CMSD Board of Education Meeting - November 5, 2025

001This work session of the board of education of the Cleveland Municipal School District will come to order. Mr. Stockdale, will you please call the role? >> Miss Elott, >> here. >> Mr. Phillips, >> here. >> Mr. Briggs, >> here. >> Miss Jones, >> here. Mr. Jones >> here. >> Mrs. Lebron >> here. >> Mrs. P >> here. >> Dr. >> here. >> Mrs. Wow >> here. >> There are nine members present. >> Thank you. I ask everyone who wishes to rise and participate in the pledge of allegiance. liberty and justice for all. >> All right. Thank you and welcome everybody. Good evening. Um, first I'd like to take a moment to congratulate four of our board members, Dr. Nigamont Streer, Madori Lebron, Charlene Jones, and Caroline Peak, who were recently reappointed to full four-year terms

002on the board of education by Mayor Justin Bev. Congratulations [applause] and thank you for your continued service. At this work session, the board will continue the practice of placing a number of resolutions on a consent agenda to vote on all in a single vote without discussion. This evening's work session consent agenda includes the minutes of the last board meeting of October 28th, 2025 and three legal resolutions. The chair will now entertain a motion to approve this work session's consent agenda consisting of agenda items 3.02 to 3 to excuse me 4.03 the full titles of which are set forth in the board meeting agenda. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you. Mr. Stockdale, please call the role on this motion. >> Miss Eli, >> yes. >> Mr. Phillips, >> yes. >> Mr. Briggs, >> yes.

003>> Miss Jones, >> yes. >> Pastor Jones, >> yes. >> Miss LeBron, >> yes. >> Mrs. Pe. Yes, >> Dr. Shrear. >> Yes, >> Mrs. Welsh. >> Yes. >> Motion pass. Nine votes. >> Thank you. The minutes are approved and the resolutions are adopted. >> This evening's board meeting agenda also includes an additional eight resolutions in the areas of board of education, finance, and excellence and culture, which the board will vote on as part of its consent agenda at our November 19th board business meeting. And now the board will hold its monthly monitoring of goals and guardrails. And alongside that, we will have the CEO's recommendation for facilities planning under the district's recent community engagement on building brighter futures. While our school district continues to make real progress and many of our students are thriving,

004it has been clear for some time that declining enrollment, primarily due to population decline. Rising costs and underenrolled school buildings make it challenging to offer the highquality programs and opportunities that all of our students deserve in all of our schools. In January of this year, the board of education adopted a resolution embarking on a district long-term facilities planning process that included a range of robust stakeholder engagement with a goal of improving student experience and outcomes while achieving a financially sustainable system of schools. At that time, our board directed that this f this long-term facilities planning process be implemented in accordance with the following guiding principles. Centering students in our decision-making, embracing data, driving towards equity, seeking and hearing input from the community, learning from history, acting courageously and decisively, and supporting students and staff through

005change. Over the past several months, our district has conducted a thorough review of the building conditions, course offerings, and extracurricular programs in each school and has held a long range of regional public meetings, virtual meetings, parent and family meetings, and school staff meetings in order to solicit community input to better inform any long-term planning considerations that would be or recommendations that would be made to this board. It's the board's intention ultimately to approve a plan that best serves all of our students with high quality academic programs and accur extracurricular opportunities in modernized high schools and K8 buildings while deploying our limited resources most effectively on behalf of our students. It's our responsibility as a board to serve the needs of every student, to educate every student, and make sure every family can feel confident that

006any school they choose for their child is going to offer excellent, equitable, and effective educational resources resulting in the outcomes that our students deserve when they leave our district. This evening, the CEO will present a set of recommendations and a plan for the board, to the board, and to the community. And I want to say to CEO Morgan, I know you've worked incredibly hard on this plan. I know you've taken the board's charge and push and been extremely effective in the way that you vetted um what your recommendations might look like. you've taken into account um the community's input about academic opportunity, college and career readiness for our scholars, and safe and appropriate buildings for our children. After receiving the recommendation tonight, I'd like our board to have an opportunity to review, discuss, and get

007additional community feedback at our next three board meetings. on November 19th at Max Hayes High School, December 2nd here at Arnold Pinkney, and December 9th at Max Hayes. The board will be increasing its public comment slots for the business meetings to 20 slots each and adding a public comment section for 20 slots to the work session where we do not typically hold public comment. In order to give Dr. Morgan and his staff time to implement the plan for the start of the 202627 school year. I am asking our board to vote on this plan at our December 9th board business meeting which will be held at Max Hayes High School. And now today the CEO will present the facilities plan along with the goal monitoring data because they are intertwined in this case today. I

008asked the board to save their questions toward the end. So you can feel free to uh click your light to indicate that you have a question at any time and I will call on board members at the end of the presentation. Over to you Dr. Morgan. Thank you so much, Chair Elicott. And I also want to thank our board one for giving us the charge of our board uh not only goals and guardrails but the guiding principles that have been behind our building brighter futures plan to ensure that this is a plan that while help us with operational efficiencies at the beginning of this plan, it's around students and centering students and what we do and in a moment I'll talk about that. Um, but I know that there are so many that are here

009or watching online that have been anticipating uh recommendations, have been waiting for recommendations. I thank you for your patience. Um, putting a plan of this much magnitude that is so important uh really takes a lot of detailed thought and intentionality and we really wanted to make sure that the recommendations we were putting forth are truly creating a brighter future for our Cleveland scholars. Um I know we will get to the recommendations. Everyone is waiting to see what those recommendations are. Um but I would ask that you would indulge uh me for a moment. One as I just share a little bit about the context around the why. We always want to start with the why. Not only why we're here in this moment, but our responsibility and charge for our scholars and our students. So

010indulge me in that. And then also as chair Alakod mentioned, we do want to give an update on guardrail three which is around community engagement and give an update on some of the things we've learned on this uh in the fall session of our community engagement. Earlier this year we talked about what we learned in the spring and in the winter months. Um and now we want to share what we learned in the fall. See, there we go. So, as I shared before, not only did you hear in our guiding principles around building brighter futures, but what we've shared, this plan is called building brighter futures because it's about our students. This is a plan about our students. And I want to tell you about one of our amazing scholars here in our system. This

011is Victoria's Blackman. She is an eighth grade scholar at AB Hart. And I had the wonderful opportunity of uh getting to a chance to know Victoria's last school year in May when she was CEO for the day. So, she shadowed me for the day. And at the time, she was in seventh grade. And when we were going from school to school and meeting to meeting, she was shadowing me. Um I got a chance to learn a little bit about Victorious and her passions. One, I learned that she loves sports. I learned that she wants to be a scientist when she grows up. And I also heard about her family history. I heard that she had many other family members that graduated from the system. Her older sister who I actually had the opportunity to meet

012at uh Bario restaurant downtown. Uh and she she glowed about her sister, her sister going into college and all the work that is taking place. But one of the questions I asked and I asked a lot of our elementary scholars whenever I get a chance to meet them is what high school are you thinking about going to? And she told me which high school she's thinking about. But as I listen to the high school she was thinking about and I also listen to the program she's interested in, the athletics that she wants to do and also the academic program that she wants. I cannot say with confidence right now that if she either goes to that high school or some other high schools in our system that she will have that option. As I shared

013before, we have pockets of excellence. Some of our schools that have college and career programs, some of our schools that have top-notch sports programs, shout out to coach. I see coach in the audience. But that is not the reality in all of our schools. And so when I think about Victorious and so many of our other scholars across our system that have dreams and aspirations like we all do, we want to ensure with certainty that wherever they choose to go to school, that they will have a brighter future, that they will have access to college and career courses when they go to high school, that they're in if they're in our K8 schools, they have access to enrichment courses, and they also get a chance to explore their passions through sports, extracurricular activities just like

014many of you and I have had in our past. So, as we go through this plan today and talk about the why, I want us to think about Victorious and the thousands of other scholars in our system that are just like her that have dreams and aspirations and a future. And this is about building that brighter future for them. So, we've already talked about how this moment demands action. We're in a perfect storm of challenges. Declining enrollment. We've talked about our declines in enrollment largely due to birth rates. We've talked about the increasing expenses that are taking place not only in our system but in all of our lives and in organizations across the city. We've talked about the serious cuts that are taking place at both the state and federal level that is even

015as costs are going up um making the the money that we have in our system we have less dollars to actually do more for our students. Now even with these challenges we have had significant academic progress. I'm proud of that progress and we're going to talk about that in a moment. But we also know that not every scholar has access to a quality education in our system based on the school that they go to. And finally, we also know that we have some excellent buildings, but we have some scholars that are being educated in buildings not worthy of them. This perfect storm of challenges that you see right before you is what is prompting us to act because sitting and doing nothing will not change the reality for our scholars in their future. So this

016is a now moment. This is an action moment. So let's talk about our enrollment. We have shared this before. 20 years ago we had about 70,000 students in our system. Our enrollment has declined by over 50% in 20 years and as I've shared before we have about the same number of buildings we had then as we do now. So we know that there is some right sizing to do. Now one of the things I want to share as I uh you know I've shared in different presentation these enrollment declines are not due to that we are losing a lot of students to charter schools or private schools or you know they're they're they're leaving for uh the suburbs. We're showing that families are choosing CMSD and at consistent rates over the past five or six

017years and we're proud of that. But this is largely due to declines in birth rates and this is not only impacting our city but major cities across the country and the world. We have even seen this in our own city. We just finished an election and we are down two wards because our population is declining in our city and that's every major city in this uh in this uh country. And so this is another reason why it this is a moment that demands action right now. Now we've also talked about our finances. Uh this is another chart that many of you have seen for a while. We have the dotted red and the dotted green lines. This represents what our system looked like when I first became CEO. And by the way, when I first

018became CEO, we entered into fiscal precaution with the state. But we did measures We cut nearly $200 million from our budget. We put financial restrictions in place. We did other work at the central office and also in our schools to bring our expenses down and exited fiscal precaution. And we have not been in fiscal precaution since. Also, thanks to our wonderful Cleveland community, we have passed a historic last year, we passed a historic combined bond and operating levy that brought money into our system. So, it closed the gap, but we know that over the next several years that if we do not save somewhere in the ballpark of $150 million, we can be at risk of being in fiscal precaution and being taken over by the state. As I shared before, when I first entered

019in, we were in fiscal precaution. We exited it. We haven't been since. I do not want CMSD on a list, especially at a time where some may believe that there's an attack on public education. This is our system. This is our city and we deserve the right to educate our scholars and provide them the brighter future that they need and deserve. So, let's take a moment of celebration. We've been talking about how our uh it's a time to level up for our scholars, but our scholars leveled up across the board on this past state report card. We're proud of the academic gains that they made in every single tested subject area, in some cases with significant gains. our scholars and our educators. Let's not forget the work our educators are doing in the classroom. Working

020very hard, our school leaders, the work that they're doing. And due to that work, we have now exceeded the prepandemic proficiency in high school English language arts, algebra 1, as well as US government. But even with this strong academic gains, there's more work to do. In 2024, I was so proud and still am proud that we were a three-star district for the very first time. But in 2025, the report card got changed and we had to look at how we as a CMSD were preparing students for college and career. And in the class of 2024, only 36% of those students met college and career readiness standards. That shows as a system we are not preparing our scholars at scale for college and career. And because of this, this was largely part of the reason why

021we became a two and a half star as well as chronic absenteeism, which we'll be reporting on our update on chronic absenteeism um in our next board meeting. This is our current reality. 78% of our high schools offer college credit. 59% of our high schools offer career pathways. 38% of our elementary schools offer enrichment courses like band, algebra 1, foreign language, beyond art, music, and PE. Now, I want to pause for a moment because when we talk about 36% of students being college and career ready, how can we improve that number where there are schools that don't even offer the programs? Once again, a moment that demands action and we have the responsibility and opportunity to deliver that for our scholars. We also have 70% of our students that are in new or upgraded buildings.

