There’s not yet a clear answer on whether Cleveland will impose stricter air quality rules that they say would help people breathe easier in a city with high asthma rates.
The long-stalled air quality legislation would add more regulations for new pollution sources. Steel producer Cleveland-Cliffs asked the city to make the new rules less stringent.
City Council President Blaine Griffin said he couldn’t yet commit to passing those rules by the end of the year, even as other members say they’re ready to do so.
“A few years ago, I asked the administration to have conversations with Cleveland-Cliffs and to see where were some of the sticking points,” Griffin told Signal Cleveland in a phone interview Monday. “And to be quite honest with you, [when] I get an update on seeing how that conversation went, then I’ll be in a better place.”
The comment followed a health committee meeting in which several council members noted the legislation’s slow progress. The Department of Public Health did make a tweak to the legislation in light of feedback from industry and air quality advocates.
Council Member Austin Davis told Signal Cleveland he’d like to see it pass by the end of the year.
“If a year and a half isn’t long enough to get this right, are we ever going to get it right? It’s been a while,” Davis said, adding later that there is more work to do.
— Celia Hack
Cleveland says no to charter schools
Cleveland turned down proposals from two charter school operators to acquire recently closed schools, records show.
The operators — Pansophic Learning and United Schools — bid on several buildings that the Cleveland Metropolitan School District shuttered in its latest round of school consolidations.
The closed school buildings drew the interest of developers, nonprofits, government agencies and others. City Hall recently released a trove of records from its deliberations over the submissions.
Pansophic is a charter school operator based in Virginia. It’s part of a global education network ultimately owned by investment funds managed by the firm Safanad, which has offices in New York, Dubai and Riyadh. In Ohio, Pansophic is better known as ACCEL, which operates more than 20 schools in the Cleveland area.
Pansophic initially proposed a nearly $24 million “Cleveland Community Learning Network,” which would include the schools of Adlai Stevenson, Bolton Elementary, Collinwood High, Hannah Gibbons-Nottingham, Louisa May Alcott and Tremont Montessori. (The company later appeared to drop Collinwood and Tremont from the bid.)
United Schools, a Columbus-based charter operator, submitted a $5 million proposal to open K-8 schools at Hannah Gibbons and Bolton.
Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration didn’t take either charter operator up on the offer. In the documents, city staff laid out their reservations about the proposals, including that “residents expressed concern over charters at all sites.”
Read up here on the winning proposals for nine school buildings.
Franziska Wild contributed reporting.
