be protected with the STEM identity inside the new environment. Thank you for your time. [applause] >> Thank you, Mr. Salary. Dr. Vincent E. Stokes. Dr. Stokes. Good evening. I probably more than anybody in this auditorium tonight have every reason not to support building brighter futures. On May 14th, this board at the recommendation of Dr. Morgan voted 8 to1 to terminate my employment with CMSD. Pastor Jones was the lone no. On paper, I was fired because I missed 4.5 days of work after being assaulted by a student applying for assault leave and having a planned surgery.
055But in reality, because I am a loud black man unbossed who refuses to bow when something is wrong. So when Dr. Morgan introduced building brighter futures a year ago, I didn't trust it. But I watched, dug into board docks, compared levies and projections, took a government finance class, learned about millage, state caps, and local efforts. And at every meeting, I stood at this mic reminding y'all of the painful truth. When white folks catch a cold, black folks get pneumonia. And after all of that, even after being fired and deny unemployment, I made a decision. I support building brighter futures. Not because I trust this board. History shows I cannot. But because the math, the money, and the moment demands it. It makes sense to merge schools so students at JFK finally get the same opportunities
056as students at John Hay. CMSD has run a semi-private school inside a public district for decades. The halves campus international bar and John Haye thrived. The have knots, Bthoon, Dickens, and Collwood were left to survive on fumes. We celebrate athletes and forgot scholars. As long as black kids could run a ball, catch a ball, or carry a ball, that was enough. But our kids can calculate, innovate, create, and dream if we give them the same resources. Y'all let Eric Gordon build brand new buildings with no scholars to put in them. Now you're mad at Dr. Morgan for trying to prevent the state takeover sitting at the door. And when the state steps in, they will not ask for community input. They will merge slash dismantle communities and the union with one sweep of the sickle.
057This is not a Dr. Morgan problem. This is a state of Ohio refusing to fully fund public education problem. But while I support the plan, I need this board to do more than smile and nod and listen to your employers, the citizens. Special education must be protected. Merging buildings without merging services is dangerous. Staffing concerns are real. You cannot pack 500 students into one building and pretend duplicate positions will survive. Stop blaming low birth rates. The children exist because they're breaking in cars at churches, hospitals, and schools every day. And stop rewriting history by blaming Dr. Morgan on Mayor Bill for 16 years of decisions made by Barbara Bird Bennett, Eugene Sanders, Eric Sanders, and Mayor Jackson who dug this financial ditch. Tonight is my last school board meeting. Not because I'm gone, I'll always
058be here. But now that I'm on city council, I've got to go raise hell over there on Tuesday. And don't worry, I'm still close enough to keep holding your feet to the fire. And in the words of my 92year-old grandmama, you better use your head for something more than a hat rack because if we don't, we're all going to lose. and the children will lose the most and give me my job back. [cheering] [applause] >> All right, Dr. Stokes. Thank you, >> Sarah Hodgej. Good evening. Building educationally requires a good curriculum, trust, and community building. Building better futures as presented contains no avenues to build and actually creates a further long-term financial instability. As a result, I stand in opposition and ask that the board either vote no or table building brighter futures. This is
059a school closure plan that asks for 18 buildings to close. By Ohio law, one of two outcomes must occur. First, all 18 schools must be offered to forprofit charter school systems, which will further drain our finances through vouchers and place increased strain on CMSD transportation. or second, we wait to sell, repurpose, or demolish the property. The latter might be acceptable if CMSD didn't already have schools like Ottabon sitting since 2011, bringing down property taxes, values, and eroding the beauty and safety of our community. The plan also creates an increased expenditure for transportation when we already have an existing shortage of bus drivers, tight funds, a need to transport possibly even more charter or parochial school students, all with a retiring head of transportation. Building brighter future closes schools the community already chose. CMSD has broken
060their trust as a result. Do the families and community members now choose CMSD anyway? Or do they go to their same Uclit park as a charter school, but they choose do out of district students choose early college or do they leave since their program is gone? Building brighter futures has a shaky foundation. I am asking the board to table building brighter futures until a plan can be created that ensures a stable foundation. The plan should have number one, it should produce a 202425 budget showing the expenditures and surpluses of last year, a written publicly shared financial savings and expenditure plan for each change in building brighter futures. Three, a written curricular guide book for all 39 affected programs before any mergers or closures occurs. four, a long-term stabilization plan for maintaining and attracting student population
061and building community partnerships and neighborhood building. I ask that the board vote no or table building brighter futures. I'd also like to call a point of order with my last 21 seconds about Dyke and the Mound mergers. It was not on the original board agenda when the permit to speak forms were up. In the past, permit to speak forms were at the board meeting. So, if there were changes to the board agenda, you could get the board agenda and then sign to speak up. Dyke and Mound didn't have an opportunity to participate in this process at all because you guys decided over the weekend. So, my point of order is to you guys for the open meetings act, is that permissible not to allow public comment on something like that? Thank you. >> [applause] >>
062Thank you. Clarence A. Kilburn III. Clarence A. Kilburn III. That concludes our public participation period. Uh board colleagues, I'm going to pause to ask our board attorney to consult him on a point of process. So, just give me a minute. Good to see you. opted to take a break when I broke here. So, we'll be right back. over. Next, I will be turning it over to Dr. Morgan to present an update on the building brighter futures proposal. Uh right after that, the board will discuss uh what has been proposed and lift up any questions or concerns that we have or have um heard about. Dr. Morgan, over to you. >> Thank you so much, Chair Elott. Before I get into the presentation for this evening, and we're we we have that that's going to be
063shared up. I do want to get a mo have a moment to address just some of the public comments that I heard. Uh and I was taking notes. Typically, we don't uh do that, but given that there were so many um on building brighter futures, there's some things that in the presentation I'm going to be sharing are going to be addressed, but I do want to ensure that I have the opportunity, uh to respond to some of those. So, uh first and foremost, it's great to see the uh Balden family out here. Uh Miss Kesha, it's great to see you. When I was a network leader, Balden, this was one of my schools. Um so, it's great to see you. Uh and great to see just the the energy uh as with Bolton as in
064so many of our other schools. We heard it from Alcott Valley View tonight. We know uh the unique uh school that you have uh your community and um as I go through the presentation in a moment to talk about the benefits of building brighter futures, I want to um you know, however this board votes, I want to reiterate that commitment to really ensuring that we have a really strong foundation there. I know the staff. I've been in uh you know your buildings as well as so many of the others and I know the communities that you're um that you're creating uh the Disney in in school that you guys do every year. Those are things that we can continue to leverage even as we move forward with our plan and then also ensuring that we
065can maximize that. So I you know I heard that from the Bolton community hearing it again uh you know from the the the the Dennis and Mooney community. I know I'll talk about that in a moment. Uh special education loud and clear. we have updates on um next steps around special education. So, please stay around to hear some of that. I know I shared some things uh last week, but I also want to make sure that you're aware to hear these things. Uh there was just so much uh there was also a lot around equity and I really want to make sure people understand that the crux of our plan for building brighter futures, it's called building brighter for a reason. This is a plan to ensure that all of our students, no matter where
066they go to school, no matter where they live, their background, how they look like, that they have expanded opportunities, things we can't deliver on today. So, when I hear things like, you know, our school community is unique, but we have no college and career readiness programs. It's great that it's unique, it's great that it's intimate, but if we're not setting students up and we're not providing those programs, we're not providing that brighter future for them. So, as always, we want to ensure that we preserve what is working in our system and all the great uh things that make our schools special while at the same time actually delivering on tangible results. And we've shared what those tangible results are right now where we're not delivering on the college and career readiness programs. I it was
067so great to see uh the parent from Valley View and hear the passion again. I remember being out at that meeting and hearing at the Valley View community meeting parents actually saying there was a time we had foreign language. There was a time we had some of these programs and enrollment continue to decrease in our smaller buildings. And as enrollment is going down because of the birth rates uh being down and uh you know there there are increased choices that are coming around that actually risks us being able to not only keep the building open but also keep the strong programs that have been around for a while. So building brighter futures is ensuring we have the enrollment to meet the demand of the moment. And with that I'll go on ahead and get started.
068Some of the things that you guys shared uh tonight I will be addressing in my presentation and also some of these were uh things that were directly addressed to me uh by our board and want to ensure uh that I address the questions that the board has given me um from prior weeks as well as uh recently. So as I shared when I shared this plan on November 5th, this is a moment that demands action. Um, I've heard it time and time again from comments brought up at this board meeting over the past month that it is a time where we know that our costs are going up. There are serious funding cuts at both at the state and federal level. We've had academic progress, but we also know that right now in our system,
069not every kid has access to the same programs. And us simply not doing nothing won't change that reality. Us doing nothing doesn't change our finances. us doing nothing doesn't provide the academic programs that our kids need and deserve. So, it is a moment that demands action and with action there are tough decisions ahead of us. But what I can commit to this community however this board uh votes this evening. We will be with you every step of the way and ensuring we take your feedback. Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention that was off the cuff and I put my notes here. uh for that parent at Bolton, I want to get your email and I want to know exactly who told you that. I want to know their name. So, we'll we'll we'll
070make sure we connect. I have members from our team. We'll make sure we have that. So, thank you. Yeah, because that's not aligned to our our commitment and we do want to hear that feedback. So, thank you. Um also, um we know that we have building uh conditions uh that you know, we're we're in buildings like the one we're in right now that's been recently upgraded. Uh well, actually recently built. Um, so we've we've been able to deliver on uh upgrades in our buildings for majority of students, but the major uh some of our students are not in buildings that are worthy of that 21st century learning. So that's what building brighter futures is. It's a a moment that demands action to ensure we have increased access to uh the student experience across our city
071for every kid, not just some. We talked about the pockets of excellence. We heard we do have some really great school options, but what if you happen to be a kid that don't go to some of these schools or what if you happen to go to a school that is not achieving state standards? We want to ensure that students have access to a high quality education while at the same time achieving our financial uh reality. So, I want to talk about feedback. Uh and feedback is a gift. I always say that. And this was a a gift of feedback during this time. Uh you'll see this in a moment, but over the the past month, we've done over 100 engagements just in this month between the recommendation and now. And that's not inclusive of the
072meetings we've done, um whether it was the input meetings we've done with chapter chairs, individual meetings that I had. I know even meeting with elected leaders, meeting with city council people, doing lunches, going out to your school communities, there were times I heard the feedback and I went directly out there. I said, "Let me just see the buildings. Let's see what's taking place." Um that's not inclusive of that. And so and um not only myself but our team, we've been out on the ground listening to that feedback and we thank you for that. Uh and I want to share with you how we're thinking about moving forward. Um as you know in this time gave the recommendation on November November 5th over the month we've been engaging and today the board intends to vote. Now
073if you've seen this chart, this is a chart that we've been showing uh since we've started community engagement in the spring. Um, and before these were all just bullet points and now they're checks. So, this just shows you all of the engagement we've done. Um, since the spring, uh, I know many people have said, "I haven't heard it. I we haven't been doing these meetings." We've been doing community regional meetings, staff meetings that we had in every single building starting in the spring, pick those back up in the fall. Um, all of that was prior to the recommendation. And then since the recommendation, staff meetings at every single impacted school, family meetings at every single impacted school, uh chapter chair meetings, meetings with uh delegations, meeting with every staff group, um as well as having