022Um, we are proud that the majority of our kids are in new or upgraded buildings, but we know that there are still some scholars that are being educated in schools that are not worthy of 21st century learning. And once again, we have that opportunity to act. And this low enrollment across our system is hurting both the teacher and the student experience with building brighter futures. This plan, the plan that I'll be presenting tonight and recommending to the board, enables 100% of high schools to offer college credit. 100% of our high schools to offer career pathways. 100% of our K8s to offer enrichment courses like band, algebra 1, foreign language beyond art, music, and PE. And all of those will happen next school year, starting next school year. Now, we also have a goal through this

023plan to get 100% of our students in newer upgraded buildings. This will take time as we are building some new buildings. Uh we're building a new Lincoln West, a new Marian Seltzer, and the board and state approved a new high school that will be named in just a few moments of where that high school will be. But we also know that if you're upgrading buildings such as new roofs and doing uh facilities upgrades, those take time. So this will take us a few years but we will get to 100% of our students being in new or upgraded buildings and also improve our enrollment at scale. So as I shared this is what building brighter futures is. It's this vin diagram improving student outcomes and experience for every scholar no matter where they live their background

024where they go to school and at the same time taking care of our finances and improving financial sustainabilities. That's what building brighter futures is. Now, I do want to talk about the engagement we've done and we talked about Guardwell 3 and when uh the the board has given us a charge to ensure that we're engaging our community through this process. I shared an update back in September, I believe it was September 9th, of how our engagement through the building brighter futures process looked like in the spring months and summer months. And today, I want to let you know about what we learned in the fall. And this is high level. Um this is just a reminder of our goals and guardrails. You guys know we are centering the work in the goals and guardrails that

025our board has given us a charge to to center our students in everything we do. And even under tonight where there's a lot to talk about in terms of the recommendations, we still want to center it into in the goals that we have for our scholars. So this guard uh this guardrail in particular talks about uh making sure that before significant decisions are made uh that we are engaging the community and there are two CEO measures connected to this one is around the amount of uh or the the the various stakeholders we would engage through building brighter future. So, civic organizations, faith leaders, parents, nonprofits, uh corporate partners, um other education part partners. Uh and then CEO measure 2 is talking about making sure that of uh you know gathering um feedback and input and

026going to 100% of those potentially impacted schools. And I'll tell you about how we were able to do this in the fall. So, just a reminder, and I know this is wordy and we're in this big room. Um a a few things to note. I know that on some slides the words may be small so try as best as possible. One, we will also make sure that this deck is uh presented. I believe also there was a QR code earlier on where you can also follow along. Of course, you're in the room, so you don't have to listen, but you can follow along um online to see the slides as well. Uh but just a reminder, phase one of building brighter futures was both the work we were doing in the spring and summer as

027well as the fall to engage with the community. And there were a couple of additional engagements we added this fall uh in addition to the work that we did this spring because we wanted to ensure we were getting into every single school and having a touch base with staff. So we went to all of our open houses and had a building brighter futures presentation. We also went to every single school and had staff meetings for building brighter futures presentation. We did six additional regional meetings as well as three webinars. Uh and then we also met again with our students. We met with our parent advisory council and many other different engagements that have taken place. And as you can see the QR code is right there if you would love to just follow along as

028we're doing the presentation. All right, give that a moment and we'll switch back. We are now entering into phase two of this plan. Tonight I'll share the recommendations and we will continue to engage. So throughout this process, we heard many different inputs that have informed the recommendation. And now that you have the recommendations tonight or you will have the recommendations tonight. We will continue to engage not only with the entire district community and uh Cleveland community. We will be going specifically to those impacted schools for staff meetings, for parent meetings, working with students during this time and then also ensuring that we're engaging uh with uh uh not only uh teacher groups but also staffing groups. In the time between both the spring and the fall, we've collected thousands of pieces of feedback. um from

029you know various different stakeholders and I'll let you know very high level uh though uh there are many different approaches in terms of how we can move forward what was very affirming was that our community in uh actually in every single case the majority of people understood the data case understood the challenging moment that we're in right now and the majority understood that some action must take place. Now, some places where we heard some feedback that helped inform our recommendation now are these. The biggest piece of feedback we heard in the fall was, "We've been doing these meetings for a while. Let us know." Timeline. That was the biggest piece of feedback. When will we know? Um, and of course, tonight is a night and you're still anxiously waiting. I promise I will get to

030it. But timeline and process those were big pieces of feedback that we heard which is one of the reasons why when we were going to do this in the uh top part of 2026 you know there was a world where we looked at this in January and February we heard from the community and said if possible you have the information and you can actually implement well pull it forward. We also got inputs from our community around things that will be important to you as we consider the recommendation aside from you know enrollment, enrollment trends, building condition and building size and we got that from you. Another important learning and the board charged us in the uh in the um guiding principles to learn from history. So something that we heard from feedback and then also

031just from immediate history we have from last year. There were two school impacts that happened last school year. Um, we uh closed Walton. Uh, well, I would say we merged Walden with Clark. Walden and Clark merged together. Those two school communities. Students had a reserve seat at uh at Clark. If they were uh at Walden, they had a reserve seat. And for the most part, staff followed. You know, there's different uh rules in terms of how we do staffing, but staff in general could stay with their students. And then we had a closure in Newton D. Baker where there wasn't a building where there was enough students for all the kids to go to and those students were dispersed in a closure. Uh and in a closure in terms of our contract language agreement when

032that a building closes or we name it as a closer uh families need to choose a school and staff need to find a new school. Um what we learned was that mergers are better for our CMSD community there. Uh we even have some data that shows that the process was seamless. Now granted, Newton Debbaker was an emergency closure, but we learned a lot about the mergers over closure. Tonight, I'm bringing you all mergers. All of the recommendations are mergers. Finally, uh, you know, we learned, you know, you have to do a recommendation. There are different things you're going to need to do, but how are you supporting staff, students in the community during this time? And tonight's recommendation, I'll share some of the paths we have moving forward that go along with this recommendation. And

033this is just a reminder of the primary data points and all of the factors that went into it that we heard from the community. You guys have uh seen this before. All right, are we ready? Let's get into the recommendations. Um, I also will acknowledge I know that uh people are seeing this for the first time. Um, so if you're online and also if you're in the room, I will pause and I'm actually purposefully going through the slides a little slower for processing time. But note this is the beginning of phase two and we're going to be doing engagement. There's more engagement. There's more uh uh information that'll be coming out to help you process this. All right. I'm going to share with you the summary of the recommendations and then we're going to go

034into what each of these recommendations mean. So the building brighter futures recommendations I will start with after once if if the recommendation is approved and you look at everything that takes place what will be left will be 18 buildings that will be empty next year. There are 18 buildings that are currently uh you know in use right now that will not be in use next year that we will have to figure out how we reuse those buildings. 18. That doesn't mean that's the amount of schools that are impacted. So stay with me. And there are five lease spaces that we use for schools or for classrooms that we will end with this recommendation. There are 29 fewer schools in this recommendation that will operate next year. 29 fewer schools. We know in some cases there

035are multiple schools on one campus. So that's why the 18 number is smaller because that's the building. 29 fewer schools in this recommendation. When we think of the total number of school actions between mergers and moves, there's a total of 39 school actions in this recommendation. Now I'll pause here and we will go through each of these. As I shared before, we prioritize mergers over closures in terms of the things that we've heard, feedback that I've heard, feedback we've heard uh from our our teachers union and other uh even school leaders in terms of how these processes could be different and this is our best option to keep more current staff and students together. It's our best option. So, all of these are mergers. Also, just know when you see this in a moment, every

036school community will absorb some type of change. But I also want to acknowledge that there are some that will absorb more change than others. Particularly those that need to move to a new school, uh, you know, to a welcoming school or those that are actually just picking up their school community staying together, but they're picking up and moving to a new location. Um, but it's not one just particular neighborhood, one particular side. The impacts are across the entire system. But do know even though there's change across the entire system, know that the entire system will improve. There are systemwide benefits for every single scholar in the building brighter futures name u plan. Hence its name it's building a brighter future. Now let's talk about this and I want to spend some time a little bit

037here because there are students that are directly impacted in this plan. students that are at a transitioning school where their school will no longer exist next year should the board vote and some schools that will have to move or even schools that are merging together and they're a welcoming school. There are students that are impacted through this plan. But I want to let you know of the students that are impacted in this plan, 100% and let me repeat 100% of those students will have equal or greater academic, extracurricular or student supports and sports opportunities. There are some cases where students do not have any of those opportunities. Now 100% of the students will have equal or expanded academic extracurricular and student support uh services. 96% of the students that are impacted in this plan will

038attend a welcoming school that is equal or greater in terms of star rating. So they're going to a higher quality school or a school of equal rating. And that's should they choose the school at the reserve seat at their welcoming school. 95% of the students impacted by this plan, should they choose the seat at their welcoming school, will attend a better condition building or equal condition building. Equal or better condition building. Now, I want to pause for a moment because not only is the footprint improving, we're taking some schools offline, but students will have a better experience. So, I know that there will be lots of questions. There'll be feedback. There'll also be some challenges to the plan I'm about to share in a moment. But I also ask that we think about our scholars,

039thinking back to Victorious and all of our other 34,000 students that we have in our system. And we have the opportunity and responsibility to deliver a better system for them. This plan does. And not only will the schools be better, we will save at least $30 million a year on this plan. Better schools, better operations, closer to our financial sustainability. Today, when we think about our traditional schools, um we have about 88 89 uh schools that are traditional schools. Um through this recommendation, we're proposing that next year there will be 59 59. So thinking about that the the the difference 59. So going from 61 schools see at the bottom in 62 buildings because we have one elementary school that's shared across two schools going to 45 elementary schools next year and 27 high schools

