Summary
- CMSD parents, teachers and students spoke about their concerns during the public comment portion of the meeting, particularly regarding expected school closures and consolidations under the Building Brighter Futures initiative.
- The district is off-track on both of the interim measures that connect to the long-term goal regarding 3rd-grade reading proficiency on the Ohio State Test (OST).
Follow-Up Question
- The Sept. 15 Signal article about the Ohio report card ranking for CMSD states that “roughly” 27% of 2023-24 high school graduates had post-secondary education readiness (like college). At tonight’s meeting, CMSD reported 35.65% of 2023-24 graduates had post-secondary readiness. Why the discrepancy?
- Are third graders included in the fall and winter assessments on the Measure 1.1 graphs for K-3 students, but not the spring assessments? This is confusing to me, because I thought we were looking at the same cohort of K-3 students taking the fall, winter and spring assessments throughout the school year.
- Is it realistic to expect the percentage of 3rd graders scoring proficient on the OST to increase 5% a year until 2030, absent some highly unusual transformation? What is a goal like that based on?
CMSD meeting notes
Call to order, roll call and Pledge of Allegiance
The meeting was called to order at 6:33 p.m. Board members present for roll call were: Robert Briggs, Midori Lebrón, Nigamanth Sridhar, Charlene Jones, Caroline Peak, Jerry Billups and Pastor Ivory Jones III. Sridhar announced that Board Chair Sara Elaqad was running late and that he would chair the meeting until she arrived. (Elaqad did join the meeting around 8 p.m.). Diana Welch Howell was absent from the meeting. After roll call, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited.
Presentation to board members
Tom Hosler, CEO of the Ohio School Boards Association (OSBA), presented a plaque to CMSD board member Midori Lebrón, who had served as a trustee on the OSBA board.
Public comment
Thirteen individuals spoke during the public comment section of tonight’s meeting. Many of the comments were in the context of the Building Brighter Futures (BBF) initiative. This initiative will result in the closure and consolidation of many CMSD schools. The schools recommended for closure will be made public on Nov. 5.
Five of the 13 speakers were affiliated with Tremont Montessori School. They were:
- Luna – a student at Tremont who spoke positively of the school (“Tremont feels like family”)
- Sandra Flowers (the Cleveland Teachers Union Tremont chapter chair) spoke about the history of the school. Flowers voiced support for the school and opposition to the school possibly being closed or consolidated with a traditional elementary school. Flowers supported moving the school to another building if necessary.
- Susan Conrad is a preschool and kindergarten teacher at Tremont who spoke about the uniqueness of Tremont as a public Montessori school.
- Kelly Lardie is a Tremont teacher who spoke in support of the school.
- Carrie Crocker (spelling unconfirmed) is a Tremont teacher (and parent of CMSD students) who spoke about the difficulty in comparing Tremont to other CMSD schools using the measures in the BBF initiative (for example, classroom size, amount of physical space in school, etc.).
Other individuals who spoke during the public comment section of the meeting were:
- Mayar (spelling unconfirmed), a senior at the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine who moved to the U.S. from Egypt in 2014, spoke favorably of the school. She said her school is “amazing” and “beautiful.” “I am very proud of my school.”
- Dr. David Margolius, director of Cleveland Public Health, spoke positively of the district as a CMSD parent and said that a pet peeve of his was negative comments about the district by suburban parents.
- Catherine Tkachyk, interim executive director of Say Yes – Cleveland, spoke positively of the college scholarship programs for CMSD students in the face of potential funding cuts. [Editor’s note: Six years later, has the Say Yes Cleveland scholarship program lived up to its promise?]
- Craig Dorn, CEO of Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU), spoke in support of the BBF initiative, saying that the YOU program could be more effective in serving a smaller number of school buildings in the district.
- Glen Shumate is a Cleveland resident who spoke positively of CMSD schools and expressed understanding of the need for the BBF initiative to close and consolidate schools in the district.
- Polly Karr is a CMSD parent who said there is an ongoing problem of missing textbooks in district classrooms. Karr spoke about a slow response from district staff and said that the situation “reeks of incompetence.”
- Famika Bonner from Marion C. Seltzer Elementary School said she was frustrated with transportation issues involving students at her school, which she is still working to resolve.
