Raymon Reed ends every week standing at the exit to Collinwood High School. As students leave the building, he wishes each of them a safe weekend and tells them he is looking forward to seeing them on Monday. 

“That’s my concept: I see you. You’re not invisible. Even if you’re quiet, even if you’re, you know, introverted, you’re known, you’re recognized,” he said. 

Officially, it is Reed’s job to run the planning center at the school, which means helping students who are disrupting class take a break and regulate their emotions so they can get back to learning. Unofficially, he provides a fundamental resource for every student in the building: care. 

Reed is not a teacher, he’s a type of teacher’s assistant known as a paraprofessional. His official title is Planning Center Instructional Aide, but that often gets shortened to “PCIA.” 

Planning centers were created by the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) to reduce suspensions after a 14-year-old student shot two teachers and two students before killing himself at Success Tech High School in 2007. In response, then-CEO Eric Gordon not only increased security at schools but also added in planning centers, student support teams and a number of other social and emotional learning supports. 

The strategy, which has earned the district national recognition, was also credited with a decline in suspensions and serious incidents at schools. 

As the district moves to close and consolidate schools next year under its “Building Brighter Futures” initiative, the job security of the people on the front lines of some of this work is in jeopardy. In early March, the district signed an agreement with the Cleveland Teachers Union (CTU) to allow planning center aides to take positions in the classroom helping out teachers if they get laid off next year. The goal of that agreement was to protect planning center aides — already are among the lowest paid staff in the district — by allowing them to transfer their seniority in terms of pay if they take a classroom job. 

Follow the story: See all of our reporting on Cleveland schools in one place.

The number of people in planning center positions, unlike teachers, isn’t based on a building’s enrollment but is determined on a school-by-school basis. It is possible the district could add positions to some buildings, but the teachers’ union hasn’t been approached about that. That means next year there will be fewer schools, and likely fewer planning center aides, but the same number of students. 

Jon Benedict, a spokesperson for the district, told Signal Cleveland that staffing for merged schools isn’t finalized yet. He also said the district values paraprofessionals and wants to make sure students have all the support they need next year. 

Famika Bonner was recently elected to represent paraprofessionals, including people who work in planning centers, on the teachers’ union executive board. She also runs the planning center at Marion C. Seltzer Elementary. Bonner pointed out that the agreement wouldn’t have been signed unless the district planned to reduce the number of planning center aides. 

“I want people to understand that people are getting laid off,” she told Signal Cleveland. “We have 100 and some PCIAs. We are merging 20-something schools.” 

Planning center staff aren’t the only positions that could face cuts. Community College and Career Center Coordinators, also known as “5Cs,” are included in the same agreement. These positions help students navigate their college and career choices. 

Not only are educators in the planning center and career navigator positions dealing with the stress of potentially being laid off, but the ones who remain face higher case loads next year. Many say they are already stretched thin — and can’t imagine what it might be like to run a planning center in a bigger school next year. 

“We already deal with different emotions or different things when the kids come into our room,” Bonner said. “Somebody who just had a fight that I have to deal with, whereas a child who just lost their grandmother, and they’re both sitting in my room.”  

How CMSD planning centers help kids 

Reed calls his room at Collinwood the “intentional care unit” or “ICU.” In addition to helping kids who are referred there regulate their feelings, Reed is a grounding presence throughout the building and serves as the girls’ track team coach. He’s been at Collinwood for the past four years. 

Reed shows up early every day to greet students as they come in for breakfast. Most days, half the student body passes through his room for an informal check-in. He works to build relationships with each student with the hope that, over time, together they might be able to address some of the root challenges that cause their behaviors. 

Similarly, Rachel Kolecky, who runs the planning center at Louisa May Alcott School, sees herself as offering more than just what’s in her job description. Her room, which often has some kind of cozy or calming music playing, is filled with tools to help even the youngest kids express their feelings, like a smiley and frowny face rug that kids, who might be reluctant to talk, can just stand on to show how they’re feeling. 

Next year, if she keeps her job, Kolecky could be in charge of the planning center at Gallagher Elementary, the school Alcott is set to merge with. That might mean she’s responsible for running the planning center at a school with an enrollment close to 1,000 students compared to Alcott, which currently has 167 students. 

Contractually, planning centers at elementary schools are capped at serving 15 students a class period, and at high schools they’re capped at 20. It’s not clear what would happen with student referrals if demand jumps with higher student populations in the buildings. The contractual limits also don’t account for the dozens of informal ways — brief chats, high fives, words of encouragement — that planning center aides like Kolecky and Reed check in with kids every day. Those informal check-ins take time and they also double when the size of a school doubles. 

Right now, Reed believes that the dynamics and the effectiveness of the planning center shift when there are more students in it. Rather than offering students individualized attention, he would have to provide a more structured environment using the kind of classroom management techniques a teacher might. And that kind of defeats the point of the planning center as a place for reflection, he said. 

Through the relationships he’s already been able to build, Reed has helped students figure out how they learn best, encouraged them to find employment and supported them in attending school more consistently. Most importantly, he’s offered care and encouragement to teenagers who might not get a lot of that elsewhere. 

“One thing that is certain to me is that we cannot diminish this kind of care,” he said. “That cannot be one of the things that suffers because we’re combining schools.”

College and career readiness navigators could also see cuts

Alicia Dodson, who serves as the college and career aide at the district’s K-8 remote school, said the flexibility of the planning center and college and career aide positions allows them to provide support for kids that isn’t tied to academic expectations. 

In her role, Dodson has done everything from helping run orientations for families new to the remote school to organizing field trips to career education centers like MAGNET and Newbridge. She said that it’s often paraprofessionals like her who have the ability to give individualized support to students as well as families.

“Our focus is not the same as the classroom teacher,” Dodson said. “We have the capacity to be that extra loving adult, to be stern, but loving.” 

Dodson thinks cutting these positions would be a mistake, in part, because of the emphasis that Building Brighter Futures places on expanding access to college and career technical education and the role staff like her play in helping kids navigate their choices. 

At K-8 schools they’re often the only resource students have access to where they can have those kinds of conversations because CMSD elementary schools don’t have guidance counselors and librarians split their time across schools. At the high school level, they are another person that students have to turn to when it comes to filling out the scholarship applications or financial aid forms, processes that can take a lot of time and prompting for a kid to complete. 

“We do want our students to graduate and be ready for the world when they’re going into college or directly into the workforce,” Dodson. “But we also need to make sure that they are understanding what their choices are, how those choices might manifest in their life, good and bad, and they’re losing a voice — someone else that they could talk to.”