040in 23 locations going to 14 schools. Now, one of the pieces of feedback as we've been going to do community meetings, there were families from Natividan and remote school, school of one. They were like, "What about us? Our data doesn't show up." And we said, "Yes, we have a plan for you. We're considering you. We're thinking about you. I want to let you know that all of our non-traditional options will be in operation next year." Nativid Pagan Newcomers Academy, school of one, remote academy or the remote school for both uh elementary as well as high school virtual academy high-tech high as well as our juvenile detention center, the downtown education center at the Kyhoga County Juvenile Detention Center. All of those options will be in operation next school year. So, let's talk about why behind

041our high school recommendations. These are all mergers. But I want to let you know why this is the best option for us. When we think about our current reality, there are themes in schools, their programs, all of which we want to keep. And you're going to we're going to talk about this in a moment in terms of some of the work and the courses that are taking place. But not all kids have access to college credit. Not all kids h have access to career pathways. We have schools that are themebased career pathway in name only but do not have the enough courses or staff staffs to complete a pathway. We have the opportunity by scaling our enrollment, merging our schools together to have enough enroll enrollment and staffing to now have complete pathways in all

042of our high schools. Have college credit opportunities in school, not just through CCP, college credit opportunities in their school in every single one of our high schools, as well as expanded opportunities to make sure all students at every high school can earn an honors diploma if they want. um all students can have expanded opportunities in arts, foreign language and other extracurricular activities. And at the same time, we are making sure that uh some of our services that we have in place such as, you know, full-time nurses in each of our building. Um safety and security uh in in our buildings and in some cases, we'll be able to add more safety and security because uh some buildings will be coming offline and we could put safety and security in uh more of our buildings. um

043guidance counselors, all of those supports will stay the same. So, we really want to ensure we're doing that as well as the supports we have for students uh who learn differently, whether they are uh special uh need students, whether they're students who are learning uh English as a second language, whether there are students who are gifted, we want to ensure those things stay the same. The other thing I want to let you know, we want to preserve what's working. um the rituals that take place, the the community partnerships, the friends of boards, those are all the things that make our schools great. We do not intend to disrupt those things. We want to ensure that those are part of our new configuration. And a big part of the merging together will be figuring out how

044do we honor our rituals, our cultures and traditions that we have in our current high schools and bring them together in the path forward. So, high school recommendations, we're going to see the names in just a moment. Um, I want to let you know we talked about colloccated high schools versus standalone high schools. So, there are 14 high schools on a colllocated campus that will merge on their respective campus and become six distinctive high schools. Well, you'll see those in just a moment. We have five standalone high schools that will end instruction in uh at the end of this year should the the board vote on the recommendation and will merge with a welcoming school to give students more opportunity and increase enrollment at scale. All right. And I know it's small so I will

045voice these over. Let's first talk about our colllocated campuses and what those recommendations are. So our high school mergers, colllocated schools merging together. I'm going to name the campus, the current three schools or two or three schools that are on that campus and the future high school with that name in the recommendation. So the name if it is changing, you will see what that is. We'll talk about the pathways and the programs in it in a moment. So bear with me. So the John Haye campus which includes Cleveland School of Science and Medicine, Cleveland School of Architecture and Design, Cleveland Early College will merge to become one high school on the John Hay High School. It it won't be a campus, it'll be John Haye High School. That is the future high school there. Lakeside

046campus, which includes Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School, Cleveland High School for Digital Arts, will merge to become Benjamin O. Davis High School. John Marshall campus which includes John Marshall School of Civic and Business Leadership, John Marshall School of Engineering and John Marshall School of Information Technology will merge into one and be John Marshall High School. Lincoln West campus which includes Lincoln West School of Global Studies, Lincoln West School of Science and Medicine will merge to become Lincoln West High School. You know we're in the process of building a new Lincoln West High School. James Ford Roads campus which includes James Ford Roads College and Career Academy and James for Ford Roads School of Environmental Studies will merge to become James Ford Rhodess High School. And finally, the Geared Morgan campus, Gared Morgan School of

047Engineering and Inn in Innovation and Gared Morgan School of Leadership and Innovation. Actually, I think yeah, engineering and yeah, that that's correct. and a school of leadership and innovation will merge together to become Garrett Morgan High School. So I'll pause there, take a look at it. You will receive this information. These are our colllocated schools coming together to form one high school and we will name what those career pathways are and what those programs are. The other thing I'll name these are not saying that these are the only high schools in the system. So, we'll get to the systemwide impact. If you don't see your name on a couple of these slides, it doesn't mean that your school will not be in existence. We'll get to some of the schools that there's no recommendation on,

048but they may be adding some programs. So, next for our standalone high schools that will be merging into a welcoming school, ending instruction in the year, merging into a welcoming school. First, we have Columwood High School. We'll be transitioning and welcoming into Glennville High School. Campus International High School will be merging into John Haye High School. And the IB program would move to John Haye High School. MC Squared STEM High School will merge into East Tech. So the MC Squared STEM program will be moving to East Tech High School. New Tech West High School and Facing History New Tech will merge into James Ford Roads High School. Pause for a moment. And note that MC squared STIM uh has three lease spaces. Uh those lease spaces will uh end in this recommendation. I want to

049walk you through when we say expanded opportunity. So, this is a couple of examples and I will note that when you go to your community meetings uh that we'll uh that we'll have at all of our impacted schools, both the welcoming and transitioning schools, uh we'll be going in more in depth in terms of the programs that'll be offered here. But I wanted to lift a couple of examples to let you know about the brighter future all of our scholars will have. So, let's take the John Hay campus with the recommendation that this will be John Hay High School. So these are four different high schools right now coming together as one. And I want you to see John Haye A and D that is in that second column there. Um that has one career

050pathway, five college credit courses, nine electives and 24 sports they have access to. John Hay Early College has zero career pathways but five college credit courses, four electives in arts and languages, 24 sports because they share sports as is. John Hay science and medicine has one career pathway, seven college courses, college credit courses, nine electives in arts and languages, and 24 sports. And when you think about Campus International, Campus International has zero career pathways currently, has the IB diploma program in terms of the college credit courses and seven electives in arts and languages, zero sports. Now operating as one campus together the career pathways will be even just by taking this and has opportunity to build out even more the engineering and science technology pathway as well as the medical bioscience pathway. All students on

051the John Hay campus will have access to those programs and still continuing traditions like the white coat ceremony and all the different things that we have as well as learning some of the other traditions from the other schools expanded opportunities to expand for student interests at least seven or more college credit opportunities. And when I say that, it isn't distinct courses because I know I think on uh science and medicine, there are way more AP classes that are offered, but to get credit for AP on the state report card under uh to by taking AP classes, you need to take three classes and need to get a three or above on the test to to do that. And so many of our schools don't offer enough courses for students to take three or or more.

052Um so this the whole campus will have that opportunity plus the opportunity to be IB. Now, I want to let you know our intention is that the John Hay uh John Haye high school will still be a criteria school, but all students who are attending Campus International now will have the opportunity to go to that school and all students on the John Hay campus will have access to IB and you know there are some schools in our city that have IB, you know, access to it. The other thing I will name is currently right now many of our students who go to campus international lower the elementary school they attend John Hay for high school. Now they can continue their IB program. We will have 15 at least 15 electives in arts or languages. That's

053way more than any three uh any four of these unique campuses offer. And 24 or more Senate league sports. Once again, expanded opportunity for every student at John Haye High School that goes into the 100% that we were sharing. Let's talk about roads operating one roads and you have facing history and new tech west. So here you see roads college of career roads environmental facing history new tech new tech west and you see the distinct schools. I'm not going to go through as I just did there but you see how many career pathways each school has. You see how many college credit courses each school has, the electives that are in arts and languages as well as the sports and in some cases uh you look at facing history new tech uh one sport uh

054maybe I believe that may be one of the ones that has a esport or maybe that's at uh Davis that has that but it's not in the Senate league because there's not enough uh sports offered there to be in Senate league eligible and if you go to New Techch West you can play sports but it's at max Hayes it's not in the school you attend. Now with all these schools coming together, all students will have opportunity to be have play sports and they'll be in the Senate league and you'll see that we are adding some career pathways because even college and career in name roads college and career has zero career pathways currently and career is in the name. So the career pathways that will be there is teaching professions. We want to grow our

055next incredible working force of teaching professionals and that will be a pathway that will be offered at roads. Believe we'll also have one on the east side as well. You'll see that in a moment and interactive media. Finally, Columwood and Glennville merging into Glennville. But this is where the board has made a commitment as well as the state has made a commitment. We are building a new high school for this community that will be in the northeast side. Colinwood and Glennville will come together in Glennville, but we will be building a new high school for this community that will come online in 2031. Now, we'll talk about the new high school. This is also where you're in the future, your trades will also be added where the Max Haze of the East Side, as people

056will say, it'll be in this new East Side High School. But let's talk about what students will be getting immediately starting next year by these two schools coming together. Currently, Colinwood offers zero career pathways. Glennville offers three. When the school communities come together, both of those school communities will have at least three career pathways in addition to some that we'll be building out in the future. Those are allied health and nursing, uh, health information management, logistics, and supply chain management. Collwood currently offers zero college credit courses in their school. Glennville also offers zero college credit courses in their school. Imagine if you're a student who lives in Glennville or Columwood and do not have opportunity to college or career. Starting next year, this school community will have two or more college credit courses in their

057school. Colinwood does offer three electives in arts. Glennville off uh in languages. Glimville offers five. We know that there'll be at least five electives in arts or mu or languages when these two two school communities come together. Colinwood has 14 sports uh that are in on Senate league uh but also Senate league uh probation. Glennville and that a lot of that has to do with the number of students. They're not enough students uh to complete a lot of the teams at Commonwood currently right now. Glennville has 15 and are in the Senate league. combined together, they'll have 15 or more and they will be in the Senate League. Once again, understand the impact, understand the tough decision. Better quality, more options schools for these students that live in this community with a new high school

058on the way. Now, we'll pause for a moment. Those were our high school recommendations and we'll be talking a little bit more about those were the ones for the school the students who were impacted towards the end of this presentation. I'll talk about all of our high schools and some of those pathways and college credit opportunities will be taking place. Let's get to our K8 recommendations. We also want in our K8s we talked about currently right now there are only 38 that offer those enrichment courses beyond art, music or PE. By merging our schools together, we can offer more programs to our scholars, not only in the academics such as we've talked about algebra one and um foreign language, but also sports. You know, right now I think of a student who attends atlay Stevenson

059who is a young lady who may want to play basketball that isn't offered there. Now I think of the students at Mary Church Terrell who are you know scoring in the above proficient category on this last version of I Ready in math but doesn't offer algebra 1. Now we don't know all the courses that our elementaryaries will offer in the future state but we do know with improved enrollment they have a shot. They have a shot now to have sports. They have a shot now to have the extracurricular and academic programs that they need and deserve. We also want in our elementary schools to preserve what is working, the culture and climate in the school, the traditions, um all the routines that take place. Um that's what makes the school community special, that family atmosphere.