074individual meetings to support these concerns. Uh so we've done that engagement throughout that time and getting a lot of pieces of feedback. As I mentioned before, in this month, we've had over 100 meetings uh between the impacted family and community meetings, the staff meetings, um the chapter chair meetings. And I I thank you for those chapter chair meetings because people showed up with their facts. They showed up with the data uh case, uh and we met and we reviewed all of those and some of those things you'll be seeing tonight in terms of how we responded to it. Um I I I've been hearing the charge. I know the board has been hearing the charge. It's not a rubber stamp moment. it's time to to look out uh edit revise. There's also been questions saying
075with one recommendation, how can that actually be uh engaging in the community? As I shared before though, it's one recommendation, we're having individual meetings where we're taking into account every piece of individual feedback and you'll see how that's showing up tonight in um the way we're responding to that. Um, I've also mentioned some of the other engagements that have taken place. Some that we've done, some that the board has done directly, some that the uh the mayor and his uh team have done um during this time to really sure ensure we were hearing from our community. Now, if you look at this slide here, this just shows the types of feedback we have uh received in this time. And the dot all the way to uh it'll be all the way to your your right
076uh shows the frequency of the feedback. And the number one piece of feedback and you heard that tonight uh in some of the comments are around logistics. How is this going to take place? How do we ensure that uh this brighter future can take place? There were questions also around staffing and job security. Uh questions around program quality, um special education and prek as it showed up tonight, timing and transportation, our calendar, which we'll talk a little bit about this evening, student experience, um questions around uh you know, why my school? we should do this but why why did you choose my school and not another and then finally just how uh the community will be reflected and how the culture will be reflected um as I mentioned before the feedback that we've heard up
077until November 5th informed our recommendations so there was this sentiment that on November 5th people said we didn't know uh but if you came to any of our building brighter futures meetings we were talking about the data case building condition we were talking about building enrollment building trends and that was the foundation of our recommendation. But there were other things that you shared feedback with us on that actually informed our recommendation. The timeline and process, the data that we were g gathering, the other information we should consider such as um report card rating um which I remember when there was uh actual charge to say we know you're looking at building condition, but are you actually ensuring that kids actually have opportunity to go to a better school? And we were able to deliver that
078in all but one uh recommendation where every single uh uh recommendation students are either going to an equal or better uh star rating school that came from your feedback. Um we also that came from your feedback that they're mergers over closures. These were things we heard from the community saying that when we close buildings and staff and students have to pick a school without being having an assigned seated at a welcoming school that's disruptive. We listened to that feedback and that's what informed the November 5th recommendation. Now, after uh November 5th uh and what led into what we're saying tonight, we've heard a lot. Uh the first thing I would say we've heard, we've heard the passion of this community and however it goes tonight, I want us to carry that passion. Uh not only
079when a a decision is happening in a school, but carry that passion because we all care for our scholars and for our our our babies in our community. Our kids need that advocacy. Our kids need that passion moving forward. And so, we want to carry that same energy. and th this time of listening to our community, it's reaffirmed the commitment and uh the promise and possibility of CMSD and our families. Um we also um there were a few uh things that we heard that prompted recommendation changes. So in a moment you're going to see in some cases where there were some prompted recommendation changes and what those slight changes meant. And um the majority of the feedback we've heard even tonight is more on implementation not necessarily the recommendation itself but how can we actually
080make the implementation stronger. So we'll break that down. Now if you look at this funnel and we if we want to take all the feedback that we heard during this time there were many things that we heard and um you know even though there's passion behind it when you're hearing so much feedback and listening to the communities and you're making a decision you want to have some type of model of how you are listening to that and when does it prompt a change and so this is a framework that we used. Uh if you're looking at this funnel these were some key questions that we asked ourselves. Is this concern cited more than once? So if we're hearing the feedback and multiple people are bringing that up, that was something that we considered. We said
081that's going to be really important for us to consider when looking at it. Uh the other thing we wanted to know was is this uh is there a strong data case? Going back to the data case that we shared here, is there a data case here? Uh you know, I know hearing from the Mooney example tonight like we're a larger building. Look at us for some of these data cases. Maybe you give a different look. Maybe you shouldn't do this. So maybe a school like that when listening to uh to Mooney you say okay it passes this check but then you want to keep going down the continuum of some of the questions here uh let me go back sorry are the maximum benefits achieved through building brighter futures and when I talk about the
082maximum benefits you probably remember this chart from the recommendation day that through the building brighter futures recommendation ation. This is what's going to be improved for students in impacted schools. And in some of these recommendations, if you do this, such as in the Mooney Dennis example, Mooney is actually a lower rate uh star-rated school than uh Dennis, it actually flips. It flips in in terms of the ability of students to go to a higher rated school. It changes the benefits in some cases where you say take a school like Alcott and keep it open. You can't do that with achieve the f uh the financial savings. So one of the things when looking through this this framework we wanted to know can we achieve the maximum benefits for students first thinking about uh that that
083chart where students will actually have benefits and also the systemwide benefits. The other thing we want to look at can we be consistent if we make this decision is it a one-off for this community while another community can say what about us and so we took it through this continuum of questions. Another question can choice because there were some families that said we we we just want to choose another school. We are open choice system and families have that choice. You can choose another school, another system. So can choice or implementation factors solve this other than changing the recommendation. So we took it through this continuum and in most cases of all the examples we've heard, there were different things we've listened to. So I want to lift a couple of those examples. I remember
084hearing from the Ucllet Park community and at this last board meeting the charge was come out to the meeting. I went out to the Ucllet Park community meeting. Great meeting, great uh school community. I always say that of the Ucllet Park uh school community um in terms of the culture that you have there. I know of running your 5K race that you have. And one of the things uh that was shared there was about their building and you got to love not only the culture that was there but they took uh me as well as uh our deputy chief of schools Aaron Fru throughout the school and they had labeled all the classrooms and what I loved about it they were like this will be our future first grade class our future second grade class.
085We get up on the second floor and it was like, you know what? We're missing two classrooms. Future seventh grade class, future eighth grade class was pinned to the wall because they don't have the space. So, right before our eyes, even though that was beautiful, I love solutions. Right before our eyes, we saw why we could not do that. I remember getting an email from uh a teacher at Stephanie Tubs Jones and said, "You know what? We're going to FDR and that building, we're a newer building. uh FDR is a little uh older and you're saying that students are going to an equal or better building condition score. What about us? Um well, a couple of things to think about it. One, um Stephanie Chub Jones is a 83 in terms of its building condition
086score and FDR is a 79. Um with the facilities work that we're doing, and that was shared at that um at the community meeting, we will be able to bring FDR, which in this recommendation will be the new Stephanie Tubs Jones, that building condition score up. So it will be equal. And actually that building is larger. It can house more students. So we are looking into it. We're hearing your feedback. And when the other thing you cited in that email was asking about the 100% of students who will attend newer upgraded facilities, that's going to take time, but the upgrades that we're doing at FDR this year to get it ready for next year is inclusive of that. So you'll have that that that stronger community. You know, we heard Valley View. I heard that
087passion. Probably the toughest meeting I had. Um but very important, very powerful, very passionate. You know, we heard about that community and what's really important about the the culture that is uh established there. You can see it over time, but I also heard about all the programs that have been taken away over time because the enrollment is so low. Valley View is a school community under 200. Um even with the recommended merge to Kenneth Clement, it will still be one of our lower enrolled schools. Um you know so thinking about the programs that we need to have and also there were questions about transportation which we are providing transportation for those families that want to choose but there were also families that said we want an option on the southwest side. You can choose an
088option on the southwest side but if you want a boy's leadership academy uh our best option in this recommendation is at Kenneth Clement. uh you know hearing from Alcott, another beautiful community. As m as much as Alcott was coming out, I worked last uh last week in the afternoon, I worked out of Alcott and went there and I thank uh the dean of engagement there for allowing me to uh to use her office and just seeing things. One, it's a really small community. Uh seeing that the enrollment was low, um I also got a chance to see that we do have uh a a beautiful and engaged special education team there. and you see what's working with that uh community. Uh but taking it through this case, if we were to make any decisions to
089keep Alcott open, uh one, it would be inconsistent because there are other uh buildings that meet the same uh criteria. We be doing a one-off. Uh it also uh we would not achieve the maximum benefits we've achieved through the plan in terms of where students can go going to a uh a school that has an improved student experience as well as achie the maximum benefits in our in our financial model. So I just wanted to share some of these anecdotes because in this time I've been hearing we've been listening and I've been going out in those cases to actually meet with you and see what's taking place and I want to let you know how we've scrutinized over this. But there is one case and I did hear from Miss uh Hajj I believe who
090said do we give the opportunity for the Mound and Dyke families to actually uh share concerns in this month and actually we did because Mound and Dyke were actually part of the original recommendation. There's a shift in what I'm about to share in a moment but they were part of the original recommendation. So we had staff meetings at that school. We also had family meetings at that school and we heard feedback. We heard from the uh the uh the Dyke community that they're really excited about their new building and in this recommendation they still will. But there was one piece of feed there was pieces of feedback that we heard that actually taking it through this case it actually is one that we're actually shifting the recommendation based on what we've heard because as we
091put it through this it actually checked all the boxes and I want to talk about that recommendation. So as we mentioned before this was a slide you remember we had 16 K8s that were emerging for specialty moves. Uh there is one proposed change to the original recommendation and it comes in our K8 mergers and move recommendations. So the original recommendation called for mound and AB heart to merge together and for dyke to move to mound. Okay. What we're adjusting with this is that Dyke and Mound merge together and be renamed Mound School of the Arts. So, Dyke would still go to Mound uh and AB Hart will uh continue to be a highquality neighborhood school. Now, a couple of things I want to let you know about this and this came from feedback we heard.
092What we heard as we were going through those meetings, we heard from many families and from the staff that said many of our kids, this is the Mound staff are going to stay at Mound. They're going to choose Mound and they're going to go to that n they'll now have a arts program and our arts elementary uh school model is not a selective enrollment. They will have that choice. So families could choose all the Mound families could choose to stay at Mound and Dyke would have still come over. But if we kept the original recommendation, Mound staff would have been going to AB Heart and their kids wouldn't be there and there would have been nothing stopping the Mound uh students from staying uh at at uh Dyke to get that new uh arts uh
093program. So that was something that did change with that. Now there are a couple of other examples. You know, Waverly may be saying the same thing like, "Hey, we're getting moved out of our our school so that Tremont can come here." Well, in the Monasuri model, it is a little different. There are specifications that teacher teaching staff need to have for the monatory model and for enrollment there's a time where the enrollment in the monatory model actually cuts off. So you can't simply merge it. Now there are some families that could choose the monastery model but they need to meet certain conditions and certain staff need to meet certain conditions to teach at the monastery model. And that's the same thing when you're thinking about Stephanie Tubs Jones and uh the the old Michael R.
