As Cleveland prepares for major changes to its public school system, in the form of 39 school mergers and 18 school building closures, some residents and council members have questioned whether the mayor’s ability to appoint the school board has led to a lack of independent oversight. Some have also suggested that some of the board’s current decisions don’t represent what Clevelanders want for their schools.
Currently, the nine members of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s board are appointed by the mayor, though the process doesn’t allow him to pick whoever he wants.
Candidates for school board need to be nominated by an 11-person panel that must include: CMSD parents, a teacher appointed by the collective bargaining representative of the Cleveland teachers’ union, a CMSD principal, business leaders, appointees from both the mayor and Cleveland City Council and a representative from an institution of higher education. Hiring the district’s CEO is a joint decision made by the mayor and the school board.
Still, voters don’t cast a ballot for anyone on the nominating committee, and with big changes looming on the horizon, some residents have questioned whether Cleveland, the only city in the state without an elected school board, should switch.
The board has also made some changes this year that mean it conducts less business in public. For example, earlier this year, it shifted to a “consent agenda” format under which it doesn’t read out loud or publicly discuss every resolution that it votes on.
The issue of an elected school board arose at a Nov. 11 town hall with Bibb at Collinwood High School—one of 19 of high schools that would merge under the district’s sweeping plan. At the town hall, Sarah Hodge, a teacher at Collinwood, asked Bibb what he would do to “re-enfranchise” Cleveland’s voters when it comes to control and oversight of their school board.
In response, Bibb said that while he takes his control of the schools seriously, he’s also a supporter of democracy.
“If the voters of the city want to have an elected school board, then let the voters decide that,” he said. “But right now, there is mayoral control in schools, and I’m not abjecting my responsibility.”
CMSD has had an appointed board for nearly 30 years. How did it start?
In 1997, the Ohio legislature passed a law to reorganize Cleveland’s school board, instituting nine voting members, each appointed by the mayor.
At the time legislators took this drastic move, the district was in fiscal emergency and under the control of both the federal government and the state school superintendent. In Ohio, if a school district doesn’t have a balanced budget, the state can take it over, a reality that is still relevant today as CMSD grapples with cutting almost $150 million over the next few years to avoid a budget deficit.
Cleveland’s elected board had been troubled for decades before the legislature acted. In 1977, its members were found partly responsible for maintaining school segregation in a civil rights case, Reed v. Rhodes. As a result, the district was placed under federal oversight and ordered by a court to desegregate its schools by busing students.
In the lead up to the state law change, a coalition of community activists and churches campaigned for then-Mayor Michael R. White to have control over the school board. On the other hand, groups such as the NAACP and Cleveland Teachers Union (CTU) opposed the bill because they believed it was undemocratic.
In 2002, a couple years after Cleveland transitioned to an appointed board, the district was required, by law, to hold a referendum about the board structure. In the referendum, voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of keeping the appointed board and the NAACP and CTU both supported the appointment system, despite having initially opposed it.
Since the district came under mayoral control nearly 30 years ago, it has made significant progress in terms of student outcomes, doubling its graduation rate.
Bibb says ‘Let the voters decide’: But how would it actually work?
There’s a multi-step process by which Cleveland voters could change the district’s governing structure, according to school board attorney Kevin Burtzlaff.
The first step would be submitting a petition to get a question about the structure of the school board on the ballot. This petition would need signatures from 10% of the voters in the school district. That percentage is based on the turnout in the last municipal election, so, in this case, roughly 4,200 people would need to sign.
Once that petition was submitted, the board of education would convene a commission to draft at least two different options for the governance structure of the board; these could include options ranging from a fully elected board, an appointed board or a mix of the two. Those options would be listed on the ballot, and whichever got a majority of votes would become the new school board structure. Depending on the outcome, the district can then hold elections for school board.
An alternative route to returning to an elected board would be changing state law. In order to do so, a state legislator would need to introduce a bill to amend the current law, pass it through both houses and then get the governor to sign off.
Just because Cleveland could return to an elected school, should it?
Some residents, like Hodge and the people who clapped after her question last week, think the question is at least worth asking. There’s also a number of city council members who’ve brought the issue up now and in the past. Their argument, and Hodge’s argument, is that school districts spend taxpayer money, so taxpayers should have a say in who’s on the board.
But, electing the school board opens up a whole other can of worms: politics. Throughout the country, including in Ohio, school board elections can be contentious and political. In those places, organized groups with their own interests, such as Moms for Liberty, have a greater ability to directly influence how schools are run because they can campaign for and spend in school board elections.
Research also shows that urban public school systems with elected school boards, like Atlanta and Los Angeles, and those with appointed school boards, like Cleveland and Boston, don’t necessarily show significant differences in student achievement that can be attributed to their governance structures. In Cleveland, mayoral control has been credited as part of the district’s transformation since 2000.
There also are questions about whether an elected school board actually makes school control more democratic given that the people who turn out to vote most frequently aren’t necessarily representative of the school district. Some research has shown that people who are most likely to vote for school board are unlikely to have children enrolled in public schools.
Sara Elaqad, the current chair of CMSD’s school board, didn’t weigh in on if an elected school board is a better model. In her eyes, what the city should be focused on is how to make the best decisions for Cleveland’s students—decisions Elaqad believes she and the rest of the board have the necessary independence to make.
“My responsibility is to lead the type of school system that equitably delivers the educational opportunities and outcomes the children of Cleveland deserve, not to serve the agenda of any one person or group,” Elaqad wrote to Signal Cleveland. “That independence allows the education of our students to be our primary goal.”