060We also want to protect against other cuts that are coming such as uh you know cuts in security um uh cuts in our security personnel. We know we need to double down on that. So we are not um making cuts in security personnel. We are actually adding to that. There will still be nurses in every school uh through this plan. Um also our 5C's at our elementary school. So these are things that we are looking to keep and work with our school community to keep what is working. Now, of the K recommendations, there are 16 current elementary schools that in this recommendation at the end of this school year, the recommendation is that it would end instruction and merge into a welcoming school. 16 would merge into a welcoming school. And we have four specialty

061schools that are not closing in terms of their school. Their schools still operate the same, but the building condition of those schools are in poor shape. and we're picking up those schools and moving them to a better school because some of the schools we took offline, maybe it was in good condition, but there weren't enough students, maybe there were too many schools in that neighborhood. And now we can give students a better uh opportunity in those specialty models. All right, just like I did with high schools, I'm about to do K8s. I will read through each of them. It's a lot on one slide. You'll have access to the slides. Um, but also you can zoom in as I I share these. And much like we did with high school in cases where you see

062a name change, that is also in the recommendation where the name has changed. Here we are. Hannah Gibbons will end instruction at the end of this year with this recommendation and be welcomed or merged into Memorial. Uclid Park will end construction at the end of this year and be merged into East Clark. Stephanie Tubs Jones will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into FDR but be renamed Stephanie Tubs Jones. We'll be keeping the Stephanie Tubs Jones name on the FDR building. Mary Mloud Bthun will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Daniel E. Morgan. Mary B. Martin will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Wade Park. Alfred A. Bennis will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into George

063Washington Carver. Bolton will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Harvey Rice. Charles Dickens will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into AJ Rickoff. Adelaide Stevenson will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Whitney M. Young leadership. Miles will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Robert H. Jameson. Mound will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into AB Hart. Mayor Church Terrell will end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Wilbur Wright. Wilbur Wright will be name renamed Wilbur Wright School of the Arts. Waverly and Louisa May Alcott is recommended to end instruction at the end of this year and merge into the new Joseph M. Gallagher building. Charles A. Mooney is

064recommended to end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Dennis in Valley View. Boys Leadership Academy is recommended to end instruction at the end of this year and merge into Kenneth Clement Boys Leadership Academy. Take a moment. Now, I want to go into the welcoming uh the moves that we're going to go into. So, before I go into the moves, I want to talk a little bit about the moves. So, for our moves, there are four specialty schools. And we talked about what our specialty schools are. These are our art schools, dual language, single gender schools, monastery, IB. These are our specialty school models. As I shared before, we have a commitment to our specialty model. They give our families choices. In some cases, they are some of our higher performing schools.

065Um, so through that, we want to honor that commitment that families can continue to choose a specialty model, a K8 specialty model for Cleveland families. We want that choice in CMSD, but we know many of the buildings did not have a good condition. And so we're giving the opportunity for some of them that had poor condition to have a new facility and better conditions. These schools are not closing in terms of, you know, merging or being dispersed. They're just picking up and moving into a new building. This gives schools the opportunity to attract new families, hopefully with a new building and an incredible program that they've already had and hopefully boost their enrollment. And it also allows us to keep some of those good conditioned buildings in our schools. Now, I'll say something to my

066specialty school community. You're going to see these in a moment of what they are. Though some of our specialty schools have have some high performance, when we looked at some of our other data in terms of enrollment and enrollment trends, we're not doing well on those metrics. I stand behind my word that we have a commitment to our specialty model with this investment in our specialty models and if this recommendation goes through and enrollment does not improve over the years or academic performance doesn't improve. We have some cases where academic performance is strong and in some cases they're not strong that does not this moment this decision now does not isn't a forever decision. We want to ensure we invest and that it continues to improve, but we must continue to monitor our enrollment, enrollment

067trends, and academic performance as we move forward. These are the K8 moves. Kenneth Clement Boys Leadership Academy with the merged students of Valley View will move into the Mary Mloud Bthoon building and renamed Kenneth W. Clement Boys Leadership Academy. Stone Brook White Monastery will move into the Stephanie Tubs Jones building and be renamed Michael R. White Monastery. Dyke School of the Arts will move into the Mound Building and be renamed Dyke School of the Arts. And Tmont Monasuri will move into the Waverly building and be renamed Waverly Monastery. Take a moment for that. Now, I know that was a lot to take in. Those are the recommendations. We're going to go through some other pieces of this, but I also want to remind I know the impact and emotion that can be gained when thinking

068about what you may have just heard, but I want to remind everyone for all those students in the impacted school community, they are getting a better school. 100% of them are now going to a school where they will have equal or greater academic extracurricular sports student support services. And you saw that on some of the slides. 96% of students will go to an equal or higher rated star school. There's only one case where students are not going to a higher rated school and it's a half a star difference. 95% of those students on the slides that you just saw in the impacted are going to a welcoming school of equal or greater building condition. So I want us to sit with this because even though there's lots of emotion, it's not just CMSD that has

069a responsibility to provide a brighter future for our scholars. We as a Cleveland community have that responsibility to provide a brighter future for our scholars. in this plan does not only a better footprint but better schools and we have to keep that top of mind and as we shared before it saves us dollars. Now, those were the recommendations for impacted schools, whether it's a transitioning school that's ending, going into a welcoming school, or whether it's a school that's picking up and moving. Those were the recommendations. But this plan is broader. So, I want to talk about the systemwide impacts because it will benefit every single CMSD scholar in our system. So, you guys have seen this slide. We are delivering on this plan. This is not just for the impacted schools, but this is for

070every single school. 100% of our high schools, not just the ones that were there, but the ones that weren't named that are staying in operations will have access to college credit, career pathways. 100% of our elementary schools will have access to an enrichment course beyond art, music, and PE. And all three of those things are happening next year. Should the board vote on this plan, it'll happen just by us doing the reconfiguration and merging the school communities together and putting programs in the building. We talked about the uh 100% having upgraded buildings. We will be working on that over the next several years to improve the building condition of our buildings. And also I will name that this plan does improve our enrollment. Many of you have been in sessions where you saw what our

071median enrollment was and what the enrollment uh trends have been. And currently for both elementaryaries and high school, our median enrollment is in the 300 range range. And we shared that a healthy enrollment at an elementary school, one that gives two teachers per grade level. Uh one that uh provides opportunity for our scholars is 450. And we said that that healthy enrollment at a high school is at least 500 to provide the college and career programs that are necessary. With this plan, if students were to choose their reserve seat, our median enrollment in elementary schools would exceed the 450 and the median enrollment in high schools would exceed the 500. It will be at 572. So, I want to let you know that the enrollment is increasing and that also supports the teaching experience as

072well. All right, let's talk about career pathways. These are this is the map of Cleveland. Um, many of you guys saw what our map looks like. This is the new map with the recommended new high schools are where high schools would be 14. We currently have 27 going to that 14. And in each one of these high schools, there will be career pathways at every single one of them. Complete career pathways and in many cases multiple career pathways. Now, with this recommendation, it allows us to honor the programs that are currently in place. When we think about the science and medicine, when we think about the IT, when we think about the STEM and the trades, it allows us to honor that while giving access to more uh scholars because they can now choose many

073different programs going to the different schools. Now, this next slide, I don't expect you to be able to read everything, but I wanted to share a couple of highlights. So when you see this slide and it's going to be very hard to see this just shows you in all the high schools we have the the career pathways that will be in these schools and the ones in blue. So when you get this and those that are watching at home you can see the ones in blue those are new. So we talked about how we're bringing back cosmetology if you're part of the John Adams school which John Adams wasn't listed there. John Adams is staying open. We're adding career pathways. You currently don't have career pathways. We're adding cosmetology. um and their uh interactive media

074and uh another uh IT specialization program at John Adams. If you are at, you know, the Benjamin O Davis High School and you will not only have access to the aerospace and maritime pathway, you will have access to the new uh air transportation pathway that we're building out there as well as as media arts. All students on that campus will have access to those programs. And so when you get a moment and you can see these, you can see where we're we're adding these. Oh, yep. I felt that this was correct. JFK, we see you. We know JFK has not had career pathways in the past. JFK, you are getting teaching professions as a pathway. And then also I believe manufacturing options. We are adding those into that option. So this are these are all

075of our schools because there are some schools that were not named. G Academy is still is still in existence and you can see the career pathways that we need to add in some cases where there were no career pathways and we need to add them there. So you'll take a moment to see these. I believe oh Bard you know I shouted out Bards around the 96% of students who are graduating with their associates but I don't believe we had a career pathway there and so now there will be a career pathway and it's going to be in the performing arts. So, access opportunity for all schools, even if you weren't named in the recommendation. Let's talk about college credit. These are those same high schools. Now, we will not do a a slide, a busy

076slide with all the AB, IP, uh, IB, and dual enrollment courses. One, uh, because that's a lot. It will make it a very busy slide, uh, by all the things that we'll be adding. But also, we have to do scheduling. So, one of the things that's going to be really important, and we'll talk about this in in in a moment, it's going to be really important that students make a choice to which high school they're going to choose so that we can determine the enrollment, so we can determine the staffing, and we can also then do the programming and finalize all the different unique programming, but know that we have the opportunity to do this now with the scale enrollment. So, every single high school campus will have college credit through either AP, IB, or

077dual enrollment, as well as continuing to offer um CCP through TRIC. But we want the opportunity for kids to take those courses in school in their school where they don't won't have to travel. Um the option to pursue a honors diploma we talked about. And then also um yeah I mentioned about high-tech uh uh high already that's at TRIC but I also want to name that through our career pathways there's also college credit opportunities through that that as students are learning a a a career trade and actually taking certain courses some of these classes actually prepare students for college prepare them for courses that they may take in tri if that's where they want to go where we have seamless enrollment now take classes at Cleveland State University, another campus where we now have a

078option for students to have seamless enrollment. So, both college and career opportunities at every single high school. This will also help us improve that college, career, workforce, and military readiness standard. Now, in our K8s, we talked about all of our cades offering at least one additional course beyond art, music, or PE. So one of the things our academics team will be doing working with school leaders of these new uh buildings is ensuring that every school is offering at least one course like algebra 1, like um uh band, like foreign language and also we will have CTE offered in every single one of our elementary schools in the middle grades. This is that brighter future we want for our scholars and now we can deliver it. In our current configuration, we can't deliver on this promise.

