Mayor Justin Bibb, who is ultimately the head of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, has said just a few things publicly about charter schools.
Defenders of traditional public education see charters — which receive public funding and operate independently — as competitors for state resources. Charter supporters argue they give parents more educational options for their children.
The issue has taken on a particular salience now, as CMSD consolidates schools to stabilize its budget. One City Council member warned last year that charters could pick up students uprooted by CMSD’s changes.
In the past, Bibb distinguished between charters run by for-profit companies and nonprofit charters that already have a relationship with CMSD. He opposes the for-profits but has signaled openness to nonprofit charters that work with the district.
The mayor criticized “reckless” and “failing charter schools” during a meeting about CMSD’s closures in November 2025. His administration recently passed over bids from charters to take control of some of those closed public schools.
“The best thing we can do is make CMSD the best damn school district so those parents choose CMSD over those failing charter schools,” he said during that 2025 meeting.
But Bibb’s office has less to say about an education nonprofit known as Future Ready Cleveland that has supported nonprofit charters and a charter-like school in recent years. Founded by a former Bibb advisor, the organization has received help — but not direct financial support — from Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam.
Over the last two months, Signal Cleveland has asked Bibb’s office about City Hall’s approach to Future Ready and new charter schools arriving in town as CMSD’s footprint shrinks. The city was also asked whether it has worked with the Haslams on educational issues since the Browns owners supported a district listening tour in 2022.
The city did not directly answer those questions. But it did respond to another question Signal Cleveland asked: Have Bibb’s views on charters changed since a 2022 interview?
During his first year as mayor, Bibb said he was “completely against” for-profit charter operators. But he suggested he is comfortable with charters such as Breakthrough Public Schools, a nonprofit network that works with CMSD.
“The mayor’s feelings are the same as his statement in 2022 about charters,” Communications Director Sarah Johnson told Signal Cleveland earlier this month. “Nothing new to add at this time.”
Teachers’ union: Mayor has ‘come to the realization’ public schools are Cleveland’s ‘bedrock’
Holly Trifiro, who founded Future Ready, told Signal Cleveland in August that the mayor was aware of her work and that she had also spoken with Council President Blaine Griffin about it.
She said her organization is exploring ways to work with CMSD and that its aim is to help high-quality schools — whether they are charter, private or traditional district schools. The Haslams have helped her make connections in the education world but haven’t given money directly to Future Ready, she said.
“Our work is not about choosing sides in a debate over school types,” she told Signal Cleveland in an email last month. “It is about expanding access to high-quality options and addressing the inequities that have too often made educational opportunity dependent on a family’s neighborhood or income.”
Bibb met in September 2025 with Trifiro and Marlon Marshall, the CEO of the nonprofit City Fund, the mayor’s public calendars show. City Fund is a supporter of Future Ready and charter schools around the country.
City Hall described the meeting as an introduction. The city has not yet fulfilled a Signal Cleveland public records request for emails discussing City Fund and related topics.
The new president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, Errol Savage, gave the mayor credit for working to support public schools. Bibb backed the 2024 school levy and made the difficult decision to consolidate schools amid declining enrollment, he said.
To Savage, Bibb did not appear as supportive of public schools as a mayoral candidate in 2021. But now that Bibb is in charge at City Hall, “he’s come to the realization that the public schools are the bedrock of this city’s greatness,” the union president said.
There is at least one message on public education Savage would like to hear from City Hall, and it’s one directed at the Haslams. The Browns owners have given millions over the years to organizations that support charter schools and such policies as school vouchers.
“Possibly someone to tell Jimmy Haslam to take his plan to the suburbs, just like he’s taking our stadium, and leave us alone,” Savage said.
CMSD Board Sara Elaqad and a district spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
Bibb draws a line at for-profit charter operators
The mayor’s views on education matter because he appoints members of the school board, picking them from among candidates recommended by a selection panel. The district came under mayoral control between 1997 and 1998.
Bibb has called his leadership role at CMSD a “special moral obligation.” Early in his first term, the mayor outlined his general philosophy on charters in an interview with Signal Cleveland.
“I’m completely against for-profit charter schools in Cleveland and in the state,” he said in 2022. “And we need tougher charter-school accountability at the state level to crack down on for-profit charter schools that prey on families, particularly Black and brown families in the city of Cleveland.”
Under Ohio law, charter schools themselves must be nonprofits. But they can be run by for-profit operators. A majority of the charters in Cleveland are run by for-profits.
Bibb drew a distinction between those and other charters such as Breakthrough. CMSD shares levy resources with a handful of nonprofit charters, including two Breakthrough schools and their satellite locations.
“Public charters like Breakthrough have been a part of the district,” Bibb said at the time. “They’re sponsored by CMSD. They were part of CMSD, they’ve been a part of the Cleveland Plan for nearly a decade. I only want to continue that work that we’ve done with the Cleveland Plan. That’s my intent as mayor.”
Mayor pledges to keep closed schools away from ‘reckless charters’
The last few years have been tumultuous for CMSD. Bibb, schools CEO Warren Morgan, and the teachers union successfully campaigned for a tax increase in 2024 to help close a budget hole. It wasn’t enough. At the end of last year, the district announced plans to close and merge schools.
Bibb said CMSD could no longer sustain so many buildings, given the shrinking student population. Closing schools would help the district consolidate resources and better serve students in the buildings that remained, leadership argued.
The mayor put his name and face behind the effort, known as Building Brighter Futures. He spent $113,000 of his own campaign funds on a TV ad in which he made the case for closures.
At a meeting last November at Collinwood High School, Council Member Michael Polensek told Bibb and Morgan that school closures could push more students into charters.
“You’re going to drive people into these charter schools and out of the neighborhood just as you’ve already done on the East Side,” Polensek said, wagging his finger. “You’re going to destabilize our neighborhoods.”
(In his State of the Schools speech this month, Morgan said CMSD retained about the same rate of students that it typically does from year to year. The district hasn’t yet released detailed enrollment data.)
At the Collinwood meeting, Bibb replied that the city had a “game plan” for repurposing closed school buildings. Ohio law requires school districts to offer to sell buildings to charters if the properties go unused for at least a year. CMSD has been swapping its closed schools with the City of Cleveland before the buildings hit the one-year-empty mark.
“I don’t want reckless charters that we can’t hold accountable to take over these school sites,” the mayor said. “I want to use those school sites for broader development in our neighborhoods. That is the plan.”