094White which is going to be in the uh Stephanie Tubs Jones building renamed Michael R. white monastery that doesn't meet that criteria. So with this mound dyke merger, it was already what students were going to do. It maximizes students first. It was what students were going to do. The Dyke community still get their new building. We are still committed to a highquality east side arts program. They'll be wallto-all. Um we are not changing the number of buildings that are closing and emerging. So we still have the the financial benefits and students can actually still maximize that potential and more students actually have a access to a high quality arts option. So the maximum benefits are achieved as well as a systemwide benefits are achieved. So I wanted to take you through that framework and let
095you know how how some go through that and you can keep going and some stop versus ones that we say hm there's a recommendation that we could actually listen to and change. And so tonight I'm presenting that change and recommendation to the board. You can see that here how that shows up represented. Dyke now merging into Mound and the school being renamed Mound School of the Arts. And as you can see, these are still our four specialty moves, but the difference now with Mound in uh uh Dyke and Mound merging together. Now, there were lots of other things we've heard. Some you've heard in public comment. Um some we've heard just anecdotally, and those are around school names. First and foremost, I want to be very clear. This board has a policy and has the
096the sole right to name our buildings. Like the board of education owns that right and there's a process outlined from board policy of what we do with school name changes. The board charge us with building brighter futures to ensure we have academic improvements in our system as well as financial improvements in our system. That's what they charge us with. This was not a name change part uh uh part in in in time with this. But there were times when we're listening in this recommendation where certain names were going to be take taken offline and we wondered if this was a time that names could be transferred not name new but names that are already within our systems where they could be transferred and if it made sense. Uh these were things that were uh were
097presented to the board and uh we made u some thoughts around it. Before I get to the name uh changes specifically that we're going to do, I do want to name one that I did bring to the board uh that was part of the recommendation and the board uh pushed me just even on the framework that said, you know, we're being inconsistent with that. And so um there was I I listened to the John Hay community. That was a community I spent a lot of time with. Uh not only going to that community meeting, uh meeting with the foundation board, meeting with students, uh many of the John Hayes students uh uh at at science and medicine actually in all of the schools. They sit on my science uh my student advisory council. So I
098hear from the community uh and one of the things that was uh said was John Hayes a selective enrollment school. um how can we if we're changing these names of science and medicine, architecture and design, um you know, early college and bringing in campus international, how can we have a name that best reflects what John Hay is, the excellence of it? And I listened to that and I thought about it. I said, it's one of our few selective enrollment schools. Uh we have Bard Early College, which is a selective enrollment. We have Cleveland School of the Arts, which is a selective enrollment. And I I brought uh an idea to the board um on a name change. Um and the board pushed me on that. Um and uh one of the things with that, none
099of our other schools were going to be uh the the recommendation was uh to be shifted to John Hay College Prep. Uh the board pushed me and said, "We're charging you with all college prep uh in all of our schools, college and career prep. Uh and this will be, you know, a one-off. It'll be inconsistent with uh things that were were shared. I'll uh turn it over to Chair Elon. >> Thank you, Dr. Morgan. I do want to reserve comment and discussion for the end, but just comment on this particular point and if board members have additional comments on this particular point around the John Hay proposed renaming, I wanted to add some color. So, as many folks know, the board did have a publicly noticed public meeting this weekend. And during that time, and
100actually prior to that, because Dr. Morgan and I do talk one-on-one, as you might assume, uh Dr. Morgan was thinking deeply about how what to propose as the name for the John Haye campus which will merge the three schools that are there now alongside um campus international under the current proposal and in you know he shared what his thoughts were I will share the board a summary of the board's discussion and first I'll say I've served on this board for almost seven years and I've consistently ly heard the same feedback from the community. Right there there is variation but in terms of the top issues they are get our kids academically prepared, provide them the a real equitable opportunity to learn math, reading, writing, get them ready for postsecary at an equitable level. And it's
101something that many of us have heard from the community. We've heard these same topics come up in many of our listening engagements, in our CEO search um a couple years ago. Feels like it was so long ago now, Dr. Morgan. We've been through so much together. Uh but the the charge of the board to Dr. Morgan has been we shouldn't have to name one school specifically to ensure that it is a college prep school. One school should not get elevated as the one that gets the name that resonates around college prep because all of our schools have to prepare our students to go to college. That doesn't mean that every student will go to college. It means that everybody has a meaningful opportunity because we have prepared them so that they are in a position
102to choose. Because if you don't prepare a student to go to college and they go straight into career, that's not a choice. There's nothing wrong with going straight into career, but there is something wrong with a school system that does not give every child the opportunity to choose their path because they've been academically prepared enough to do that. And so we pushed Dr. We're going to, you know, we let him know that our feedback was that we would want to approve a school named John Hay High School because a high school prepares you for anything that comes next. No matter what part of the city you live in, no matter what your personal situation, no matter what your race, your income, that is our charge to you, Dr. Morgan that every high school in the
103district provides these opportunities for our students and that is where the recommendation change for that name came from. Is there any additional comment on that particular point? All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We'll turn it back over to you, Dr. Morgan, and then we'll reserve more comment for the end. >> Thank you so much and appreciate that push in charge. Um the other thing I heard from the community on high school name changes was Benjamin O. Davis Jr. um which is uh which was the name of our original um our original aviation school many years ago. So it's a name that was once in our system and there was a question around junior and high school and wanted to name you know people were saying what you know if there's a junior behind
104well won't they think that there's a junior high school? Well even in our own system we've had Martin Luther King Jr. High School um and there's several Martin Luther King Junior high schools. Uh we will manage we will get through it. uh and um you know the Benjamin O. Davis Jr. legacy uh which Davis currently is named after will continue to reflect that. So I just want to let you know we heard that and there are many examples like that across the country. Um so which name changes rose to the occasion that uh we want to think about name transfers. So we know that with the original recommendation Mary B. Martin would cease to exist as a school next year uh because uh of the merger with Wade Park and Mary Mloud Bthoon would cease
105to exist next year because it will uh merge with Daniel E. Morgan and um Kenneth Clement is moving into the Mary Mloud Bthoon uh school. Uh you know this is my third school year as the CEO and every year we've heard uh questions around our girls leadershipmies in terms of their names. could they reflect names of um you know strong leaders that uh that reflect the vision and mission of that uh community as well as um uh just feedback on uh how those names came about and knowing the legacy of Mary B. Martin who was the first black board member in the 30s and that school has been in existence since 1962 and we all know the legacy of uh Mary Mloud Bthoon um and that school has been in existence since 1963. The recommendation
106is to transfer the name Mary B. Martin to our girls leadership academy on the east side of Warner girls leadership and Mary Mloud Bthun to transfer that name to our girls leadership academy on the west side at Douglas MacArthur. And so that is the recommendation on change based on feedback that we've heard from the community. Now there's many other things we've heard that are implementation in nature. So those are the things that actually change the recommendation that the board will vote on which are small in nature. It doesn't it doesn't um uh change the number of schools we're recommending to close. Uh it still maximizes the amount of benefits uh that we uh plan to do through building brighter futures, but it was based on feedback. And so to those who thought we weren't listening,
107we were. We're doing a lot of work in this time to listen and we responded. But the majority of things we've listened to was really around implementation. How can we support school leaders during this time? And even I know that there's a optional survey that's going around that is helping school leaders of the community should this board vote on this think about how the uh uh the characteristic staff want in a leader uh as they're merging these school communities together that is supporting. Um so should the board vote on this recommendation tonight, we're prepared to uh name school leaders um starting this week um for uh you know principles at least and we know that the assistant principal process deans and campus coordinators will take place shortly after the new calendar year. Um when we
108think about prek, we've heard a lot about prek. Uh and I'm going to share an update with you in a moment on prek, but just know you were heard. Special education is another thing we've heard a lot on. You were heard. I'm going to share an update with you and some next steps that we're going to share there. Um on uh teaching assignments and what are we doing with our staff, those were things we heard. Starting end times and calendars. Most of the time that comes to this board in the springtime. Tonight you will see a draft uh that we have for starting in times and calendars. Uh knowing that this that is a board approved process. It needs to sit for uh 30 days to get feedback, but we have a draft. Um, and
109we're grateful to our uh uh teachers union partners who are already providing early feedback on that because we know how important start and end times will be for families making a choice. Um, and we are we know how important it it will be on um for staff to know which buildings they uh will uh want to uh choose and select. So that's one of the things that was really important and that charge we were even hearing even from our partners to say make sure uh staff and students have the options available. Uh transportation was uh something we heard about um school choice and how the school choice portal was going to be and that's going to be the number one thing we'll have to do moving forward. Should the board move uh vote on this
110plan today, we need to ensure that every family makes a choice that is in a school that's impacted through building brighter futures. They'll have through the early part of January all the way through February 27th to make a choice and that's going to be important. That choice will determine the budget which will well first the enrollment which then determines the budget and can help us with our staffing and then help us execute our programmatic reality and we we'll have a semester to plan for that to the board vote on this tonight. uh the vision for what's happening in our high schools, we shared um some of that uh last week. Um and then I know with some of our school communities when I had the opportunity to meet with the foundation board at John Hay
111just doing mock schedules of what that looks like. I remember one of the things I heard from a very uh strong alum uh uh Josh who is an alum of uh science and medicine. I believe he grew uh graduated in 2015. Appreciate his push. not only is he a young executive in our city right now, um, but is passionate and also always comes prepared. And one of the questions he asked in one of the meetings was how can if we're offering all these programs at science and medicine, and this would be at any of our high schools, how can it work? And we appreciated that push because as we started looking at the schedules, we said, how can we uh look at all of this? And we proposed a highle schedule of how a student
112can start in the IB program while also taking the science to medicine pathway, the state approved science and medicine pathway while also taking uh honors and AP courses and graduating both with the college and career readiness um uh credentials and an honors diploma. Uh now of course to be college and career ready for the state you only have to meet one requirement but the schedule showed how it can fit for those students who are high achievers and want to do it all. And that's what building brighter futures is about. It's about maximizing opportunities. So we appreciate that push and giving some of that information and that feedback and it's all about implementation moving forward of how we can uh support our schools. The building investments, which buildings are we we are investing in and ensuring
113that we can bring that up to code. Uh I I hear uh the the the the Mooney community. Uh Mooney is another school I've been out to quite a bit. It is a very large building currently right now also sharing a high school with it facing history which is in this recommended uh ask uh recommendation uh ceasing to have operations next year. Um but then also with Dennis there's some improvements we've already made. It's a building that already has AC. Um I know over at Mooney it's not an AC building except in the center of the building which those rooms get really cold. Um but uh there it's not an AC building. Um Mooney already has uh AC upgrades. We just put a new roof on um at at um not at MUN at Denison.
114At Dennis, Dennison already has um uh AC there is a roof new roof we just put on there and we're doing some of those upgrades and those were already in motion uh before we we got to the building brighter futures recommendation. So, should the board vote on this, we're committed to ensuring that there is a strong uh quality building and that you guys have a quality option um moving forward with that. Um so, this is some of the things we've heard. Safety is also something I've heard and I believe it was Miss Bonner who said the things that are taking place on safety. I think everyone got my email. I'm you know we know some of the things that are taking place um right now in our schools. Um I'm angered um by um the
115the recent car breakins. Um that's not only happening in our schools, it's hitting churches. I know when we came in this week, we knew that this weekend a bunch of churches were hit. Uh this is an issue we are working closely with our city and CPD on. Uh and in cases, uh Chief Dots and his team has been reviewing footage with Cleveland Police Department and in some cases they've actually been arrested. Um we've been able to track cars because of the camera system we have. We have the flock uh security camera system and we're reviewing that. Um so that is all the work that has taken place and I'm angered by what is taking place uh there. But we are also increasing our supports working with our safety and security team, working with OPBA which
116is our safety and security union to increase those safety measures. And this is the type of energy they'll take to ensure we have increased safe me uh safety measures as we move forward with building brighter futures. And the work that we've been doing now that has led to a decrease in serious incidents over the past couple of years. So it's a continued commitment that we're continuing to work on. It's not just the work we do with CMSD. It's our work with the city. It's our work with CPD. It's our work with RTA in some cases. Uh our transit uh police that help uh with this work, our safe passage work. So it's a collaboration work and we're going to do this work moving forward. All right. So let's talk special education. There were a lot
117of questions. I know last week I shared this continuum of three types of opportunities and placements that happen with our students with special needs or who learn differently. Uh and I know that there was this question around um this idea really around gifted uh which I will say specifically when we think about gifted education we haven't really spoken to uh in this uh in this plan. Uh and gifted education is really important. We do have some students that are gifted, but I want to let you know that we haven't even spoke specifically to uh in terms of our plan with gifted. And I know I have met with some of those gifted teachers and look forward to really figuring out how we can actually maximize opportunities for gifted. But if you're actually talking about the
118maximum benefits to building brighter futures, ensuring students have college and career readiness, um that's for all students, even our special education students. So all students within our system deserve college and career ready programs. All students in our system deserve a high quality education. That's not gifted. That is those are all students, even students with an IEP. Now, there are three stu uh settings that students with an IEP are in. They're in a regular classroom um where they get uh support from a co-teer. Uh they are in a setting where there's small group resource settings and then there's that single classroom setting. Um through building brighter futures for the first two, we will have uh classroom settings where students who are in the general education tier one setting will be able to move with their peers
119and be in a setting where uh there's that push in support or the resource supports that come that are coming out. And in a lot of cases, some of those single classrooms will also be able to move as well. But as it is now, we need to ensure that we have the space, the teaching requirements for students matched to their individual IP in their new building. And I want to talk to you about some of those next steps we're going to be doing with families to ensure that. Um I I've talked about these uh learning environments and our commitments to ensure that this is taking place and that all students uh receive the maximum benefits through building brighter futures. Um our district commitment is to ensure that uh we are moving classrooms with their co
120uh students with uh their colleagues where possible where we could do that. That's like our maximum benefit that we want to be able to do where possible. We also creating those continuums. Right now, based on our system of how we do special education, many of our students in the single uh special education setting actually have to move classrooms somewhere in their K8 time frame because that class is not available as they grow and u move through the continuum. Uh through building brighter futures, we're actually going to be able to increase the amount of times where students are actually to stay will be able to stay put in their uh prek8 timeline. Um and then also we're proactively working on communicating with families. Notification will start going out um uh this month. Um placement and support