079I want you to remember that in our current configuration, we cannot deliver on this promise. And there will be at least four sports options at every school. So, I talked about that that student at Atlay Stevenson who now may have a shot being combined with Whitney Young to offer girls basketball and other sport activities. The other thing I will name, we were asked about preK and there's a lot more information about preK. We'll go into detail of some different uh programs and different student groups. Uh but prek currently in our current configuration, all but four elementary schools offer prek. So we didn't have prek in four of our elementary schools. Through building brighter futures, all but two will offer prek. So we will still have prek. We have a commitment to prek and really want

080to work with all of our prek partners to continue to support prek program. And then we've talked about upgraded buildings. This is a a busy slide, but I just want to let you know that when you came to our community meetings, we talked about what is a good condition building. So, a good condition building is a building that has a 80 or more on um on their building condition score. We shared, you know, Chief Thompson when she was sharing this in our our regional meeting, she was sharing that building condition is something that can change over time. Um, it's really great and high when you're a newer building and then over time it's kind of like your uh your car that kind of depreciates in value as it goes along through wear and tear and

081it takes great maintenance to make sure we we maintain that. Uh, not all new buildings are, you know, buildings that have the best condition scores. There are schools like the John Hay campus. It's an older building, but we've taken really good care of that building and it has a better building condition score. So we'll be working really hard to ensure that not only through new builds and now we've named the new builds that we're working on. So the new builds currently in Marian Seltzer, the new build in Lincoln West and the new the new build for the Glennville uh Colinwood community that we'll be building. Um but also through maintenance that we can do. I know Dennison currently right now is getting a new roof and that's going to improve its building condition score. Um

082I know that there's other work we're doing. Uh, you know, you may look at AJ Rickoff, which is a very beautiful building. Uh, but if you look at AJ Rickoff and see it, you wouldn't know that it has a building condition score of 64 because there's some uh foundation work that you can't see that needs to be done. Our team is committed to making those changes and actually by taking some of the buildings offline, we'll actually have more uh bond dollars to actually put towards some of the maintenance in some of these buildings. So, know that we have work to do and we're going to continue to work on this and it is going to take us time to improve the uh upgraded building conditions in all of our schools. So, just a reminder, all

083of our scholars will have this brighter future. 100% college and career in every single high school, 100% of at least one enrichment course in every single elementary school, and 100% of students in newer upgraded buildings. You remember the metrics for the kids that are impacted by this plan? This is for the entire system, a brighter future. And in our current configuration, we cannot deliver on this promise. Let's talk about what you can expect ahead. So, tonight heard the recommendations. These are our recommendations. And as you heard from Chair Elott, uh she has uh charged our team with doing engagement, which I'm going to talk about in a moment, to continue to do engagement in alignment with our board guard rail and is recommending for the board to vote on December 9th. That gives us a

084month to continue to engage. And engagement starts tomorrow. We're going to be meeting with some groups starting tomorrow. I know there's a lot to process. There's a lot of information, not only just understanding the plan, there's a lot of questions around what about transportation, what what about enrollment choice? Usually, this is the time of the year when choice windows happening. All those different things we want to give you access and answers to. Um, but we'll have principal meetings, assistant principal meetings. We've already been meeting with our school leaders who have been um just been phenomenal. Our school leaders have been phenomenal. not only um weathering change but also being a support for their school communities. We will have in-person staff meetings at every transitioning, welcoming and moving school. Uh we'll also have uh in we'll

085get input from our uh CT uh uh CTU chapter chairs as well as other staffing groups at every transitioning, welcoming, or moving school. Uh we're going to have in-person family meetings in every transitioning, welcoming, and moving school. And then also we'll have student supports at those impacted schools as well. I will name that uh I believe it's Friday at the end of this week to at the end of this week we're going to be sending um notices out email out to families at all the transitioning, welcoming or moving schools with information about when your family meeting will take place in your school community in over the several weeks. And I know our very first staffing meeting uh in a school will be on November 12th, but we're starting some engagement tomorrow um with some webinars

086that we're going to be doing for some of our uh our teacher groups. Let's also talk about how we're prepared to support our families. And there's way more information. Um the building brighter futures website that you go to to get information will continue to be a landing page. I know we're in the process of reorganizing our building brighter future website to organize content by material. Not only will this presentation and the recommendations be posted, but it'll be a repository for all things when you think about transportation, when you think about enrollment, when you think about um safety, all these different things there. It'll be a repository for that information. U but we want to ensure that families have a supportive experience. And so at every single school, we have stood up transition teams that are

087help uh that are there to help families with a personalized experience uh to let them know their options, explain information, and also navigate them through this process. Uh we also want to continue to ensure safe and reliable transportation. I know there was a question, there was a gasp uh when I said the Valley View to Kenneth Clement. I understand how far apart those are. So, I understand that and know that there's a plan when we think about transportation and there are also other options. So, I just want you to know that we've thought about those different things and you'll learn more about that. Um, reinforce uh our commitment to all of our students, but also our students who learn differently. So, thinking about uh student support for special education, multilingual students, and then also our

088pre-K students as well as gifted students. We will reinforce those supports and letting you know where all of that uh information can be found. And then we also really want to help families make a choice because should this board vote on this plan in December 9th, we have to get into action to prepare for next school year. And the best way we can help to get into action to prepare for next school year is to ensure families make a choice during the choice window. You'll learn more about this, but that choice window will open right after winter break and it'll go through February 27th. The sooner we know the enrollment at the schools, the sooner we can find out the staffing and can support our staff through this process. So, it's going to be very

089important for families to make a choice. Speaking of staff, uh we shared in our staffing briefings earlier our commitment to staff and we want to ensure that we are honoring those commitments uh and explore as many options as possible to keep as many staff as possible. Um we made a plan that where these are all mergers. So that helps to um maximize um or minimize uncertainty and maximize continuity through mergers over the closures. Uh we will be naming principles as soon as possible following the board vote to help jumpst start on this planning and I know we've been meeting with principles on you know what uh all the different options look like and through it all we are following the collective bargaining agreement. Um and so our collective bargaining agreement talks about what happens with

090staffing in these uh situations and we'll follow through that which is why it's so important that should the board vote on this families make a choice so that we can determine that enrollment and we can determine staffing and um f uh finalize staffing through the spring and then also buildings. I know that, you know, I started with these 18 buildings that are going to be left uh without anything going on in them next year. And there's a question about what's happening with these 18 buildings. Some people may say in the past or they currently see a building that's boarded up or you know that any nothing is taking place on it or they're wondering what's taking place on it. We know those concerns. We heard those concerns. We heard that through feedback, which is why

091we've been working with our city and other partners to think about building reuse even now. Uh and we have a timeline to determine that. There's also rules in terms of what happens with our buildings. Um so we're going to continue those partnerships to really figure out a strong building reuse plan. Just like I said shared state of the schools, we do not want this this plan to um uh to harm our communities in terms of those neighborhoods. We want to ensure we're investing in them through the buildings. And so there are ways we could think about that investment uh through building reuse. Um and the other thing I would say is should the board vote on this and when the school year concludes it will immediately uh be secured and we'll be working to secure

092those buildings um until we have uh a use for it. The other thing I will say about buildings um for the buildings that we will still they will not have a home next year there will be some buildings that we will choose to uh keep. Um, I know there are questions about other offices that we have and what we might can do with those. And in the future, as other leases end, we have the opportunity to move offices into buildings that we have. We've done that in the past and we're committed to continue to explore those options. We also have the opportunity to think about other academic uses or um you know should I know our enrollment trend right now is showing that birth rates are not showing we'll grow but should we grow if

093they're buildings that we keep online you can always reopen them especially if they're in good condition um so those are different things that we'll look at in the future um but those are all the things we can explore through building reuse just want to bring us back to this vin diagram that you've seen throughout time about building brighter futures two objectives I've shared before I said it may seem simple and as you saw from tonight it's not simple which is why took us a while as we were thinking about the recommendation there's a lot to figure out a lot of details a lot of plans it's a big impact it's a big moment for us but with that moment let's not miss our opportunity and responsibility to act to ensure all kids no matter their

094background where they go to school what they look like have access to a high quality education while at the same time improving financial sustainability. I shared with you the numbers. I shared with you how this not only improves the quality of schools for the impacted students but for all students. And I also shared the financial savings we would have. I ask you in this time don't lose sight of what this plan delivers for our scholars. Not what it delivered for us. We had our time. we graduated and we those memories always stay with us. But for our babies now, they deserve a brighter future and our current configuration can't deliver on it and we can't afford it. So I ask you that as we go into phase two and I look forward to engaging you

095in the weeks to come. Thank you, Cher. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. And I want to just say I'm grateful for the thoroughess with which you brought this proposal to the board and for the care with which you've presented it, knowing that our community, our scholars, our parents, our residents are watching and that they just as we are are concerned about the future of our children and what we will offer them in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District today and in the future. Um, I'll start with questions from my colleagues. I see Dr. Shredar first followed by Mr. Phillips. >> Thank you, Chair Lad. Thank you, Dr. Morgan, for that comprehensive presentation. Um, uh, I'll just make a comment that the the the breadth and depth of your presentation clearly shows the the thought and care that

096your team and you have put into this. So, so I appreciate that. Um on behalf of our community, um I I have several questions, but I'm not going to hog all the time. Chair, um I'll ask a couple and then you know allow my other colleagues to do so as well. >> Great. Keep your light on in that case. >> Say again. >> Keep your light on. >> Yeah, I will. Um so, um first of all, I I want to talk about the the high schools um in particular the uh the specialty schools. Um, you know, we have not by specialty schools, I mean the theme-based schools. Um, I know you said that the the new high school configurations will allow for the programming to continue to be there and for students in in the

097whole high school to be able to access those. So, you know, as an example, um uh when the um when the IB program um moves to John Hay High School, all students um in the in the in the school will be able to access that. Um but there's a but there's the other aspect of this which is um which is that you know these schools have used their themes as a way to attract students to their schools and and and one might say you know some have been more successful than others. um in this new configuration, how do you anticipate from a leadership perspective how we will attract students to schools to continuing to use these themes but the broader um aspect of that as well. That's a great question and so really thinking about

098how are we attracting attracting students uh into our system that uh may have come for these uh different programs and one I want to remind uh everyone that these programs will be continuing and expanding and so I think we have that opportunity to talk about the great programs that are going to be taking place and the fact that now within Cleveland Metropolitan School District 100% of our high schools offer college and career. I think that that is something we need to continue to share to get families in it that we are offering that and that uh we're we now have uh sports in all of our high schools and we didn't have that before. Those are things we want families to hear and know that they can come to our system and so it's about

