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A Message From the
CEO
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Dr.
Eugene T. W. Sanders |
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Welcome to the Cleveland
Metropolitan School
District Website. As many of you know, Cleveland once was renowned for its’
highly reputable public school system. Today we are striving for nothing
less than a school district of premier status.
The need has never been more urgent.
Our need to achieve excellence is based on the
skills and experiences required to succeed in a fast-paced, technological
global economy. Clearly the potential is here, and the existence of a strong
student support system comprised of educators, parents, community, business,
and faith-based leaders is firmly established.
But in order to become a premier school
district, we must establish reachable goals along the way. As such, we have
identified three main goals for this school year:
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To
reach Continuous Improvement on the state report card
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To
improve student safety; and
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To improve customer service
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REACHING CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
I vowed before the start of this school year to
move the District from a designation of Academic Watch on the state report
card to a designation of Continuous Improvement.
That goal will be accomplished by implementing a
school-by-school instructional plan focused on outcomes by each class and
each student. Each student will be required to take a pre-assessment test a
minimum of three times prior to the actual achievement tests in the spring.
The assessment will help us customize the learning experience by child;
teachers will modify the lesson plan to meet the desired outcome. That
effort is off to a good start.
We also initiated the 3Rs (Rights,
Responsibilities, Realities) collaboration with the Cleveland Bar
Association that has more than 700 lawyers, judges and other volunteers of
the legal community tutoring 10th-grade students on the U..S.
Constitution, assisting students with the civics portion of the Ohio
Graduation Test, and providing career and post-secondary options counseling.
Ongoing academic and leadership initiatives continue with Harvard
University, the Ohio Department of Education and the Stupski Foundation.
SAFETY
We will continue to focus on improving student
and staff safety in schools and to foster a more respectful atmosphere in
making our schools more conducive to teaching and learning. We will have
“zero tolerance” for any behavior in schools that detracts from the focus on
academics.
We have created student safety leadership teams
in schools permitting students to have valuable input in efforts to increase
student safety, create a more respectful environment for teaching and
learning in schools, and to provide a mechanism for responding to student
concerns.
We will continue seeking to improve the
collaboration with several of the city’s law enforcement agencies in order
to increase the visibility of safety patrols at the start and the end of the
school day. As a result of our collaboration with the City of Cleveland,
and the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department, we will grant deputy authority
to 17 members of the School District’s Division of Safety and Security;
giving those members broader authority, including the capability to arrest
individuals away from school property.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
We commit to making
customer service a priority for our central office administration building
and each of our buildings in the district. While ‘customer service’ is a
term that is used often in the business world, we at the CMSD believe that
it also has merit in our schools which must become open and inviting places
for parents.
Schools are the
learning and knowledge laboratories. We must work much harder and more
quickly to send a message to our community that our schools are good places,
and that we value all of those who are there and who live and work in our
school communities.
I believe that
every phone call should be returned in 24 hours and each individual piece of
written correspondence should be replied to in seven business days. I
believe our phones should be answered promptly and courteously, and that the
department or person you are seeking should be easy to find, and each caller
should be connected immediately.
We also have taken initial steps to streamline
our administration and to reduce costs. Those efforts will continue
throughout this school year. Our recent efforts to reduce costs resulted in
the elimination of more than 20 administrative positions in addition to a
decision not to fill several other vacant positions or the positions of
individuals who recently retired or resigned.
Those initiatives, combined with the elimination
of an outside construction consultant who served as the Owner’s
Representative for our capital projects, will save the District a total of
$5,728,804 million. The reductions were made without directly affecting the
classroom. No teaching positions were reduced. Every effort is being made
to provide an enhanced focus on our Number One customer: The Student.
A ROLE FOR EVERYONE
We are in the midst of completing a five-year
Strategic Plan designed to chart the course for all levels of the District’s
academic and organizational effectiveness. A recent series of community
meetings planned to include community input into the Strategic Plan drew
more than 1,000 residents and many good recommendations.
Moving forward, we are fortunate to have the
unfailing support of Mayor Frank Jackson and School Board Chairman Larry
Davis who have placed the highest priority on the progress of our children.
With their support and yours, together we will move from vision to victory
in becoming a premier school district in the United States. |