121will continue to work with families uh based on what's in the students IEP to work uh to maximize uh the setting and the resources that's needed for students and that's the work we'll continue to do and our special education team who works really hard to make sure we address that. Um we'll continue to do that. As I mentioned before, I want the name so I can follow up with that personally. Now, this is what you can expect in terms of timelines. Um, conversations with every principal um should uh we move forward uh with this plan will take place this uh uh starting this week and individual letters of notification of single classroom placements will go out to families uh Friday. Um there will be a teacher information session about what is taking place through special
122education starting uh the week of December 16th. Um and then uh special education webinars, parent and gardening webinars taking place uh starting uh the week of December 17th. Uh and then also single education um uh parent meetings as well as staff member meetings starting to take place in January and when we come back and continuing to meet with our families of individual needs to make sure that they understand their choices and giving them their choice options all the way through uh this season. So this is a high level uh timeline. We're working with our special education team to ensure that we can provide uh these resources and supports moving forward for families. PreK um as we shared with our uh in our original recommendation and what we've heard even before the recommendation how important prek
123is and prek is what we can do to ensure that families are in our system um and stay in our system. And we were proud that through the recommendation uh that I originally submitted to the board on November 5th to ensure that we have prek throughout our system and maximizing where prek was. Now, in the original uh where we are right now, all but four elementary schools have prek. In the original recommendation, all but two elementaryaries were going to have prek. in our meetings uh that we had, specifically the chapter chair meetings uh when um uh I know uh our uh chief of staff uh had a opportunity to meet with the Adlay Stevenson community and they brought many different um cases uh to that meeting and one of the ideas was the thought that
124the Lee Harvard community, the Southeast community was going to lose its preK because Whitney Young has pre-K and so does Atlay Stevenson. and we heard that and we said, "Wow, if families are actually coming in through prek on the southeast side and that's how they're getting into the system, uh we must rethink if we were going to have prek uh on the southeast side." So, based on that feedback, I'm happy to bring to the board. I met with the team and we looked at what we can do. Uh we will be able to offer prek at Whitney Young, making it all but one elementary school will have prek. That's 98% of our schools will have prek across the system. we hear that charge of of of ensuring that we increase that access and we're able
125to do that based on feedback that you guys responded to. It doesn't change the recommendation, but what it does do is it uh supports as an implementation. So, I'm excited to be able to have prek at Whitney Young and it'll be on that southeast side. Starting end times, um we will be able to continue with our three tier system with starting end times. We have tier one schools in terms of when they start and the range of times when they start and end. tier two uh and tier three. Uh we will continue this three- tier system with uh school transportation with start and end times. Note that these are draft times. Uh we will be communicating these with families um should the board vote on this to make sure families know what the draft times
126will be. I continue to say draft uh because the board has not voted on that. We have to go through a process through that. But we want to let families know what we're thinking. So it is subject to change. Now, if you see this, uh, this is the range for starting in times for our preK8 schools. Um, you can see the tier one range of times, which is from 7:35 to 8:05. Tier 2 is from 8:35 um, or or 8:40 start time, and then tier three is a 9:35 start time. You can see those end times, and you can see the amount of schools that are in each of the tiers. um based on uh feedback that we were seeing, we were able to adjust 13 of our schools um due to the mer uh
127due to the mergers into a new uh tier. So only 13 of our schools were uh are recommending to adjust their start uh times. We looked at where the schools were merging. So the two school communities merging together, what was their start and end time? And we wanted a time that either reflected uh an in between time of that or will be later. Um, we know from our attendance data. We shared that as part of the goals and guardrails a few weeks ago. Uh, we have several start uh early start schools where the chronic absenteeism rates are abysmal. And so this is an opportunity for us to respond to families and ensure that we can get uh kids into school and we've adjusted uh those start times. Um and so you'll see some of those
128shifts. Uh there is one recommendation change when we think about actually the Balden Harvey Rice merger. Um I believe uh Balden is a um currently a later start um start time. Um Balden is a earlier one. Um actually a really earlier one. I think it's a seven um uh a tier one start time. And with this recommendation in terms of the starting end time, we're actually going with the Bolton start time, the later start time. Um starting in end times at the high schools, you can see those same tiers. In this case, there were five adjustments we've made based on starting in times and also to align with chronic absenteeism. Um, there are five schools in the tier one, uh, eight schools in tier 2 and one in tier three. And some of our alternative
129or non-traditional options, you can see when those start and end times are. As you know, through this recommendation, there will still be um some non-tra we will still have our non-traditional options in our system. the academic calendar. This is also something that is uh draft uh because the board needs to take vote on it. We need uh there needs to it needs to sit for 30 days. There needs to be a hearing on it. Here are some of the early thinking that we've done uh to adjust for building brighter futures and what we've been hearing around implementation. Particularly one of the things we heard from our teaching staff is will there be time in the beginning of the year for us to have time uh with our staff to build culture uh to start the
130school year. And so we wanted to maximize uh that time and actually giving up uh what will be usually a district uhwide PD day for a staff uh PD day. Uh we also are starting uh the recommendations to start school a week later. Uh so the recommendation here is I believe is to start on August 24th. You'll see that in a moment. Also to support our chronic absenteeism rates instead of holding open houses and parent teacher conferences across two days. Right now we do one elementary day, one high school day. And what happens for a lot of kids in our schools if they attend a high school um but they have kids in their K8s, they miss both days. They miss the day that they don't have to go to school but then they have
131to watch their brother and sister on the other day sometimes and they miss school. So where we could adjust to support uh attendance and also support our families, we did. And you'll notice that there'll be one open house, one parent teacher conference across this. Uh you'll also see on this things such as spring break um uh for this upcoming year to align with um uh you know the the Easter holiday. I know all don't celebrate Easter. Um but some people often on that Monday when we have school the very next day. There are a lot of calloffs. Uh this will all be part of uh will all be part of spring break as part of this recommendation. Uh and you can see what the calendar adjustment looks like. You'll have access to this u and
132see what those adjustments look like. The other thing we want to do is bring a two-year calendar. So, we're not just bringing 2627, we're bringing 2728 so we can plan ahead and accordingly. Of course, if anything adjustments need to be made, we can uh the 28 uh in 2028, that's a a leap year. So, you'll see some adjustments, but this is the adjustment to the calendar. All right, without further ado, I want to present the final uh recommendation to this board on building brighter futures uh with the modifications and changes of things that we've heard. So, with this recommendation, uh we will have our prek8 schools um actually most will be prek8 schools. We'll only have one K8 school. We're currently at 61. This recommendation calls for 16 fewer, bringing it down to 45 elementary
133schools. Our high schools, we have 27 now. This recommendation calls for 13 fewer, bringing it to 14 high schools. That's a total of 29 fewer schools. So, with building brighter futures, this recommendation means that there will be 29 fewer schools next year than what there are this year, operating 59 total traditional schools. We will continue to have our non-traditional options of schools like nativity pagan remote school of one our v virtual academy high-tech high as well as our school in the juvenile detention center. Um this is a reminder of what those mergers are at the high school. We have 14 colllocated high schools that will merge into six different campuses and um five high schools that will go into a um that will end instruction this year and go merge into a school. These are
134those six campuses with the proposed names. I want to remind you of what that recommendation is. The John Haye campus uh which includes Cleveland School of Science and Medicine, Cleveland School of Architecture and Design, and Cleveland Early College High School will all emerge in this recommendation and should the board vote and become John Haye High School. The Lakeside campus, which has Davis Aerospace and Maritime and Cleveland High School for Digital Arts, um which was another thing I heard tonight uh from the MC Squared STEM community. If we were to merge MC Squared STEM in here, not all students would fit on the Lakeside campus. It's a small building. So, we couldn't accommodate emerge. But for that father there, one, we're committed to building a very strong STEM program in East Tech. And I'm glad our
135central neighborhood will have the uh a high quality program like MC Squared STEM. Our kids in Central deserve that. Um, but also if you want to choose uh Davis as an option for you, you can. Uh but back to the uh to the recommendation here. Uh those two schools will merge and become Benjamin O. Davis Jr. High School. John Marshall. John Marshall Civ civic business leadership uh school of engineering and school of IT will all merge to become John H John Marshall High School. Um Lincoln West campus which has both global studies as well as our our our health sciences program will merge to become Lincoln West High School. Um there next year uh the recommendation is for that to be at the old Geared Morgan uh swing space while we're building a new Lincoln
136West High School. Um, James Ford Roads uh campus which has uh college and career as well as environmental studies will merge and become James Ford Roads High School and the Geared Morgan campus uh which has the engineering school as well as the uh leadership school will merge to become Gared Morgan High School. Now these are the schools that are transitioning meaning ending instruction this year and merging with a welcoming school. Uh, Columwood High School recommended to end instruction this year and merge with Glennville High School. Campus International IB High School recommended to end instruction this year and merge with the John Hay High School. MC Squared STEM High School recommended to end instruction this year and merge with East Tech High School and New Tech West and Facing History ending instruction at the end of
137this year and merging into James Ford Roads High School. Um, we've already talked through each of these uh uh K8 mergers. Um, but just looking at them, making sure that uh everyone can see that Hannah Gibbons ending instruction this year being merged with Memorial. Uclit Park ending instruction this year and being merged with East Clark. Stephanie Tubs Jones ending instruction this year and being merged with FDR being renamed Stephanie Tubs Jones. You're going to see that in the next slide again. Mary Mloud Bthun, uh, ending instruction this year, merging with Daniel E. Morgan. Mary B. Martin, ending instruction this year and being merged with Wade Park. Uh, Alfred A. Bennish, ending instruction this year and being merged with George Washington Carver. Balden, ending instruction this year and being merged with Harvey Rice. Charles Dickens, ending
138instruction this year and um, being merged uh, with uh, AJ Rickoff starting next year. Adelaide E uh E. Stevenson um recommended to end instruction at the end of this year and being merged with Whitney Young. Miles recommended to end instruction this year and being merged with Robert H. Jameson. Dyke School of the Art recommended to end instruction this year and be merged into Mound and continue the arts program and become Mound School of the Arts. Uh Mary Church Terrell um ending instruction this year and being merged with Wilbur Wright, being renamed Wilbur Wright School of the Arts. Um Waverly Louisa May Alcott both ending instruction this year and being merged with Joseph M. Gallagher. Charles A. Mooney ending instruction this year in terms of the recommendation and being merged with Dennis. And Valley View Boys
139Leadership Academy recommended to end instruction this year and being merged with Kenneth Clement. We've already talked about these specialty moves and they're also going to be reflected in the name changes that I want to make sure that uh you know what this recommendation calls for. So the FDR building which is the current building the future name of that will be Stephanie Tubs Jones. Stephanie Tubs Jones building right now will be the future home of Michael R. White Monastery. That will be the new name. Mary Mloud Bthoon um will now be the home of Kenneth Clement Boys Leadership Academy. That's the new name. Waverly will now be the new home of Waverly Monastery within this recommendation. Should the board vote on this, Wilbur Wright um uh which is our uh arts program on the west side
140uh recommended to be renamed Wilbur Wright School of the Arts. Um Mound, as we talked about merging with the Dyke School of the Arts and becoming Mound School of the Arts in that uh recommendation, Warner Girls Leadership recommended to change its name to Mary B. Martin Girls Leadership Academy and Douglas MacArthur Girls Leadership Academy recommended to be renamed Mary Mloud Bthoon Girls Leadership Academy. All right, we've already talked about these systemwide benefits. Building brighter futures will ensure that next year 100% of our high schools will have college and career programs. Well, we can't deliver on right now. Right now, we have 78% of our high schools that offer college programs. 59% offer career readiness programs. through building brighter futures. 100% will offer these programs starting next year if the board votes on this recommendation. Also,
141right now, 38% of our elementary schools offer enrichment courses beyond art, music, and PE. That's less than half through building brighter future starting next year. 100% of our elementary schools will be able to offer um enrichment options beyond art, music, or PE starting next year. and also through building brighter futures. We will eventually get to 100% of our students in newer upgraded buildings. We're not there today yet. There's still buildings that are being built. We're building a new Marian Seltzer. Uh we're in uh the process of building a new Lincoln West. And in this recommendation, as we shared on November 5th, it calls for the new build of a Glen of a new Glennville High School uh for the uh Glenville Columwood community. This also improves our enrollment across our system, ensuring that we can
142keep programs as they move across the board and improving stability as well as teacher um the teaching experience in schools as you even heard tonight from the Waverly community of being able to collaborate um with other colleagues that are teaching at grade level. Um we've shared that this program will mean career pathways at every single school. I know on the day of the recommendation we shared what those career pathways are. Um but in all 14 of our high schools in this recommendation, that's what it will call for. We will start with some that will be ready for next year, but we have work to do to ensure that they build over time. Same thing with our college pathways. They will be offered in school, not where students will have to travel to TRIC or travel
143to other places. Those programs will still be eligible, but we want students to have college and career readiness programs in their school, whether through AP, college credit plus, dual enrollment, or IB. and that'll be offered in every single uh high school that we have through this recommendation. We've already talked about the enrichment options beyond art, music or PE, meaning that students will have access to courses like algebra 1, band, foreign language, career tech. Um, and you know, huge shout out uh I know many of our middle school students are preparing for the all city winter concert which is tomorrow. I'll be playing in it. I was practicing it today. I actually have to go home and practice. great music uh for this year, harder music. Uh but we do have some students that have access
144to band, but not all of our students. And so we want to ensure that more students have access and increase access to that as well as access to sports, not only just sports for some students, but for all genders and for um students uh to maximize their likes and abilities. And as we shared before, this recommendation has prek in every single elementary but one. And right now we have prek in every single elementary but four. Um, and we've already talked about the newer upgraded buildings. Not only just the new builds that we're doing, but also the upgrades we're doing across the system to raise the building condition score. We talked about that. Finally, I just want to end where we started this recommendation with a scholar. Uh, this is Victorious Blackman. Now, since I shared
145the recommend uh the day of the recommendation, uh, Victoria's mom reached out to me. Uh, as I mentioned, Victorious is a eighth grader at AB Hart. Uh, I had the opportunity of meeting her for CEO for the day and she reached out to me and she said, "I want help as I'm thinking about the options and choices for Victorious. I know what her passions are and I want help when thinking about that high school choice." Reach out to her immediately uh and say, you know, we will support you as well as every single eighth grader as they navigate this choice. And all of our families should the board vote on this recommendation. this is our plan, our our our time to ensure that every single scholar has a choice um has support with that choice
146and we help them navigate that. So, we're committed to doing that for Victorious and all of our scholars because they need and deserve it. And Victorious, I know um uh we talked about that Cavs game. We're working on it. You will go to a Cavs game this season. So, we're working through that. And with that, I turn it over to Chair Elott. >> Thank you, Dr. Morgan. I want to make a few comments before I call on my colleagues for questions and comments. And uh a couple things. One, I I want to remind and I've said this before and I know that the change is going to be difficult for people and that the uncertainty right now, the feeling of uncertainty is quite uncomfortable. I know that you, Dr. Morgan, have put forward as much
147information as you possibly can to share with folks how you're thinking about implementation. What we're voting on today is the plan, the strategy, and then the implementation comes. And we are holding you to a high standard of course and as you are yourself in terms of how you implement this for our families, for our students. Um, the other thing I want to say is this always had to be a comprehensive plan, right? We cannot move peacemeal at the stage that we are in at the state funding level we are in the challenges that we face on that front the enrollment population declines that yes we are facing those are facts we're we did not come here to sit at on this stage and lie about the population numbers um and neither did Dr. Morgan. And