099making sure we can share those programs. I also want to talk about some of the work that our academics have been doing at the K8 level through this plan. uh there will be CTE programs at the elementary level where students will begin to explore their interests uh and can make better informed choices based on their interests and based on uh some of the the survey work that they've been doing. And so there's already work that's underway to help uh you know even the current eth graders make an informed choice uh and understand their different options and understand the pathways that are out there. And um now we're just really excited that there are even more pathways such as teaching professions. I don't know how many uh high schools in the you know in our region

100uh offer the ability to get exposure to being a teacher um and to do you know work like grow your own but now we offer that we'll offer that through this plan and it'll be both on the east and the west side. So if you're watching this and you are not a family that's currently in CMSD come we actually have more programs now and I invite you to come be a part of our system and we have room for you. >> Um so thank you. um for that. Um I'll acknowledge that this plan that you're presenting um represents a phenomenal amount of change and on behalf of our community a lot of pain. Um I know you understand and empathize with that pain. Um so I'm going to ask the the money question really quick,

101right? I mean you know and and Mr. Stocktail, please jump in if if you if you find it appropriate. Um the the the last slide that you showed us was we want to show a brighter future for our students and show a financially secure future for the district. Um I I know that you've said that this plan will save 30 million a year in um uh in expenses. How does this plan impact our five-year forecast on the budget? Um and in particular the the chart that you have um shown us several times uh Mr. Stockdale over the last two years um that shows uh how our expenses and our um our revenues um seem to be diverging. What is the impact? Um and if you don't have this handy I would appreciate um you bringing

102that back at our next meeting and sharing that with the community. >> That was one thing I was going to offer Dr. Shria. We can give you the specifics of what that impact will be but I'll talk very high level. So when we say in the ballpark of 150 million and the reason why we say in the ballpark is because as uh budget cuts continue to happen you know we just lost a federal grant uh gearup grant that uh you know federal dollars we you know worked hard with college but we lost that and that supported over 300 kids in our system to get college advising. we just lost that and you know thinking about how we can continue these services every day there's different things that are being taken place and be cut uh

103being cut so that that number is relative um but we've shared we have in the ballpark of about $150 million that we need to save over the next few years and by saving at least 30 million on this this at least saves us 90 million over the next three years um and there's more measures that we are continuing to take um through that uh we can bring back what that means uh for future forecasts um and And as I shared at the the the uh start of this, when I entered in as CEO, we were in fiscal precaution. Uh we exited it and we haven't been in it since. And so our entire team is committed to that. I know Chief Stockdale is committed to that to make sure that we have a financially viable

104system because when you don't have a financially viable system, you are at risk of state takeover. And I just want people to realize that if we submit a five-year forecast or now a four-year forecast where we're not in um compliance for the current year or in two fiscal years out um we will enter into fiscal precaution fiscal watch and can enter into state and we want to avoid that. >> Thank you >> Mr. Phillips. >> Thank you Chair Elott. And similar to Dr. Shrear I do have several questions. This was a thorough um recommendation. I I do want to um give space though. Um but first thing I would like to kind of ask just to for clarity um fiscal precaution. I know that I've asked this question before at a previous board meeting. But

105I just want to be um as clear as possible for everyone to understand what fiscal precaution entails. >> Yeah. I will start high level and then I will I'll phone a friend um who can probably give the a much more detailed answer to this. So uh what it essentially means when we have to submit a four-year forecast you need to be in the black meaning that at the end of the year you have to have a positive bash cash balance for that year and for two fiscal years out and if you don't fiscal precaution just means okay first warning or in some cases you don't know what uh action they could take action at that moment. It shows you're not in compliance but it's the first step of you're not in compliance. Uh if that

106continues to happen, it could be fiscal watch and it's like you're continue to not be in compliance. If it continues to happen could be state takeover and it's not a rubric or we don't know when that could happen. In any moment if you're not in compliance, the state can take action. Um two stock how did I do? Would you add anything? >> Yeah, that was great. Um I mean I think the the point that I would really double down on is is what you were talking about with really the precautionary status of it. I mean we're talking about uh the state only stepping in when in the next two years there is a chance that you won't be able to pay payroll, that you won't be able to pay bills. And so they require um

107the board and the district to create a plan that remedies the the problems and they don't they don't always give us a lot of time and uh it requires a lot of uh detail and so this allows us to be much more proactive in trying to get ahead of that. >> Yeah. I would also add Yeah. I love how you said we can't pay our bills and in years when we are um negotiating contracts we can't certify a contract. >> Thank you. My my next question would be I think for myself just wrapping my head around so much change even from the very beginning um instantly went to transportation. How are we going to get our students um from one building to the next? Um, I do kind of want to focus this question more

108on um, our students who are walking um, and with in mind our students with uh, special circumstances. Not just students with disabilities, but also students who just have extraordinary circumstances when they're going from um one community to another or if if they're um taking that walk to schooling. Um how how do we potentially plan to support our students in that type of transition? Thank you. And that's a great question. You know, safety was top of mind. It's one of the largest piece of feedback that we heard from the community as we go out. Um and then also, you know, something you guys charged us with in terms of safety and well-being of our our staff and students. A few things I will name with that is we are open choice system. And so when we

109actually did our landscape analysis of this plan in terms of where students actually live and where they're going to school um we have some students that are traveling um you know quite some distances uh to get to schools. I know when we were doing the landscape analysis now of uh Columnwood um uh there are students who live in the southwest that are are traveling all the way to the northeast to go to school in Columwood um which is great. you know that you we your open choice system and students can choose. Um and so I do want to name that there are families that are already doing that um you know that that movement. Um but we have a commitment to ensure that we continue with um services like safe passage, increasing our security services

110to ensure the students have the safe passage to and from school. Um with a number of these recommendations in our high schools uh the students already go to school together if they're consolidating um one campus. So, they're already on the same campus and go to school together. There are patterns going to and from school. That wouldn't change because they they currently go to school u with with uh one another. Now, there are a couple of schools being added to that community that we have to think through. So, that is something that's really important. And just a reminder that currently for our high schools, all of our high schoolers uh take advantage of RTA. Now when it comes to our our our our um elementary schools that uh you know where there are um uh bus

111transportation uh and we can come back to give even more specifics. I know in our family meetings we'll be sharing more specifics about it. We are committed to provide safe and reliable transportation. In some cases, a family member may live across the street from a school um currently and when a recommendation happens um uh now they have to travel a little bit further and in those cases and now they would qualify for transportation. We're providing that transportation for them. And so all of those details not only will be shared in the family meeting, uh we'll also have those on the website. And we'll um I'm also committed to you know if there further questions or you guys want me to bring things back in the weeks um between now and the vote um I'm committed

112to doing that. >> Thank you. And if I could ask uh one more question. U again just from my mindset from the very beginning um considering this uh change um I almost instantly thought about class size um and how you know um I know years ago for myself when I was a student in the district um sometimes we would have class sizes that was large. Um, so I'm just thinking about class sizes as we um merge so many schools. How do we or are we ensuring that we're not um ending up with classroom sizes that are u far too large? >> Yeah. Uh this plan uh does not call for an increased class size. It calls for our the the class size that we have outlined in our contract. We also have outlined in our

113contract for o overages currently. Um but you know, and I've shared this before. Let me explain what our current configuration happens when it's a small uh enrolled school. So, when it's a small enrolled elementary school and there's only one teacher in that grade level, uh if you're the only third grade teacher and that year there happens to be a bunch of eight or nine year olds that enroll in your school and there's no place to put them, you actually have a larger class size versus if there were at least two teachers, you can now split those students up. There was a teacher that came at the beginning of this year. She's a art teacher at John Adams and she talked about I think she said there were 41 students in her class. But when I

114look at the slide and see that currently John Adams doesn't offer any career pathways. I have a wondering I don't think there are many electives there. So students to graduate they have to take an elective and I'm sure as a art teacher she's the one. They're probably taking art every year. Um and that's not the brighter future we want and that also does not create a great teaching experience for that teacher and hence the larger class size. Now with more teachers, more options, um one, it allows school leaders to do a robust uh schedule. Uh and it also allows uh students to have more options and also uh split students up more. So this plan actually uh in some cases will help class size uh and not hinder it. And just reminding everyone in terms

115of our healthy enrollment of being at 450 in that elementary school is still a small uh school. At least at 500 to a,000 or a little bit over a thousand, it's still a small high school. If you think about um some some neighborhood high schools or not neighborhood high schools in our city but surrounding us um they're a lot larger than that and so we will still have um relatively small enrolled schools. >> Miss Welch how >> thank you chair Elott and thank you Dr. Morgan and team for the countless hours months weeks that went into this. Um the depth and the breath um of this work shows through. So really appreciate that and I'm sure the community appreciates that. Um I have two questions. One is sort of a double click of Dr. Shrear's

116question. So when the team comes back with the impact to the forecast, can we also see the breakdown of that 30 million per year because I think it's important that we have confidence that that savings is sustainable as we think about kind of building that sustainable brighter future. And then my second question um and again >> Miss Wchow could you just get a little closer to the microphone? >> Sure. Better to hear >> the first one. Okay. So the breakdown of the 30 million per year savings um just to as we think about sustainable uh brighter future just having confidence that that 30 million per year um is sustainable in the long term. And then the second piece as I think about the 150 million gap that we have sort of over the next few

117years um when we come back I'm making an assumption and we'll see this but that 30 million maybe doesn't get us all the way there. what are the next set of levers that the community can expect that the district will start to think about to help us get there? Um, question two, um, is more about sort of geography. So, as I look at this recommendation and I look at the impact of east side versus west side, it might appear that there is more of an impact to our scholars on the east side. And I know that the team um has thought through this thoroughly, but I think the community would appreciate hearing just how the team has thought about making sure that scholars are equitably impacted on both sides of town. >> Yeah. No, thank

118you for that question. Uh first to answer your first one, committed to uh bring that back to you in terms of that uh the finance and um the work we have to do and to answer at a very high level on the first question. There's more work to do and so we know that this is the work that is uh impacting schools. We are already working on what this means for central office and each year we've been doing work at central office and it will continue to be this year and so more to come on that as well. Um uh to your question about um uh I just lost it and I had uh east side west side. Thank you so much. Um yes that's another one. I'll actually bring more of a specific breakdown

119but right now currently we actually have more schools on the east side uh and lower enrollment. So we actually have a larger number of schools than what we do on the west side. Uh with building brighter futures, we'll actually have clo uh about the same and this for elementary schools. We actually have about the same number of schools on the east and west side now. And so I'll uh give that uh to you. The other thing I will name is of students that need to move a school. So whether they're school is recommended to end at this upcoming year and move to a welcoming school or they're picking up and moving uh there are 5,000 students. So it's an impact of 5,000. Of course, 5,000 is a is uh is a uh you know, a

