Cleveland schools CEO Warren Morgan says cutting 410 jobs is needed to shave $50 million a year and stave off state oversight of the district.

Last week, the district laid off 146 teachers and 120 other staff, including classroom aides, guidance counselors and licensed practical nurses. 

On Monday, Morgan said cuts will also include 86 administrators, around 50 of whom work in school buildings as principals, assistant principals and deans. The rest work in the district’s central office. 

Roughly 60 other staff members, including lunch aides, custodians and school secretaries will also be laid off. 

Morgan, during a media briefing, reiterated that while the cuts were grim, they are part of the district’s plan to “right size” in the face of declines in both school funding and enrollment, which has dipped dramatically over the past two decades. 

Cleveland Teachers Union President Errol Savage said that the district had options other than cutting staff who work most closely with students on a daily basis, including deeper cuts to highly paid administrators and contractors who don’t work directly with students. 

“This is devastating for children, this is devastating for families, and I hope it isn’t devastating for the district,” Savage said in a video shared with union members on Friday. “The necessity of the lay-offs is unclear. We’re not in a budget crisis, we’re not in a budget deficit.”

CTU challenges transparency around the need for cuts  

Savage and other CTU members pointed to the district’s most recent financial forecasts as a reason for why the current lay offs aren’t necessary because the projected deficit is years down the road not next school year. If the cuts to teaching staff were needed this year, Savage said, the district wasn’t fully transparent with the public about that. 

The most recent forecast, presented by Chief Financial Officer Kevin Stockdale at a February board meeting showed that the district is in the black until fiscal year 2029. In order to avoid coming under fiscal watch with the state, though, school districts must submit forecasts that show they are in the black for the current year and the following two years. 

On Monday, district officials said that the February forecast included around $30 million in projected savings from the district’s “Building Brighter Futures” merger and consolidation plan. Those calculations included cuts to personnel, though it wasn’t clear at the time how many would be teaching or support staff and how many would be administrators. 

Without the $30 million in savings, including the current layoffs, the district could enter fiscal precaution with the state as early as fiscal year 2027, Morgan said at Monday’s press briefing.

Savage said that it’s “news to him” that the current cuts were included in the financial forecast presented in February. He rarely misses school board meetings and said at the last few financial forecast presentations the potential for job cuts to educators never came up.   

“They never mentioned any layoffs, because that would have gotten my attention very quickly,” Savage said. 

During a November board meeting, Morgan gave a high-level overview of how the district calculated the $30 million in savings. At the time, he said that while utilities and leasing would make up around $1 to $2 million in savings, the majority would come from “the programmatic impacts” of the merger plan; he didn’t use the word layoffs or explicitly reference job cuts for teaching staff. 

After that meeting, Signal Cleveland asked district officials what that meant. Both Jon Benedict, the district’s spokesman and Stockdale said the savings would mainly come from cutting staff — mostly administrators. 

At a press conference in December, after the school board unanimously approved the school closure plan, Morgan said that building-level administrators, including principals, assistant principals deans and campus coordinators could be displaced or laid off due to the plan but said  that staffing for teachers and other educators would be based on enrollment. Currently, the district is predicting a slight increase in enrollment next year due to an influx of new students to CMSD. 

Savage said that by describing the savings of the merger plan in vague terms the district didn’t make it clear that there would be lay offs to educators. 

“If they were trying to say: ‘We knew there were going to be layoffs, and we said it.’ Well, you should have used the word layoff,” Savage said. 

CMSD is also cutting nearly $20 million from central office 

In order to bring the total savings up to $50 million, the district is making additional cuts during this year. About $20 million in cuts will come from the central office budget, which pays for high-level administrators but also departments like transportation and special education. 

Morgan said that eliminating administrative jobs is in line with a 2025 state audit that called out the district for being top heavy compared to similarly-sized districts in the state. The audit recommended that CMSD cut around 77.5 administrators.

Of the 86 administrators the district is laying off this year, a little over half work in school buildings, including principals and assistant principals. The rest work at central office, according to Benedict.

The nearly 50 building administrators who are being laid have already been factored into the $30 million in savings projected by the merger plan. The roughly 36 central office administrators who received layoff notices on Friday are in addition to that. 

At the briefing, Morgan noted that the central office cuts also include other spending reductions identified by department heads such as contracts or travel. He didn’t provide much detail beyond that. 

What’s next? 

CMSD’s Board of Education will vote on some of the layoffs this week at its meeting on April 14. 

Those layoffs include teachers, paraprofessionals and other positions represented by the Cleveland Teachers Union, which have a contract with the district that requires that employees are notified 30 days before the end of the school year if they will be laid off. 

Layoffs of what are called “at will” staff, who are not represented by a union don’t require a board vote.