148I want to call that out. Nobody on this board or in this leadership seat is here to operate in bad faith. Uh the board does not serve for the glory or the pay. Uh I'll just let everyone know we don't get either. Uh certainly not paid. And um the intention here is to make systemic change, change across the system so we can deliver what we owe our students. And what this board has been very clear about for the last several years as we implemented student outcomes focused governance. And we created board district goals and guard rails that are the foundation for this work. And I'm proud of what you've delivered today. I know we still have some comments and questions around it, but you've been responsive to those comments and questions. Again, it always had
149to be a system level change so that we could ensure that there were not pockets of problems or places where our students were not able to um access the educational outcomes that we want them to access. And you know, you've said before that this work is personal to you and for me it's personal as well. Um, you know, I'll share a personal anecdote. Growing up, I was always a public school kid. I always went to public schools. When my family moved to the US, um, when I was little, they quickly realized that if you were not wealthy and you put your kid in the nearest school, the nearest public school, you could not count on a high quality education, right? They had to try to figure out what how could we figure out where we
150might be able to live where we would have access to a decent public school because school funding is so disperate across our communities. And I moved around a lot. So I went to a lot of different schools. I saw those disparities firsthand. And I don't want that for our students. I don't want our families to have to make these high risk decisions about where they're going to send their kid. I want every option in the district to be a quality option no matter where you live, no matter who you are. And that is what this board is aligned on with the goals and guardrails that we've set out and the charge that we gave you, Dr. Morgan, of creating a a successful and equitable facilities plan. So, thanks for all the work so far. I'll
151turn it over to folks. I see Dr. Shredar has his light on. Dr. Shredar, over to you. >> Thank you, Chair Elkad, and thank you, Dr. Morgan, for your presentation. Um, and and I particularly want to thank you for your responsiveness. Um I know that um we've there's been questions that have been flowing at you and and I appreciate you taking the time to answer them. Um I have a I have um three questions and then I have another comment which I'll reserve after uh my colleagues have a chance to ask questions. Um the actually two questions. You've already answered one of those uh in your uh in your presentation. Um the the first question is about transportation. So, um I I know that you and your team have presented a plan, a transition plan
152for transportation that will uh preserve um the the ability for students to be able to rely on uh school buses and and transportation opportunities as they go to their transitioning schools. Um we also constantly hear about um about transportation issues um in in various cases um including today. Um I want to uh make sure that over the next two years as we go through this transition that um that you provide a report to this board um on a regular basis maybe on a quarterly basis about how that is going with respect to um with with some specifics about um how many families and students are are utilizing those transition opportunities. And and I just want to um lay one more thing on the table which is that um this is a you know you have
153acknowledged that this is um an um an an an expensive u thing to do but yet this is a commitment that we are making to our families and community. So um so I would like to see some kind of a regular update on that. Um the the other one um and this is um again a question perhaps um actually more a comment. Um so there was um comment made today about the STEM designation um in the MC squed STEM high school. You've heard from me over the last three years since you've been here about um uh about what how I feel about that particular school um and about the fact that we have a STEM designated school through the Ohio STEM learning pathway and um and and the state uh department of education and workforce.
154Um we have in our new plan um across our 14 high schools, we have five schools that offer a STEM pathway. Um I I think it is entirely reasonable for us to apply for a STEM designation at at least one of those schools, if not more. Um and go through that process. Um it's a it's a process that it is a process that is intensive. Um but uh but I'm confident that the the design of the curriculum that we have will help us uh will will get us through that designation process. Um and and and we at Cleveland State have the resources to help you with that as well. So I just want to make sure and I'm you know specifically there was a comment that came up today um about MCQ High School going
155to East Tech and and you know this it's [snorts] entirely possible for us to take East Tech through that designation process as well. >> Thank you [clears throat] >> Mr. Briggs. >> Yeah, thank you. I have um a comment and general observation if you'll indulge me a minute or two. First of all, my compliments to uh um Dr. Morgan and his extraordinary staff for the research and uh listening as you've done um and responding to virtually every major objection observation and I think that's um very effective. Um but I do have a couple comments. No one ever accepts a school board uh appointment imagining that they'll have to vote on a massive consolidation of schools. Um we envision ribbon cutings, graduation ceremonies, um expanded opportunities for our students. Uh the reality we face today and
156have been working on uh for the last year um is very sobering. Um over the past several weeks, we've um listened to parents, teachers, alumni, politicians, and neighbors, and share their heartfelt concerns about the school consolidation plan. Their passion is undeniable. Their love for their neighborhoods and their schools uh is real. And I want to be absolutely clear that these voices matter. [clears throat] The district leadership has taken uh every concern seriously into account uh in coming toward a final decision. Uh consolidation is painful. Um I understand that uh every school building holds memories, represents community identity, serves as a neighborhood anchor. But we have to ask ourselves, is it better to spread uh shrinking resources across half empty buildings and with crumbling infrastructure? Uh or to invest in fewer, stronger schools where every student
157has access to upgraded facilities, robust programming, and the resources they deserve. Uh the consolidation plan isn't about abandoning neighborhoods. It's about ensuring Cleveland students have a future worth staying for. It's about directing resources toward instruction rather than maintaining excess capacity. It's about making responsible choices today so that tomorrow's students will inherit uh opportunity and no debt. Our district leadership working with the community has redefined this plan to minimize disruption uh while maximizing student outcomes. Uh but make no mistake uh doing nothing is not an option. It uh falls to us, to this board, this administration, to this community to make the hard choices to put our students first. Cleveland's children deserve better than the status quo. uh they deserve a district that's financially sustainable, educationally excellent, and honest about the challenges we face. That's what
158this consolidation plan is all about. However difficult uh it is to deliver. Uh there will be bumps in the road and you know what that's the road and we'll be traveling that road and as those bumps arise we'll solve them. We'll meet them. We'll we'll get things done and make sure that everything we do is we do to enhance uh student improvement. >> Thank you, Mr. Briggs. Mr. Bips, >> thank you, Chair Elott. Um Dr. Morgan, I I just got a few quick questions. Uh first, kind of going back to uh um the gentleman who spoke, I believe it was Mr. Feliciano senior um regarding our um Spanish speaking population. Um I would ask this question in regards to all of our English language learners. I know that we have a diverse um you know
159a diverse set of students who um speak many different languages. Um so my question is kind of around um the material that's being disseminated the communication. um is there opportunity for um this material to be um shared with our families and our our our students in um the languages that they speak. >> Yes, we actually do uh have translation uh our material where we can translate that. I know our multilingual department um uh supports that um for getting material out to families and also supports us from a district uh wide communication standpoint of getting information out. Um and in some cases whether we're in you know different family meetings we sometimes have translation support um and also uh in some cases sign language supports which that's also a a language um that uh uh supports
160you know uh a different language and uh we provide that uh services as well. Um also to you know Mr. Feliciano which I always appreciate uh his leadership um and the work he does in our community. It is really important that um not only our Latino community but all of our students are reflected and uh you know my my my push to that would be through building brighter futures. This is an opportunity that all of our kids can have. Um the fact that some of our kids go to school with no college or career opportunities if we do nothing um that doesn't help. Uh and so uh that should be for all of our students and we also want to make sure that we can u maximize um uh that community as well as others.
161I do know that that is a growing population within our city. Uh and um really ensuring that we can provide the resources and supports needed to help them thrive as well. >> Thank you so much. And I I know I tend to um well, first of all, I will say that just from my perspective um here today and over the last month or so. Um a lot of the uh commentary that I've heard was around equity. um the need for every student to have every opportunity to be successful as possible regardless of the building um they find themselves in or the neighborhood that they live in. Um, so my question kind of goes to the line of question that that I tend to have is around special education students um and the need to support
162um those students and their families potentially through a transition a a significant transition as has been pointed out by so many people who spoke today. Um can Dr. Morgan, can you um this is less of a question, but can you kind of speak to uh from your perspective just that importance of um you know some I would say the the extra support that our district can kind of help provide to help walk those families potentially through um a big big change for their for their families. Yeah, change is uh is difficult and when I think about what our district has to do uh to ensure families understand their choice, there's ways that we have to make sure that information is out there uh that it's accessible um and that we do it in many different
163modalities. So, one of the ways is we have our building brighter futures website. We have a new website. I know I continue to talk about that which we're constantly evolving. Uh we have to get our bo board goals and guardrails. They're already up there, but we're going to get them on the main landing page um because that's what's driving our vision of our our district. Building brighter futures is also on that main landing page um where you can go and get all information. It has information um and also that will continue to evolve as we have the school choice uh portal should the board vote on this uh as well as the school finder uh tool. So all of that will be available. We also at every uh for every school have navigation support. So
164f uh someone on our team that is actually helping families understand their choices, helping them navigate it, tracking um per building which families actually have made their choice uh so that we can do that. Um I was at Dyke uh this morning um and you know talking with the Dyke uh community uh one reiterating that uh our commitment to ensuring that we will still have a high quality esart aside arts program and that was one of the things I was reiterating this morning even as uh you know they were still processing the you know some some of the elements of the recommendation change. Uh but one of the things we you know we shared with that is ensuring that families in this time understand their transition supports and understanding um you the types of information
165they will need you know moving along the way. And so it's really important uh that as we go through this time and go through this process that we we we stand up supports, we have transition supports. Uh we're still working with our our partners to figure out what those transition teams will look like, but all of those things are going to be key elements. Uh I remember Miss Gamble said this morning when we were meeting at the the Dyke School, she said the number one thing that we could do right now to support our families is making sure that they can they make a choice. U when they make that choice, not only can that ensure the quality of the programs we'll have, but it'll also ensure um the the staffing we'll have in our
166building and can help keep as many of our staff with our students. I'm sorry. I >> Go ahead. You get one more and then we'll come back to you. >> Okay. I I'll take my one more. Um, thank you, Chair Elott. The my my next my last question was kind of around um just that what we're ultimately um here is to ensure that our students what they learn and what they can do. Um and that the impact of building brighter futures. um if the board was to vote for that would be to improve what our students can do where they can go after high school or or in their transition period. Uh Dr. Morgan, can you kind of share um how building brighter futures, consolidating schools, how that and and I know you've spoke about
167this a lot of times. I just want to be very very clear um about how um students at our K through8 schools may have opportunities to learn that they don't have currently um and how that could transition for them into high school and beyond. >> Yeah. Um you know simply put enrollment equals resources. When we have the enrollment at our schools we get more resources in our schools. Uh and then that also leads to programming and what we can offer. And right now we have many buildings. Uh you know I uh one of the number so I was talking to a a parent last night uh because when we heard from the Dyke Mound community I got an email from a parent and I said I'm going to call you. It was like 9:00 at
168night and the parent uh we were talking about Mound and the Dyke merger. Uh she one she had confusion that the arts program was leaving. So when I cleared that up we were good there. But then we started talking about the Colinwood Glennville merger. And one of the questions I asked I said do you know do you know how many students we have at Colinwood right now? uh and she started saying what 5 600 and I said no we don't we have about maybe you know 200 or so on the books and on any given day based on um the attendance rate that is there we have to have 100 sometimes less than that that are attending there uh we also have no college readiness programs no career readiness programs the same thing with Glennville
169uh shout out to being the uh state champs again we're very proud of them three championships four years I see you there let's give him a And [applause] so we're very proud of them being state champions in football, but it's also a place that we have no uh college and career readiness programs and also the enrollment there is about at 300. And so when I think about what we're doing to prepare all of our scholars, we have we have that that right and responsibility that kids no matter what school they go to that they're set up and prepared for life. And um by scaling the enrollment in our school, we can actually provide that and that's why this is real and we hear the the the the passion in the room. Um but when we
170present the type of data we presented last week on our college readiness and our our best schools are at 23% right now in terms of um you know college readiness and that was at one school and on the John Hay campus looking at 68%. Um not 68 6% 8% respectively per per campus. We have we have to do better. We have to do better and doing nothing. What I hear when we say don't do nothing it's good enough. What you're telling me is the kids in our community, 6% college ready is good enough. 8% college ready is good enough. And as a district, we're at 3%. College ready is good enough. 0% college and career readiness programs in your school is good enough. That's not the case. It's not good enough. We have more to
171do. And building brighter futures will address that. >> A lot of lights. All right. Miss Peak followed by Miss Lebron. Dr. Morgan, I wanted to uh touch upon um how we are preserving the legacy of the schools that are closing and working with the community and figuring out how with other community organizations how we can kind of not create the the the sense of the past. And along with that, um, we talked about the different roles that the schools that we are closing, some of them are going offline and some of them may have some other opportunities for the community to get engaged in that. Just could you expand on that a little bit and touch and let people know uh, you know, that there's a plan for that? >> Yeah. Uh, one of the
172biggest work that we want to do is through the work of our transition supports. Um and one of the reasons why should the the board vote on the plan this evening, we want to name a school leader as soon as possible, uh leadership is going to be key in terms of um transitioning um you know, schools that will be transitioning out, thinking about what are the the legacy, the programs, the traditions and rights that need to carry on as we move forward into the new communities. But there's a rich history um in our community with these schools. There's a rich history over time. Um, you know, I I shared this before, but our the state of the schools address this year, and if for those who weren't there, you know, it's online, you can see
173it, but I talked about history. Um, that, you know, this is something that throughout time, our district configuration has changed. There are schools that were around are no longer around. Um, but it's still a part of our history. I'll never forget the meeting that Chief Farmer Cole and I had with uh the East uh High Alumni Association. an East High alumni. Uh East High is no longer a high school. Uh it's what at the time was called East Professional Center. And you know, we uh there were we worked and the board uh pushed us and voted on renaming that professional development center the Arnold R. Pinkney East Professional um center. Um but when we were even thinking about that, even though as great as Arnold Pinkney was, I know the East High Alumni Association had
174questions and they're still active, alive, and engaged even though that school has been closed for years. And so when we think about those legacies, these alumni associations, they're still around and they're still real. And just like with East High and East has been closed, no well before my time coming here. And we took the time and met with that alumni association president and figure out how can we preserve the legacy. That's the type of energy one, the type of leadership that you not only have on this board, but also the leadership you have within the system that we will do that. We're doing this to to to meet you where you are to listen to you and figure out how we preserve those legacies. uh and it'll be the work that we're doing all together.
