Opening new schools to serve Cleveland’s diverse population of students is a central component of Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools, the comprehensive plan to reinvent public education in our city. The idea is that a variety of schools, taking different approaches, can better serve the diverse needs of today’s students than the one-size-fits-all approach of the past.

Jennifer Rhone walks the hallway of Thomas Jefferson International Newcomers Academy, where she’s one of two assistant principals, and gives a tall, dark-haired boy a wave. “I’d adopt him if I could,” she confides, out of earshot. “He’s so smart and kind, but he’s struggled since he got to the U.S. He had a really difficult childhood…”

The lights go down in an auditorium at Facing History New Tech High School in Old Brooklyn, and a large movie screen flickers to life. The documentary film being shown is called “What Tomorrow Brings.” It follows a group of students in the first girls’ school in an Afghan town.

In Broadway-Slavic Village, supporting students means supporting their families. Last November, with the holidays on the way and two kids in school, Carlotta Jackson was on the verge of eviction. “I was stressing,” Jackson says. “I had all these bills, I was working all these hours. If I had to move, I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

In addition to learning technical skills, Max Hayes students make field visits to local manufacturers with the help of an in-school office of WIRE-Net, a nonprofit with the goal of maintaining and strengthening Cleveland’s manufacturing sector. Many students participate in half-day internships. Max Hayes is one of five newly designated Academies of Cleveland — career and technical high schools adopting new curricula to better meet the needs of today’s employers and colleges.

To eat lunch with her is considered a privilege, even though she’s at least their parents’ age, has the very adult-sounding title of wraparound site coordinator at Fullerton School of Academics in Slavic Village, and sits in an office right across from the principal’s.

Enabling and encouraging schools such as Stonebrook to open is part of the overall strategy of Cleveland Plan’s for Transforming Schools, a public-private effort to ensure every student in Cleveland gets a quality education.

When Tim Primus was helping create the curriculum for the new John Marshall School of Engineering earlier this year, his colleagues thought he was crazy. The plan was to combine traditional algebra classes with studies in robotics. Professors from Cuyahoga Community College would lead robotics classes, and students would receive credit from both John Marshall and Tri-C. “People just laughed at first,” says Primus.