120number of of students, but of our of our population of nearly 35,000, the impact is 5,000. And at the high school level, inclusive of that 5,000, there 800 of that 5,000. And so, um we're looking at that and I can bring more of the the stats that we looked into into that plan. >> Is that all, Miss Walsh? How? Thank you. Miss Jones, did you have something? I thought I saw your light. Oh, Pastor Jones, go ahead. >> Thank you, Chair Elart, and to our CEO, thank you for a transparent and a wellprepared presentation. Want to ask about the non-traditional programs, the remote, virtual, and the school of one learning. Um, will that be impacted um in any way, shape, or form? And then we just passed with a twothirds vote a nearly $3 million

121um levy. And so as we work toward um the future the budget and the work that you're putting forth uh you're you're saying we're you're certain that we can get to a better place with these savings and the um um combining of the schools etc. >> So um I always do this. I got your second part of the question. What was the first part I have? >> It was concerning the non-traditional learning opportunities for our scholars. >> I got it. Yep. Let me just write this down. Okay. So, non-traditional, as I shared before, all of our non-traditional options will remain for the upcoming year. Um that is Natividon Newcomers Academy. Um both of our remote schools are virtual academy, hi-tech high, um our DEC, the downtown education uh center. Um yeah, I believe those are

122all our um our non-traditional options. Um school of one. Yes, school of one. Yes, school of one. All of those will remain the same. I will say in our annual budgeting process, if there are operational efficiencies that we look into in terms of staffing, our programming, we will explore those in the normal um bud annual budgeting process that we'll do. Um but the programs themselves will will uh remain. Um and also I do understand there we do have to study these programs a little bit more to understand not only impact but also costs efficiencies. Um there is a little bit more of a question that I have um you know when we think about this in terms of why families are choosing these options if you know uh beg some exploring um but given where

123we are and um uh we did not have uh all of that information at this time the recommendation is to continue those while we continue to explore those options. Um in terms of the the levy yes we are so grateful to the Cleveland community for um helping us close that gap. if we did not pass the levy, um we wouldn't have been able to really exit fiscal precautions. So, it's one of the reasons why we were able to exit fiscal precautions. So, we're really thankful for it. Uh and is anyone who knows anything about um school finance here in the state of Ohio, the state of Ohio is the number one state in terms of that is reliant on um uh school levies over time. One of the things we are committed to is doing

124the work. Um and uh you know what I hope people will see you know this is my third year as a CEO um we one are committed to our kids. We want to ensure that we always uh can improve the system not only in academic outcomes we provide higher quality options for them but we're also not afraid to make the tough decisions to put our school system in a better position and also if we can alleviate um needing to rely so heavily on the the the Cleveland community. I know times are tough right now and so we don't like to always have to go out um uh for for levies. You know, when there's a need, we will have to. But doing these this hard work, making the tough decisions now actually helps us in

125the future and um can alleviate some of that burden. >> Miss Levon, >> thank you chair. Thank you, Dr. Morgan and team. I recognize that you shared that 100% of the students will have equal or greater academic and extracurricular opportunities and I appreciate that and it and it it seemed to be true in the presentation and the information that you provided. However, I am uh glad that you mentioned the minimum number of college credit courses, keyword minimum, because when I think of equitable education opportunities, having a school with only two college courses and having another school with seven college courses and an IB program does not seem equitable to me. Um, and so I I know that you would like to and hope to offer more across the district. Can you speak to what that

126plan will look like? >> No, I I appreciate that charging. you're you're you're speaking my language. You know, there's work to do. Uh you know, we're even saying as we're providing this brighter future for our scholars, there's still work to do even as we think about our system. Um and know that in some of our schools right now, they have none none. Um so, one of the things you'll see on some of them, it's like two or more. Um and uh we know that once we actually are able to determine our school leaders in our buildings, we can uh build out those programs, build out the vision. Some of those things will take time. So, this is this is what we're saying we know we will offer next year. It doesn't mean that that's going

127to be in perpetuity. And our goal is to continue to work on this. I know as I'm looking at Dr. Florence uh uh who leads our academics with just such um strong conviction and leadership um but also with a strong lens towards equity that all of our students can and will achieve. Um there's work to do to build this. Um but I'm excited to see what this plan will deliver next year for our scholars. um because in some cases they don't have any opportunity and this will grow it significantly in that and we can also share more about how we've been thinking about pathways and some of the the um programmatic elements uh in in uh weeks to come. >> All right, I have a couple of questions Dr. Morgan or a couple things to

128underscore and then I know we have additional questions from other board members. So talking about that healthy enrollment number 450 to 500 I do want to underscore what you said because it does when we look at our underenrolled schools currently where we have a 100 200 250 kids right that does seem like a large number in comparison and if I'm thinking about my school experience you know I went to two different high schools they were both well above 2,000 students I know we're in a very different time um but could you just speak to like what that 450 5500 number really looks like in comparison to our peers perhaps our higher performing suburban districts. Um to to my understanding it's not you know it's an increase from an underenrolled school but it's not that big

129of a school. Right. >> Yeah you're you're absolutely right. It's not that uh these are still when we think about small schools that have intimate class sizes in some cases still just the two classes per grade level. some of our buildings that's all it can hold because we do have smaller um built buildings. Uh so still having that intimacy these are still um for the majority prek8s um a couple will be K8s and so really having that that intimate um feel with the programs. I will also say there is definitely beauty in being small but when you are so small you can't offer programs. So, we talked about uh, you know, being so small that you can't offer a basketball team because there's not enough students on it, or being so small that you may

130need to be on Senate League probation because there's not enough kids to finish a a team. Being so small that you can't offer the academic uh, opportunities. Um, I just got a list of um, all the students in who took I Ready this last time for math and are scoring in the advanced and advanced proficient. for I don't have the list in front of me, but it's over 10 elementary schools where there are students who are scoring advanced and advanced proficient in math now and there's no access to advanced level math. And thinking about safety and engagement, I know when I was coming up, if you're not being challenged, sometimes you check out, sometimes you start misbehaving. And we can't offer that because the schools are so small, we can't even differentiate the classes. And

131so, um, that's not the brighter future we want or, um, the the equitable, um, uh, plan that we want. Um and in some cases in some schools uh you know there are small nature of it and you pay a tuition to go there. We're a public uh school and so we need to think about how we best use our resources to provide that brighter future for all of our kids. >> Thank you Dr. Morgan. And speaking of some of those enrichment opportunities, it is my impression that some of our schools where they are, you know, not at that healthy enrollment, we sometimes have to overrely on external partners to come in um during the school day or outside of the school day and deliver enrichment opportunities. But then my impression and I correct me if

132I'm wrong is that that also results in inequities because external partners can only partner with so many schools or are in a geographic position to do so. Um is that about right or >> you're you're absolutely right when I think about programs that we've had over time where we're either funding it and had a big you know a big part of it. There was a time where we had esser dollars and we were spending millions of dollars to outsource programming for our scholars. In some cases, not all schools had that programming and in other cases, what happens when the funding leaves? The kids don't have the programming. We should be able to sustain the minimum that we expect for kids. The the the the academic programming that we should have should provide all the extracurriculars

133that we would want for our kids as well as the college and career readiness courses and not being reliant on someone else or some outside funding. And so that's one um area that we need to uh continue to explore and and look at. Um and then also when we think about sometimes when we have options where one school has one thing and the the next doesn't, we've seen even here uh as uh or you guys as a board and definitely we as a district have seen where there have been some programs that have been funded or cost different things and some schools and students had access to it and not all um do. And so kind of to Miss Lebron's point, it it sets up a system within a system where uh some have it

134and others don't. And we really want to lean into how all kids can have access to these options. >> Okay. Um one other question before I turn it over to Dr. Sheridar next. Uh you talked about moving Tmont Monttoauri or proposing to move Tmont Montasauri program to the Waverly building and I know that that's a beautiful building. I used to live right next to it. But I also believe that uh a Montasuri program requires a particular kind of physical setup. Uh does the Waverly building accommodate that need for a Montasuri program? >> Uh yes, both for um both monatory programs are being uh recommended to be moved. So Waverly does have the the space requirements needed uh for the the the monastery program as well as um when I think of the Stephanie Tubs Jones

135building which will now be Michael R. White Monastery. uh it should the board vote on it uh has the requirements. So those were all the things we had to look at. One of the things we mentioned in terms of the the details of the plan are thinking about the space requirements, the classroom requirements. We have to do that for prek. There's certain specializations for that. Special education classes, certain different things. So we've gone into those to look at the operation operational um plans for it. And I think I see members of our our Tmont uh community here. Um uh I'm excited that that will be a uh option for them. It is a very beautiful building. Um and then also for our current students who attend uh Waverly not only have the option to go

136to the new Gallagher which is also a very beautiful uh building um but may also have the opportunity to join the um the uh the new Waverly monastery if that's an option that they would want. >> Thank you Dr. Shrear followed by Mr. Phillips. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, so this is I have two questions. One is a quick one. Um, just to elaborate on Miss Lebron's question about college classes. So, so slide 39 is is really helpful, right? It gives a single page view of all high schools and what career pathways are available. Um would it be feasible for you to prepare something similar that has um college prep offerings in high schools and and will it be possible to create something like that before the school choice portal closes so that students and

137community can can choose schools based on those as well? >> Yeah. Um one I'll take that offline. One of the things I voiced over is um we can name based on what courses are currently offered based on the staffing that is there. Um so we can give somewhat of a picture. We also could say like AB uh AP IB like we could say at a very high level. Um we will not know the exact course options until staffing is determined. So that does make that a little harder. Um because what you also see on the career pathways, you're not seeing all the courses for career pathway, you're just seeing the program and so it's easy to name it. Um but I wonder and we'll take it offline. I wonder if it we could say AP

138will be here, IB. So you can see what type of program and that would be a lot cleaner of a map than like listing all the courses. >> Yeah, that's the level I'm asking for. >> Okay, great. >> Um thank you. Uh the second question, um this one's a little more u broader question. Um, you know, we're losing the only single gender school option on the west side when um when when the when the boys at Leadership Academy moves. Um, what um can you say a little more about this loss to this community um and and and what your thought process has been with respect to the boys leadership academy? No, thank you for acknowledging that. And that was there were a couple of these where I said and I I I told you guys

139when people were saying why we don't have a recommendation decision, this is tough and there's a lot of things to outweigh. And that that's one that was uh really challenging because we want to both honor the fact that families in uh the Valley View community are choosing a single gender school. And so there's this option of just saying how can we honor the commitment of them still choosing a single gender school and having a a quality single uh gender option. Um, also we know that that building condition is not where it needs to be. The enrollment and the enrollment trend I think it's under 200 students in Valley View right now. So, uh, it's it's challenging on a lot of ways and not sustainable. So, we were not going to be able to sustain it.