175Um but above all, this is a history-making moment because we can be a part of the start and it's not the finish, the start of ensuring that there was more access for all of our kids within our system and that's a side of history I want to be a part of. >> Miss Peak, anything else? >> That's it. >> All right, Miss Lebron. >> Thank you, Dr. Morgan for everything that you've done throughout this process. Um I know that you've led again with intention and heart and thinking keeping the scholars in mind as a priority as well as being data informed. So I appreciate that. Um one of the thoughts that I have is um there was a school um a CMSD staff member that came up and said the promise of building brighter futures
176wasn't the problem. Like people were in agreeance with that, right? it was more around the process and and wanting to be brought along the journey and I think about uh some of the things that you've highlighted throughout this process. So you've highlighted a f um you've highlighted for us that all students 100% of impacted with with um 100% of the students that are going to be impacted um through the school mergers will have equal or expanded academic and extracurricular opportunities and student support. And who would be against that, right? that's that's great um to provide those opportunities, but we need to make sure that the expansion doesn't unintentionally widen performance gaps among students or specific student groups, right? Uh we need to make sure students don't fall behind and you know, it's it's one thing
177to say more access and more access is good, but only if all student groups can succeed once given the opportunities, right? Um it can't be like a sink or swim model. We want to make sure that our students are successful once they're giving these opportunities, especially for some of our students, that these opportunities are brand new for them because they haven't had them in the past. Um, I say that to say that I do also really believe and stand behind the goals and guard rails that we've set up and I think that the goals and guard rails will help us monitor if building brighter futures is actually delivering on its promise. So, it's not something that we're um going to vote on today and then just like go ahead, you know, go out there and
178do your thing. You know, we're going to continue to monitor the progress of building brighter futures um through the goals and guard rails that we've set up. So, that's one thing I wanted to say. Um and then the other thing I wanted to bring attention to and I don't know that I can I don't know that it's framed as a question, but I had a concern question. So January through February 27th is when school choice window opens. And so we already know that the students that are impacted by school mergers will have a saved seat in the in the welcoming school automatically and then they can um during that time they can choose a different school or do nothing because doing nothing means that they will go to the welcoming school. Is that correct? uh
179one clarifying question I mean one clarifying point to that we are asking families in those uh situations to either choose another school or confirm their seat and the reason why we want them to confirm their seat. Yes, they have a a seat welcome it at their school and I I believe mi um Mr. Dr. Bips asked this question um or a version of this question last week in terms of if they do nothing what will take place but we want them to confirm their seat because um we will be determining budgets and staffing models after this and if we make an assumption that families are going to go and they haven't confirmed their seat we could do a staffing model for that and if they don't show up um we're going to have a lot
180of adjustment movement um uh you know we we currently have that when we think about fall adjustments and staff need to move and all of that and so we're trying to create as much continuity as possible. So, we want every stu family to confirm their seat. Like, if they like their welcoming seat, they confirm it. We'll make it really easy. Say, "Yep, I want to go to that welcoming school." Or they make another choice. So, they'll be able to do that between January 5th and February 27th. Now, if we don't hear from them in that time, which we're going to work really hard to make sure we're talking to all those families to hear what their choice are, we will assume that they're going to their welcoming school, but we don't want to do that
181for the majority of kids because we could have a lot of staff movement and that won't help the staffing experience. Thank you. Um and uh that actually leads to one of my questions and then tying it to the special education single classroom piece is um can you remind the community of what the support will look like during that time um when the school choice window is open? Um, and then the other piece is does does this single classroom timeline of events mean that the special education students and families don't have choice that they're going to be assigned a single school classroom and that's where they go because I wasn't sure where the choice piece comes in here. >> No, great great question. I'll start with the latter uh piece. Just like all of our students
182now have a welcoming school where we're saying this where you have a reserve seat. That's what that assignment is. It's like this is what your assignment is and you still have the opportunity based on now the the one thing is especially for our students with the single classroom there are certain needs and specifications and so that's why these meetings the individualized approach is so important because every student is different. We can't we can't do a blanket sweep and just say this is where it's going to be and this is what those classrooms are going to look like. We really want to have that differentiated support. So, our special education department, our enrollment support office is ready to support those families individually, not only with the the letters that are going out, uh, but the information
183sessions we're going to have, um, ensuring our staff understand what's taking place and how they can communicate with families. So, that's what's taking place for our special education families. And similarly with all of our families, it is a individualized approach. Um, we plan to start doing high school choice fairs starting this month. Typically uh the we would have in November started the high school choice process. So we want to get that underway as soon as possible. So the high school choice fairs will take place this month for our eighth grade students who will be rising nth graders as well as every single 9th through 11th grader in an impacted school that needs to um either confirm uh their choice or um uh or make a choice. Um and uh then those transition supports, the navigator
184uh that's helping families throughout that time, the phone calls asking families um uh have they meet their choice and just confirming that as we move along. >> Thank you, Pastor Jones. >> Thank you, Chair Elard, and to our CEO, Dr. Morgan. Um I concur with our colleague, um Mr. Briggs, his words, uh for this time, this historic moment. I just want to share a comment that I appreciate the progressive plan uh to implement change necessary for our Cleveland scholars and that I want to acknowledge the clergy community who came today and some are still here and uh for your rigorous meetings with us and sharing and being clear in your communication and your entire team for all of the um just the data and the um research and the educating and all of the exploration
185as well as the implementation of um such a rigorous and what I like to call a progressive plan uh that will carry us forward. And so I think the question is what can the community do? Uh what would be the message to the community? How can everyone come together at this point and and and help? And I would also share this question with Sher Ella Carus of her experience of what would be a word that we could share with the entire community. What can we do to just really help this plan go forth? Something I always think about is we can do the work at the district level, at the school level, at the classroom level, and yet we still have to address everything around our students that impacts their ability to succeed. Right. And
186Dr. Morgan, you mentioned the car breakins we've had at our school. We've had those all across our city, across my neighborhood. Um there's we've seen that they are mostly minors, children committing those violations. And I personally don't believe that kids are inherently bad ever. Right? I don't think that [clears throat and snorts] we have kids committing criminal acts because they can't be fixed or there's not something going on that's contributing to that behavior. That's just one example of the ways that, you know, we've got community leaders, council members here in the room, and I would love to continue to partner on everything around our students, the safe passages, the way that they get to school. Our kids are less safe on their way to school than they are in the building. So, what can we
187continue to do as a community with all the leaders who are here and not here to ensure that we are addressing everything else that impacts our students, our families, and our educators, right? Our educators are people in our community as well and the way they show up in our classrooms is a direct impact of the way that our society and community is around them as well. And so my hope is that you know I appreciate the clergy who have been partners on this front and many others. My hope is that we can continue to partner around that work surrounding our schools. And when I say surrounding our schools, I don't mean just geog geographically right around our schools. I mean everything across our city and our region. All right, I have a couple questions and
188I'll turn it back over to Dr. Shredar. Um, first, you know, we had some school psychologists come in and speak today and I do want to mention to everybody, I know I also want to mention that most people stayed through the whole presentation, so thank you. And a lot of people stayed through now, so thank you again for that. Um, but also want to recognize all of the educators who have come in and spoken, not just today, who have engaged with Dr. Morgan's team provided their input. The care and concern is very clear and I appreciate it. And I I just wanted to raise some of the concerns that the school psychologists raised with us today um around you know specifically today they talked about logistics and space and having a place to have confidential
189conversations. Do you have a response or comments on any of that? >> Yeah. So yeah, one and I I I wrote that down. when we think about the implementation, those are the things we want to do really in the implementation uh uh space. Um also, you know, there there are things we have to legally abide by and provide that space as we will. Um and there are other things that have uh we've been able to have in some of our buildings, not just with our psychologists, but you go in some of our buildings because they're so small. They're commu each community partner has an entire classroom. Uh and those are resources particularly um whether it's staff members or community partners that we're going to have to rethink as we think about our buildings and using
190space because those spaces were intentionally made for classrooms and for instructional purposes. So we want to do that. Um but there are many ways to leverage that space. Uh you know we have we have uh spaces that are you know central office uh uh spaces. We have spaces that could be in the school in terms of how we rethink those spaces. And so a big part of that when I hear those questions I'm like those are the next steps in the logistical space. Um when we think about those school leadership teams of figuring out what needs to happen in our schools and provide that. Uh so we're looking forward to learn about um those spaces in each of the uh schools. Uh and in some cases I know our team has already gone out and
191looked at the the necessary needed spaces um to provide that. That question came up uh and shout out to I see Shahira in the background. We've been friends all day today doing the SEIU webinars of which I know we had technical difficulties on the front uh end. Uh but I know one of the questions that came up I think from food services when I was meeting with the food services staff was you know what about the kitchen spaces and storing our food and what how can we do that? Not only have we done an audit with our nutrition services to look at that space but those are the types of questions we want to uh we want to find out and bring our operational team uh out there to meet those needs. So, I appreciate
192you raising the questions and we have um uh you know, should the board vote on uh this plan? We have a semester uh to get prepared for next school year. >> Thank you. And my other question [clears throat] is just to confirm, am I recalling correctly that about 27 28% of our students are students with disabilities. Okay. So, I know that we've heard a lot of concerns from families and educators around those populations. There's a reason why more than a quarter of our students are students with disabilities. It is because public schools are required under federal law, and I hope that continues, but I think that we will continue to prioritize that to accommodate and ensure the education of students with disabilities, right? And so aside from, you know, the concerns around implementation, I think
193we've heard a lot from you about that. But I do want to mention that there's no scenario where this district could succeed by shoving aside or disregarding 28% of its population of its student population. Right? So it is obviously incumbent on us to ensure the appropriate education of those students. um not just because it's the right thing to do, the legal thing to do, but also we would never be able to succeed as a district with a quarter of our students just being left behind. So, I appreciate all the care you've brought to sharing, you know, how you'll be approaching that work. Dr. Shredar, thank you, Chair Lakad. Um I I want to just um ground this this very important thing that we're talking about and a very important decision that we're about to vote
194on in in a larger context. Um two years ago about two years ago is when we this board began our process on student outcomes focused governance. Um it took us about a year under the guidance of the council of the great city schools to think about how we structure our board meetings, how we um how we evaluate you, Dr. Morgan as the CEO and and in turn the rest of the district. Um and and how we uh center conversations in public about how the district is doing its core work, which is serving every student that walks into one of our schools and the community that that we serve. um that work, you know, again, we began that work about two years ago and um in um in in May or in April, May of this
195year um we adopted our our three new goals and three new guardrails. Um and it was in the process of doing that is uh is when we charged you in January of this year um in January of 2025 to begin this process that you are bringing recommendations today about the building brighter futures plan um where we said well you know if if our goal is to support every student that walks into a Cleveland Metropolitan public school um then we needed to be doing that in a responsible manner. Um and again just to remind um uh everybody about the goals, it's you know, yeah, you can go to the website and read it in in in full, but but really we we are saying that we want six out of 10 of our third graders to
196be able to read and pass the OST. We want one out of two of every um uh eighth grader or ninth grader who's taking their algebra to be successful. And we want one out of four of our graduates in high school to be ready for college. Those are not >> over the next 5 years by 2030, right? Um those are those are, you know, if we if we talked about them, those those should be relatively obvious goals for a for a large district like us. And yet they are stretch goals for us given our current state and and we've been seeing that um in in the progress monitoring presentations that you've been making. Um and and I want us to keep keep centering that those goals and in the context of the guardrails which said
197um you know we will make sure that that our facilities are safe and our students are safe and our community both you know not just students but the educator community and as well um we will make sure that students have opportunities to learn and be engaged in enriching opportunities beyond um their academic learning. And we said that um anything that you do um in in terms of large decisions will involve community input. Um I want to stress on that last point which which really is is you have demonstrated um and I believe as a board member that you have demonstrated that that the district and under your leadership has gone through a a thorough and and inclusive community process and hearing from people. Not every single person who gave you a comment is going to
198feel completely satisfied. Um but you have taken the time to listen and and I I thank you for that. And I just want to um uh center again just round out by saying that um this difficult thing that we are doing is is only one of several things that is going to happen over the next several years over the next 5 years as we as we have set up these goals. Um there are going to be other difficult things that we have to do. Um most importantly every two weeks when you sit when you sit here at a board meeting and we look at data that um that is is not happy data that is a difficult thing that we're doing and calling attention to those and ensuring that we keep the focus on the