- Alan Nevel, board member from the Urban League of Greater Cleveland (and chair of the People and Culture Committee), read a statement from the board and CEO expressing concerns about the lack of resources in CMSD schools and emphasizing the importance of the BBF initiative.
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Consent agenda
The consent agenda considered at this meeting consisted of minutes from the Oct. 14 and Oct. 18 meetings, one finance resolution, one operations resolution, one academic resolution, four excellence & culture resolutions, and four legal resolutions. All of these items were approved unanimously by the board.
[Editor’s note: Learn more about CMSD’s new consent agenda format.]
CMSD literacy goals and guardrails report
This portion of the meeting consisted of a data presentation by CMSD CEO Warren Morgan II. Morgan began by discussing results from the recently released Ohio state report card. Although high school proficiency scores improved across all categories (with scores in English, Algebra 1, and U.S. government now exceeding pre-pandemic levels), the overall ranking decreased from 3 stars last year to 2.5 stars this year. Morgan said the cause of the decline was the inclusion this year of measures related to college, career, workforce and military readiness for high school graduates. The district only received 1 star from the State of Ohio on this measure, which helped decrease the overall ranking.
Morgan continued by discussing the district’s long-term goal for 3rd-grade proficiency on the English and Language Arts (ELA) portion of the Ohio State Test (OST). The goal is to increase the percentage of 3rd-grade students meeting the proficiency standard from 35% in August 2024 to 60% by August 2030. There are also two interim measures (called “CEO measures” in the presentation), which are intended to show progress (or lack thereof) toward meeting the overall goal. These interim measures are discussed below:
Suggested Reading
Measure 1.1 – Increase the percentage of K-3 students on track in reading as measured by the fall iReady assessment. – Morgan reported that only 39.3% of K-3 students were on track to meeting OST proficiency levels according to this fall’s iReady assessment. The 45% goal was not met and is a decrease from the 47.9% observed in fall 2024. Morgan attributed some of the decrease to the district adopting the iReady assessment for this year, which is more rigorous than the NWEA assessment used last year. When using statistical methods to enable apples-to-apples comparisons between fall 2024 and fall 2025, the “on-track” percentage was 44.8%, which is higher than the 39.3% seen with the iReady assessment this fall but still below the 45% goal.
Measure 1.2 – Increase the percentage of 3rd-grade students predicted to be proficient in reading as measured by the winter iReady assessment. – This interim goal has yet to be measured for the 2025-26 school year. However, using the fall 2025 iReady assessment, 24.35% of 3rd-grade students are predicted to score at the proficient level on the spring 2026 OST in ELA (which is slightly lower than the fall 2024 percentage of 26.23%). The goal is for 35% of 3rd-grade students to be predicted proficient on the upcoming winter assessment. Although Morgan said that there is typically an increase of 2-4% in the predicted proficient percentage between the fall and winter assessment, the district is “significantly off-track” to meet the 35% goal when measured this winter.
Morgan discussed reasons that the district isn’t meeting the interim reading measures, specifically mentioning inconsistent application of curricula in classrooms and insufficient support by the district central office. Morgan concluded by talking about steps the district is taking to improve performance, including increased feedback, communication and support from central office staff to school teachers and principals.
After the presentation, there was time for comments and questions by board members. Sridhar said he appreciated the “level of depth and data” in the presentation, and that while “this can seem like a lot of data overload,” it is important for the board to receive these presentations in order to hold the district and its leadership accountable.
Billups asked Morgan about the decreases between the winter and spring predicted proficiency results for Measure 1.1 (for example, the percentage of “on-track” K-3 students decreased from 50.9% in winter of 2025 to 36.4% in spring 2025). The explanation given by Nicholas D’Amico, executive director of Research, Evaluation, & Accountability, was that the decrease was almost completely due to higher expectations for 3rd graders to be counted as proficient in the spring compared to the winter.
New Business – Chair Elaqad spoke about several board members attending the Council of the Great City Schools conference earlier this month in Philadelphia. She talked about what was learned at the conference and what they could bring back to CMSD.
The board went into closed executive session around 8:10 p.m. after a unanimous vote. The next scheduled board meeting is a work session at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 5 at Arnold Pinkney East Professional Center.
The board returned from closed executive session shortly after 9:30 p.m. to adjourn the meeting.
These notes are by Documenter Tucker Handley.
If you believe anything in these notes is inaccurate, please email us at documenters@signalcleveland.org with “Correction Request” in the subject line.