Voters raised taxes last year for Cleveland Metropolitan School District. That still wasn’t enough to stop the carving knife from falling on the public schools’ budget.
That cognitive dissonance came home this week. Teachers packed a school board meeting to oppose the district’s plan to get rid of alternative and extended calendars at nearly two dozen schools.
Liz Pangrace, a CMSD teacher with three children in district schools, addressed her comments directly to the mayor, who was not in attendance.
“Last November, when 66% — two-thirds — of voters cast their ballots to pass the school levy, I don’t believe they expected this administration to use their tax dollars to give Cleveland kids less,” she said. “I know I didn’t.”
The remarks were notable because Pangrace, who is married to Cleveland City Council Member Kris Harsh, appeared in an advertisement for the levy last year.
“Without it, our kids face millions in cuts,” she said in the ad.
The levy’s passage won the district an annual infusion of $49 million. But that only bought the district time for cuts. Schools CEO Warren Morgan said this week that the district aims to cut a cumulative $150 million over three years.
In an interview, Pangrace noted that the buck stops with Bibb, who is the only mayor in Ohio with direct power over his school district.
“The mayor is the one who’s in charge of the school board,” she said, “and Mayor Bibb is going to be responsible, and his legacy is going to be the person who dragged CMSD backwards.”
For his part, Morgan signaled before the election that cuts would be necessary even if the levy passed. This week, Bibb reiterated that message.
“We told voters during the election last year that the levy wasn’t going to be the saving grace to get us out of this current financial situation,” the mayor told Signal Cleveland.
Bibb argued that “sensible cuts” were necessary to improve CMSD in the long term, particularly if the state and federal government pull back funding.
On Thursday, the mayor signed an executive order forming a special cabinet focused on children’s well-being. It was a week of dichotomies. As City Hall says it will focus its attention on kids, the school district is tightening its belt.
The next fight may be even more contentious. The district has begun planning for school building closures. At a town hall on the Southeast Side in February, Bibb mentioned upcoming “hard choices” about CMSD’s “footprint.”
“I’m going to need to work with you all to make those hard choices,” he said, “and it ain’t going to be easy.”
Signal Cleveland reporter Nick Castele contributed to this story.