199main thing and and ensure that our students are successful and our community is successful. So, I just wanted to um you know, in as as large and monumental as this decision is where we're talking about making changes to 39 of our school facilities, this is the facilities plan. The goals and guardrails that the board has charged you, Dr. Morgan, with is the real um uh focus in terms of ensuring that our our students, our community is served in the best possible way. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Shrear. And I mentioned the five years for the goal because we have work to do beyond that. Um, Miss Walsh Howell. >> Uh, thank you, Chair Alakott. Uh, I want to echo what my colleagues have said. I have two comments. First, I want to start with
200just thank you and team for the work that went into this plan. The amount of days and nights and weekends and listening to the community. And I want to steal the red pen analogy for being open to using the red pen in a very thoughtful way and walking the community through the framework by which you all made changes to the recommendation. Um, so I appreciate that. My second comment is is to the community as I think about uh the resolution that's being presented today codified within that resolution is we've asked we've charged Dr. Morgan and his team to come back and report on the implementation of the building brighter futures plan in addition to the goals and guard rails monitoring. So I'd like you all to hold us as a board accountable uh to making
201sure that that process is going on. But um as again as we look at the resolution and what's being voted on today, I think it's very important um that the community sees that we as a board um are listening and we are taking our job seriously of of holding the district accountable. >> Thank you, Miss Walchow. And with that, the chair will now entertain a motion to approve resolution 5.01 adopting the building brighter futures plan. >> So move second. >> Thank you. And before we call the role, I do want to highlight a couple of things. This is quite a robust resolution. As Miss Welch Howell mentioned, it does outline that there will be monitoring of the implementation. It brings in the goals and guard rails that the board has set for the district and
202that this work is intended to further those goals and align with those guard rails. It outlines the values that we as a board committed to um quite some time ago around or rather guiding principles around how this process would work. Um and it even includes a directive to Dr. Morgan around how to implement transportation, right? Because it is important to us that this plan works for our students and our families. Although we don't typically include that level of detail in a board resolution, we have included it today. Um I won't go through the whole thing. I know it's quite late, but um it's available on board docs and I wanted to highlight a few of those items before we vote and thank you Miss Wchow for driving the po point home around monitoring. That's going
203to be incredibly important. Are there any other comments on the resolution? >> Mr. Stockdale, will you please call the role? >> Miss Alakod, >> yes. >> Mr. Phillips. >> Yes. >> Mr. Briggs. >> Yes. >> Miss Jones. >> Yes. >> Pastor Jones. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Lebron. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Peak. >> Yes. >> Dr. Shrear. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Welch. >> Yes. >> Motion passes with nine votes. >> Thank you. The resolution is adopted and the Building Brighter Futures Plan is approved. Let's get to work. >> [applause] >> All right. Next, and we still have business. The evening's consent agenda includes the minutes of the last two board meetings, five finance resolutions, one academic resolution, and five excellence and culture resolutions. The chair will now entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items
2046.0 through2 through 9.05 as set forth in the agenda. >> Second. >> Thank you. Mr. Stockdale, please call the role. Miss Elicott, >> yes. >> Mr. Phillips, >> yes. >> Mr. Briggs, >> yes. >> Miss Jones, >> yes. >> Pastor Jones, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lebron, >> yes. >> Mrs. Peak, >> yes. >> Dr. Shrear, >> yes. >> Mrs. Welchow, >> yes. >> Motion passes with nine votes. >> The minutes are approved and the 11 resolutions are adopted. The board will now hold its regular monthly monitoring of goals and guard rails. Dr. Morgan, please present the report. >> Thank you, Chair Elott. Um so uh we are bringing our second rendition of the goals and guardrails is focus on college and career readiness. Um and uh I see that we have uh Dr. Florence that
205is uh up here and then Dr. Demo to help me co-present. Uh since some of this information was already uh shared in last week I will go through uh some of the slides uh briefly. I also see um other members of Dr. Florence's team uh coming up to also assist and we thank you for the work you guys have done on this. So, as a reminder, um our five-year goal on college readiness is that the percent of the four-year graduation cohort, uh who meet at least one college ready indicator, that's ACT, SAT, college ready, honors, diploma, AP, college ready, uh or 12 plus college, uh credits will increase from where it was last year at 8.2% uh to 25% um by uh 2030. And as you heard us say last night, even just saying a
206quarter of our students will be college uh and career ready by uh 2030 um is though a lot of uh it's it's a strength with it but also there is work we have to do there. >> Dr. Morgan, I do want to note that we are conducting business in this meeting and I would ask media who are conducting interviews and Councilman Palinski to exit the auditorium. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. You can go on. >> Thank you, Chair Elott. Um, the specific uh CEO measure that we're looking at tonight is other part. Last week, we looked at the students who were testing on the benchmark exam, which is our NWA that are uh tested as college ready. Um to uh tonight we're looking specifically at those students who are actually on track to uh attain that
207college readiness based on the the indicators whether it's AP or IB or the courses that they're taking. So we want to increase the percent of third-year high school students that are on track to either earn 12 uh college credits or pass AP IB exams by the end of their fourth year from a baseline of 6.4 to 7.2%. as all things and I've te I teed this up. I think um now this is December. We have this as we're finishing out this calendar year and heading into 2026. I think we've had a monitoring session on every one of our goals. Not all of our guardrails, but we've had a monitoring session on every one of our goals and we're learning a lot. Uh so just anticipate uh I have already talked with our team. I know
208Dr. Florence and I have talked about what are better indicators that we can look at. Not necessarily that the goal will change, but what are better ways we can indicate uh show progress of our students making this progress, but then also the strategies that we're doing. How can we better uh best demonstrate which strategies are working? Um so some background we already have talked about college, career, workforce and military readiness over time. The importance of um this indicator is our state's charge to ensure that our students are college and career ready as uh demonstrated in uh you know 11 different ways. Um this readiness is something that the state uses to uh show predictability of students success rate um once they go to college and also persistence. So, we are ensuring that we're monitoring that,
209not just over dialing to what the state is doing because they could change that college and career readiness indicator at any point in time, but we do want to make sure we are holding ourselves accountable to some measure to ensure students are college and career ready. And so, that's why that's really important. Um, there are two indicators specifically that we're looking at um as a way of of monitoring this work. We know we have advanced placement and IB work. So uh this is one way that students can demonstrate that based on the uh scores on the exams that they get in these courses that they take. And then also the students that are earning 12 or more college credits uh as indicated through the college uh credit uh plus program that's CCP an early college
210program where students are also earning um either dual enrollment or an associates degree or a state approved uh career technical um education program. So these are the ways that we're we're monitoring that through our work. I also want to talk about remediationfree ACT SAT scores. Uh so these are the benchmark or the scores that uh SAT and ACT has set that if students hit this score uh they will be remediation free in college. And even some of our highest performing students when they get to college they're in remediation free classes meaning they're not even taking that uh freshman level uh college course courses. they are taking courses that are college prep courses and we should be doing that college prep. Um and so we really want to ensure what does it mean to be remediation
211free as you're moving forward. The other thing and you mentioned through building brighter futures, well, we've mentioned through building brighter futures, now every kid will have the opportunity um starting next year to earn a honors diploma in every high school. And these are the ways that you can earn honors diploma uh whether through the the academic honors uh courses that are being taken, the IB uh honors, career tech honors, STEM honors, arts honors, and social science and civic engagement. Last week when I shared our data demonstrating the amount of students that are on track to be college and career ready as measured by the NWA, we saw that a little over 3% of our scholars right now are indicated to be college and career ready. And these are our nth and tth grade scholars. Um
212though that uh history has shown that it increases over time, uh we know that we have work to do. uh 3% is not where we want to be and even to the highest where we've got to seven sometimes uh um close to 8% is still not where we want to be. The majority of our students are being left behind. Um some things that we are seeing in terms of trends uh who's struggling the most are our students, our English language learners as well as our um our students with uh uh special needs. uh this is showing uh students who are uh testing on that indicator. But I also want to underscore as we talked about the work we're doing with building brighter futures and our commitment to students who learn differently. If the courses aren't
213even accessible in their school, so one if it's not accessible in their school and also if they're not ha don't have access to taking the courses um special education students uh can thrive in honors and advanced courses. Uh in fact uh many students of major uh who uh are not students of color or students living in poverty when they get to college there are students that have accommodations and things to support their learning and they're in advanced courses. They graduate from college, they graduate with college with honors. Um so having a uh uh individual education plan, an individualized education plan or supports and accommodation does not mean you don't have the ability to access high content. And we need to change that narrative. And so what this shows me and also what the board just
214took bold action on is showing if we're not giving the option for our students who either learn different languages or learn differently um they will not be able to achieve this uh level. Um our data also shows that our gifted students at 11% but even for a gifted student only 11% um are are fairing a little bit better than our non-gifted students at 3% and females are fairing a little bit better than males at 5% versus 2%. But altogether we have work to do. Um some of the strengths uh we've been able to increase the amount of students taking AP courses um from where we were uh at about 676 to now um being at 868 students enrolled in AP classes. Uh we've talked about the work that our academics team has already been doing
215even prior to building brighter futures to ensure more kids are enrolled. Uh this number will continue to grow as we're offering more opportunities. Um there are currently 786 students who've participated in college career uh uh plus uh college credit plus programming. Uh that has increased to 842. Um that's something that we uh are are doing. And then you've heard Dr. Florence talk about the new college and career readiness work uh walkthrough tool that the team is using and um we've already done 149 of those career readiness walkthroughs using that tool. um some of our limitations right now pre building brighter futures we don't have the courses to do this and as I appreciate the push from everyone on this board but it comes up coh constantly from you Miss Lebrone is this push of even
216with building brighter futures uh we're still going to have some work there's going to still be schools that are just offering maybe one college uh uh course or um one career pathway and so um we have limitations now and we have a journey ahead of us to ensure that there's equity and access across our system. Um the progress monitoring we're doing for both AP and um CCP uh coursework. Uh that's work that we've actually just started some of those strategies. We talked about that last week. And then currently right now teacher PD is voluntary, but that's work that we can do by working through our partners uh and leveraging some work moving across the board. Uh strategies for improvement. We want to uh continue to utilize the resources available such as the AP classroom platform
217that we've talked about. uh utilize data from the college readiness walkthrough tools to learn what is taking place in our classroom and what the rigorous instruction can look like. And then providing that professional development that we also talked about last week. Um access, we've talked about ensuring that there's increased enrollment. Building brighter futures will also ensure that we have uh access to these courses in each one of our high schools next year, the 14 that will be uh in existence next year. And then expanding those CCP opportunities. We know right now we have uh CTP available through um our high-tech high at TRIC. We're continuing that program, but that will not be the only avenue for students to earn uh college credit uh moving forward. Um so the intention is to also have that in
218our high schools. Um some other things and uh we heard this uh last week uh we've had increase uh usage of the AP classroom platform tool. So that is uh increased by 33 percentage points. So that we're excited to see that increase. Uh we've also provided professional development to teachers in advanced placement. We still have some work to do that at scale but that's work that we've done. Some things that were that are starting to work it says working u but well I see starting to work but I would say things that are working but we still it's emergent I would say is the implementation of the college readiness walkthrough tool. Uh so we're seeing some uh some bright spots with that and it can continue to grow and leverage uh the awareness of the
219AP classroom resources and the college board platform. Uh that's the work that the team has uh already done to provide support to our teachers um in expanding this things that are starting to work is coaching building principles around this walkthrough tool as well as the um the work that we're doing on the AP uh classroom platform. Right now 52% of our teachers have at least uh been exposed or actually have uh visited the AP uh classroom platform and so we have work to do uh to increase that and then not sounding like a broken record right now what's not working is just the variability across our system and building brighter futures will help that from scheduling um we know right now if the master schedule doesn't support the expansion of these courses and also just
220the the rigorous and intense load that needs to happen uh with uh this course work u we're not going to be able to grow. And so I know Dr. Florence's team is already looking with the implementation of building brighter futures. There will be um work to do. I I heard someone say we need a manifesto of how to implement these programs. Well, guess what? I believe that was also Miss Hodgej from Colinwood that the team is working on that uh and that's inclusive of a ma, you know, what it means for master scheduling, what it means to implement these college and career readiness programs. So continue to uh as we say watch us work uh and uh also help us support you as you're doing this work in your classrooms. Um and then also we
221talked about the gaps that exist. Not all students have access to it. When right now we have some schools where there's 0% of these programs. Of course when students take the NWA that's where they're going to be at. Now also mind you as we think about when students took the NWA many of them were taking this at the beginning of the year. So I am excited to see where we at least are um after some inputs of instruction is um and seeing some of the the strategies that our team is starting to do to see the improvement of that. Um but these are also some of the limitations um and then also just the foundational skills. Um and those foundational skills don't start in high school. As a former high school teacher and principal, uh
222I often said, you know, the fact that there were uh you know, ninth graders coming in at a third grade reading level and the fact that, you know, in high school, our high school educators are charged with not only bringing them up to par, but graduating them and getting them prepared for college, that's a tall task. So college and career readiness doesn't just start in nth grade, it doesn't just start in eighth grade or seventh graders. It's high quality curriculum at scale. Um, so the, you know, we may sound like a broken record, but all these things are connected from the goals and guardrails. The work we've been doing, the work we've been doing to have highquality instructional materials in every single classroom starting in our early grades, it builds that college and career continuum.