140Um, our girls leadershipmies um also have similar challenges, but the enrollment is not quite there. And so once again, I said to our specialty schools, this is a time to actually think about the enrollment, continue to get that um the academics up uh so that you can continue to maintain. Uh but Valley View, that was a very challenging one. So, let me walk through some of the options. And I know Valley View community when um you have your staff meeting and also your family meeting, you'll get more detail of this. If families honor and really want that option for a uh boys leadership academy, we want to continue to invest in that by merging into Kenneth Clement. Uh that not only helps the the healthy enrollment of Kenneth Clement uh and in a single gender

141boys academy. Um and they could then choose that to go to high school again academy and continue that on. Um or there are other options that those families can choose from and we'll talk about what those options are in their neighborhood because some families may say that's too far. No, we wouldn't we wouldn't have a single gender boys academy in that that neighborhood in the southwest, but there are other options that have room that we can help those families explore options. >> Mr. Phillips, I know you said you were next, but I think I may have missed Miss Peak earlier. >> Go ahead, Miss Peak. >> Oh, thank you. Uh, I agree with the rest of the board members and that there's definitely been a lot of work and dedication put into this document, but

142um, you know, as a mother of a Marine, I'm just wondering where the milary is that military component still embedded in the career paths and what relationship or what options will the students have for uh internships or hands-on learning outside of the school? >> That's a great question and as you know military readiness is part of the college career workforce and military readiness. I'll follow back up with you. You know we have JOTTC programs and we can offer we could share where those programs are. I know currently we have it at John Marshall. Um, uh, yeah, we have sever JOTC in several of our, um, schools. Uh, and we can provide, uh, you a list of what that looks like in the future as well. >> Mr. Phillips, followed by Miss Lebron. >> Thank you.

143Um so my next question is kind of around um and I know we're talking about impacts on our district um next year and in the years to come but I also think about what happens in school tomorrow. Um with this recommendation with um all of this information being shared um I just imagine my own children you know um going to school tomorrow and where their mindset may be. So my question is around um how the recommendation um may be communicated particularly with those schools that's going to be most impacted and kind of feel like all schools in some way will be impacted. But um how how will the recommendation be communicated with school leadership um teachers and students and families? >> Yeah. Um actually following this meeting uh we'll have um information sent out where

144um our entire school community not not students on that but staff our school leaders parents um partners um will get information about the the recommendations um and then also information about what's to come. Uh there will also be webinars both tomorrow as well as um Friday and Monday um for teacher groups. Uh and uh that's also if that'll also be coming out tonight where teacher groups can sign up to say hey I want anformational webinar to get information. Um we will then have staff meetings in every single school on November 12th um 18th and 19th and then also from November 12th all the way through about I think about the first week of December uh we have family meetings where families can come um and all of this we will be supporting schools uh with

145with someone from our team coming out sharing more information. Uh in addition to all of that we will have information posted on the website. So um we will have information you know this recommendation on the website immediately but more information to come in the days to come. Not only uh we have individualized every single school. So every single school has their own detailed information uh where you can go and say what does this mean for me and my school community and what that means for transportation what it means for my options. So that'll be on the website and families will also get that at the community meeting. Staff will get that. Uh we will also just have other information about transportation services. uh we're going into student uh we're we're going to every school to

146uh support our students during this time. So we have a uh many different things to think about how we're supporting. We talked about those transition teams um and we know that even with all that plan um there in some cases sometimes it may never uh in this moment it may not feel enough. Um, and I acknowledge that uh that it is uh challenging and I just want our community to know that we're here every step of the way um to answer your questions um to provide that clarity for you. >> Miss Lebron, >> I have a comment and two questions. Um, I just want to say that since joining the board in 2023, um, I I've appreciated that you have led with intention, especially when it came to um, recognizing that there are gaps within

147the district that need to be fixed. And I definitely think that the work with building brighter futures is trying to address that that gap. Um, and it just so happens that, you know, when you're focusing on student impact over operational efficiency, it worked out because of the $30 million in savings that um that you will be sharing more details about in the future. So, I I just think it's it's really nice that um knowing that you were trying to fill gaps and make opportunities more equitable for students and scholars in the district that it just so happened that it worked out to also save money. Um, so I just want to applaud your team for that for that work. Um, one of my questions is around what professional development or coaching will teachers receive to

148align instruction with the goals of building brighter futures. Um, you know, I'm thinking things like, do we have enough certified teachers to continue the CTE pathways? Do we need to um spend more money and invest in teacher education so that we have more credentialed teachers to teach CTE pathways and some of those college credit bearing courses in the high schools? That is a great uh question and I know work that our academics team and as well as our our talent team has already been thinking about uh where there are opportunities for uh teachers to get credential in different areas uh that may expand um some of the options that may be available in terms of some of the programs that are open. We're open to that. And I I I love your question because it's

149it's also a charge that I hear in that in the coming months. Uh should uh this is be a plan that the board votes on, we need to ensure that we set up that professional development um to support our teachers through this change. And so thank you for that. >> Thank you. Uh okay, sorry. Thank you, chair. Um I do uh also appreciate that with the adoption of goals and guard rails um that we will be able to monitor the progress of building brighter futures as we move forward. And so I'm really excited to see how um you know the impact that building brighter futures will have on the goals and guardrails. But one of the um guardrails that I want to mention is around safety. Um and I want to know how will we

150be updated around belonging culture you know as these as these schools merge into new schools with other students and scholars that they may not have been with um from different communities across the district. How will we support that culture shift in a safety place? >> Yeah, thank you. Um, we have a new uh culture and climate survey. It's a 360 survey that students take, staff take, as well as families uh take. It's on the panorama platform. Um, and I'm not sure if the first administration has taken place. Has it taken place yet? Or it has. Yeah. So, we already have some baseline data and I think we're coming up as part of our goals in gart is to present some of that information with you guys uh in the coming weeks. I know it'll be

151sometime this winter. Uh so, one we could share more about that there and it'll be baseline. And so, there's this opportunity to see what uh happens through the course of this year. Um and we do know change is hard. So, I imagine uh there's going to be a lot of things we're going to do to shepherd our community through this change or maybe some impacts we see in that data with that, but also an opportunity to see how it grows over time. So this will be a year, it's our first year doing Panorama and also with all this change, it's hard to to monitor how people may feel in a year of so much change management. Um but an amazing opportunity for us to see how this grows over time with a charge once again

152um to merge our school communities um to honor the traditions and the rituals that have once had in the past and uh forge ahead um together. and I know our school leaders are really committed to that in this new configuration. >> Miss Jones. >> Thank you, Chair Elott. First, I'd like to thank Dr. Morgan and his entire team for all the work that you put into this um and appreciate the detail that you have here. But I'll also say it is completely overwhelming. Um and with that being the case, I want to have a question around will there be a place for the community, students, teachers, etc. to send questions so that they could be responded to and answered. >> Great question. Um uh on the webinar tomorrow, I think it's an opportunity to collect

153questions because it's a webinar format. Um so it's informationform informationational in place. Uh there will also be the opportunity through the staff meetings as well as the family engagement sessions not only for us to listen to feedback but also collect questions live with people and those are in person not webinars those are in person. Um there's also a opportunity that we're working with that was really important um uh to our our teachers uh and I I heard this feedback and charge directly u from our teachers union that need the space for uh themselves to actually just say have that optional space to say how can we discuss what this means for our school community and gather that feedback and input and so that's an opportunity and then in the first week of December um there'll

154be an opportunity where our chapter chairs can actually share feedback back with district leadership of what all the inputs and feedback they have gathered over the course of the next few weeks. So, there's several different points in time and that was something that I know um not only that was important to our school community but a direct charge that I heard um directly from our our um our our our labor partners that it was really important that that was showing up. >> All right, I don't see any other questions from my colleagues. Thank you for those. Um I have a couple things I want to underscore Dr. Morgan. Uh the first is that you know again I appreciate the thoroughess of this presentation. I know that there are many questions that remain to be answered

155and that you will be sharing in the coming meetings. Um I want to underscore that we do not have the option to not act right and uh I appreciate the breadth and the scale of the efforts that you've made. I know that you know it is very difficult for everyone to take schools offline to make these changes to merge. Um, and also we owe our scholars a quality education. And every dollar that we spend to heat, clean, maintain underused buildings is a dollar that we're not using in the classroom to educate our kids. And so what you've presented, I think, addresses that in an adequate way, and I want to continue to talk more about that. Um, you've mentioned a few times about the timing and how folks want to see the recommendations. They want

156to know what the decision is. And I want to just remind everyone of uh the fact that the board has to see the recommendations and decide on them in order for you to take action, right? So, it's not like you're just holding out on people. Um you're here to present it so that we can vet it, do our due diligence as a board, hear more from the community, understand, you know, what needs to be communicated more thoroughly. And that part is important. And also there's the part where I know I personally have said to you, you cannot afford to bring us a proposal that has not considered what transportation will look like, what safety will look like, what staffing will look like as thoroughly as is possible. because once the proposal is out, we are

157going to vet it and the community is going to start thinking about it and relying on it and we're going to have to start taking action so that we can make the change as quickly as is reasonable. And so I want to just, you know, raise that up because I think that folks forget maybe everything that goes into these considerations. And it might have been quite easy for you to just look at, you know, dollars and numbers and forget the other things which are some of the cultural things that have been brought up, the staffing issues, the safety of our students as they're getting to school, the quality of that transportation and what we're providing to them. So, you know, I know that there has been more weight than perhaps folks would immediately be comfortable

158with, but it has been for good reason. So that you could bring a strongly considered proposal that the board would be able to comfortably and reasonably vet and ultimately, you know, be able to accept with all of the information that we need to have in order to be able to do that. Are there any other comments or questions? All right. Well, we look forward to our continued dialogue on um both our goals and guardrails and the building brighter futures recommendations. And thank you again, Dr. Morgan. Is there any old business? Any new business? All right. The next regular board meeting will be a board business meeting on Wednesday, November 19th, 2025. This meeting was originally scheduled to be held at Garrett Morgan High School, but the location is being changed to Max S. Hayes High

159School at 2211 West 65th Street. The chair will now entertain a motion that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of considering the appointment and employment of public employees and officials, preparing for negotiations with employees concerning the terms and conditions of their employment, conferring with attorneys concerning disputes involving the board of education that are the subject of pending or imminent court action and considering details relative to the security arrangements and emergency response protocols for the board and the school district. >> So moved. Thank you. Mr. Stockdale, please call the role on this motion. >> Miss Elicott, >> yes. >> Mr. Phillips, >> yes. >> Mr. Briggs, >> yes. >> Miss Jones, >> Pastor Jones, >> yes. >> Mrs. Lebron, >> yes. >> Miss Speak, >> yes. >> Dr. Shrear, >> yes. >> Mrs.

160Walsh, >> motion passes with nine votes. >> Thank you. The motion passes and the board will now move into executive session. Following executive session, the board will return to this room to adjourn this meeting without conducting any further business.