223And that's work we have to continue to do. Um, just some next steps, some of these things I already started to share. ensuring that all of our school leaders are um using the career readiness uh college and career uh ready uh college readiness tool, the professional development that we're doing to leverage uh that work in terms of instructional practices, scheduling uh regular regularly reviewing AP and CCP performance data and reviewing those gaps. I know that's work that Dr. Florence's uh team uh this wonderful team that's riding in front of us, I I know they meet on a regular basis. Uh and a lot of uh Dr. forms team. She has different committees on her uh team uh to look at uh data and review it and this is one of them. Um uh what are
224they doing to speed up progress or what we are doing to speed up progress? U monitoring the AP classroom data every 3 weeks and follow up with schools that are not using the program. Um just having that accountability supporting principles with the creation of these programs for the 2627 school year. Um, which is another reason why through building brighter futures, us naming principles this week is going to be really important because we have a lot of work to do. Uh, and principles need a lot of support figuring out how to schedule, how do we offer these courses? Um, how do I get kids where they are to where we need them to be? Um, that's going to take work and we're ready to support our principles through that. And then we talked about earlier exposure
225to advanced coursework. Right now, we want to start that work in seventh grade. We've talked about the ability to offer algebra 1 and eighth grade. Um but that even looks at preparing students for that math level um before then. Um how do we replicate what's taking place in schools? Once again, right now having that access to um the AP classroom platform, looking at the AP uh uh the college uh readiness walkthrough tool and leveraging those best practices as we're going in and out of our our buildings to see um what's scalable and also what's working across our system. There are bright spots. um our data would suggest we have work to do in all of our schools. Um but there are bright spots and things that we can leverage. Uh and then we also just
226talked about the expanded access. Um what evidence exists that shows that this you know will work and you know just research shows that when students have access um to highquality instruction and also advanced coursework this pushes the system uh and it pushes and prepares our students post high school. Uh so I know this is a college ready goal and many may be listening to it thinking that our push is to ensure all kids are going to college. We want all of our students to be critical thinkers and so when we think about what colleges look for at a minimum they're looking for critical thinkers and you need critical thinking even in your career. Uh and so uh we want to ensure we're preparing literate, vibrant citizens to uh be productive in our society whether they
227choose college or career. >> Take questions. >> Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Miss Jones. First off, I can finally feel like I can exhale. Um, having said that, I want to thank Dr. Morgan and his team because they went through an awful lot of iterations of a whole host of things based on community questions, based on our questions, um, and were able to come back with information that was helpful for all of us. But I also want the community to know that this was not an easy decision for any of us. We had to talk with each other. We had to listen to each other. And for me in particular, it was very difficult being a CMSD grad. Now granted, it was many years ago and things were not fair even then fair then either. However,
228they weren't as difficult as it is now. We had far more students. We have far more opportunities. We have far more chances than are in our system today. And so I am really happy that going forward all students will have the opportunity to take all of the classes and all the options and all the extracurricular activities that they want to participate in versus you having to choose a school to go to to have that happen. So from that perspective, I am honestly very pleased with the work of the board, with the work of his staff and work the work of the community. And I can honestly say change is not easy and the board knows from some of our discussions it was not easy for me either. Um but we have to move forward. We
229have to do the right thing for our students because they deserve that from us. They deserve to know that we support them. We believe in them and we want the absolute best for them for not only college but also career. Thank you. >> Thank you. Miss Jones agreed and appreciate the additional comment on building brighter futures. Dr. Shrear followed by Miss Lebron. >> Um Dr. Morgan, thank you. Um I I I'm just going to reiterate a question that I asked last week. Um and and related to your your next steps slide. Um uh it would be meaningful for us to see data in your next report that talks about what kind of preparation. So I see a a bullet point somewhere in there about more advanced coursework starting in seventh grade. um which really supports
230our goal number two um with uh with math preparation. But I I think it'll be meaningful for the community to see what kind of what kind of course work and when the students have that coursework what we expect to see in um um in in our CCP courses, AP courses and as well as uh with ACT and SAT scores. Thank you, >> Miss Lebron. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Thank you for highlighting um the one thing you said about uh it's CMSD's job to get students read like re remediation free before arriving to college because that is really big and it costs students lots of money to take courses that don't even award them college credit, right? Um so I appreciate that. Um and paying attention to that work. Um, you mentioned here that taking AP
231courses, students taking AP courses increased from 676 to 868. I'm curious in the future in future um, presentations, can you break down the the um, grade level of each of the students that are taking these courses? And I think part of that is because the goal is tied to their third year. We want to see the increase in their third year of high school. And so it's important to know when they're taking those te uh when they're taking those courses, but then also um the other thing that I wanted to mention is the number of students taking AP courses is nice to know, but what's even better for us is how many students are getting a three or higher on those exams. many students can take the class and then if they're still not getting
232a score of three or higher, >> yeah, >> you know, are we really getting them, you know, those 12 credit hours that they need um in order to meet the measurement? So, I'd like to know a little bit more about that in the future as well. >> Thank you, Miss Leone. Mr. Bips, >> thank you, Chair Elott. Um I I just have one question and and it pertains to slide number six and I you know, and I apologize if I missed this. I had to step out briefly, but u I I don't mean to just state the obvious, but it's um the start of the school year is a dip every year. Um I assume that it could be attributed to summer break. Um I my question would be knowing that this is generally the
233trend. Is there any strategies that can be potentially implemented to um reduce that um dip that we see every summer with with with pertaining to slide number six? >> Yes. And in in looking at this, these are um this is the students that are predicted uh uh and I actually when I was going through this slide, I was actually looking at um referencing the the data we actually saw last week and it's slightly different. is the students that are predicted to be on track. Um, and we use several predictive measures. In a moment, I'll I'll bring uh Dr. Demo up to talk about the the predictive measures, but I'm going to answer your question, but I'm going to talk about I want Dr. Demoiko to uh come up to talk about the methodology behind what
234we did to predict it. Um, part of the reason why you uh see that dip is yes, some some of the the summer um uh slide, but also the fact that we're not uh we're we aren't even achieving a higher level throughout the year. And so, uh when we're looking at some of this data like the one we did last week, we're taking that test at the beginning of the school year before there's any value add of instruction. So some of the ways we could do this is by ensuring uh that we're growing the number of students that are on on track and to this point that they are not just taking the class but they are actually excelling in the class going really well. Uh that will ensure in the following year at the
235beginning of the year we'll have more students that are on track. But Dr. Miko can you talk more about this measure and what went behind the predictive measure? >> Sure. the the way the measure works for the predictions is so one thing to remember is that each of these kind of three data points you see within a school year represents a completely different cohort of kids and that's why you keep seeing that dip from end of year to start of year because it's a different cohort of kids in their third year of high school. So it's not really due to summer slide it's just you're looking at a brand new group of thirdyear high schoolers in each of those different school years. That's part of why you see this trend of you're going to go
236up and then at the start of the year you're going to start lower again. The way the predictions work also is that we're feeding in a lot of student level data. So their attendance, their grades, whether they've actually earned any college credit yet, whether they've passed any API courses yet, um whether they've been suspended. So we're feeding all this data in to make them the prediction of how well they'll do at the end of their third year. And at the start of the year, really most of what we have is just attendance suspensions. We haven't completed a semester yet. They haven't earned college credit. And that's another reason why you see that big jump between start of year and the middle of the year is because kids will have completed a semester of college credits.
237So that usually gets them earned credits and then we can say, oh, it helps us better sort out who's really on track and who's not. So that's partially why you you see the pattern here. Um, yeah. Okay. >> And Mr. Mr. Bips, I appreciate the question uh just because uh wanted to make sure how we differentiated this data from the data we saw last week. So I appreciate that. >> Thank you so much, >> Miss Leone. Sorry, I just wanted to make another point. Um like to my earlier comment around, you know, pro expanding access to classes like AP classes, but not necessarily having the supports in place, being careful that we don't end up with an unintentional gap um in performance measures. But um the reason why I bring that up is cuz I
238saw that one of the um I don't know if it was in the strategy slide or like a um a weakness slide, but it was around um teacher PD for AP classes is is optional or voluntary. Um that to me will make it hard to meet the you know to fill these gaps if we continue to leave it as a voluntary option for teachers. So I just want to address that. Yeah, that was definitely something we flagged and it's a it's a limitation uh of which we we invite uh the work that we'll continue to do within our our scope, but then also invite the work of our of our partners, our union partners in particular to think about how can we leverage uh getting more of the teachers as training as well. >> All
239right. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Thank you to the board for the rigor. I know it's rounding on 10:00. Thank you to our staff who are still here um keeping us going um keeping the meeting on. I just want to say thanks for the questions. This is the work. Appreciate the rigor. Um all right. Uh is there any old business? Is there any new business? The next regular board meeting will be the 2026 organization meeting session on Tuesday, January 13th, 2026. Can't believe I just said that. 2026 at 6:30 p.m. at Arnold Pinkney East Professional Center. The chair will now entertain a motion to adjourn this board business meeting. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Hearing no objection, this meeting is adjourned. Good night and happy holidays and happy new year.