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The onset of spring school decision making is one aspect of education that hasn’t changed during the pandemic. Now is the time of year when families and students are considering their options for next year, with open enrollment and/or the application process underway in most Cleveland district and charter schools. Students in pre-school may be staying in their current school or transitioning to a new school for kindergarten. Eighth-grade students and their families are likely weighing the many quality highschool options in greater Cleveland, which will also pave the way for participation in the Say Yes to Education college scholarship program.

Choosing the right school for your child can be overwhelming. Thankfully, Cleveland families do not have to go it alone. After a successful pilot last year, the School Quality Navigator program has returned with a new cohort of informative and professional staff members who are available to provide support, information and a personal connection through all phases of the school choice process.

Anju Abdullah has been working with Cleveland Transformation Alliance for over five years, first as an ambassador in the community, distributing School Quality Guides at events and completing family surveys to inform the community reviews on MyCleSchool.org website. In her new role as a School Quality Navigator, Anju enjoys the opportunity to engage directly with families, hear their concerns and provide assistance. One recent example is a family that is moving closer to downtown and wanted to know more about nearby schools, she was able to discuss four nearby school options and provide information so they could follow up with tours at each school. A longtime Cuyahoga County county employee, Anju’s experience in social services and public education programming makes her a tremendous asset to the families she is working with.

On the flip side, her colleague Natalie Ziegler is a recent “northeast Ohio boomerang” who returned from Rochester, NY to participate in the Cleveland Foundation fellowship program where she served at the Cuyahoga County Public Library. Natalie re-discovered a love for Cleveland in her library role, where she engages with students and families. Natalie sees a lot of parallels between Rochester and Cleveland and credits her library experience with informing her approach to working with families and community engagement, “When I’m in library world, I’m working with people to help them with paperwork, research for personal family issues, faxes or copies of divorce papers, etc. — even helping someone find a new book to read.”

Like Anju, this kind of personal connection is central to Natalie’s interactions with Cleveland families. She is inspired by “the way parents and families are connected and rooted in supporting each other,” recalling one parent who has been in the district for 20 years. Now, as an alumni parent, she is one of many people who Natalie thinks of as champions for Cleveland schools — which she sees as a counter to the news/media perspective often portrayed.

In addition to Anju and Natalie, Maxine Williams has returned for her second year in this role. She is a Cleveland parent who also works at the Cleveland Public Library adjacent to CMSD’s Marion Sterling school, and helped with the initial pilot program in 2019. “We did such a good job,” she said, prompting families to stay in touch with her even after the program ended.  Williams enjoyed learning more about Cleveland schools alongside the families she served. Before becoming a navigator, she said, “I didn’t know that you could go to any school or that schools had specialized programs,” she said. “The Navigator program took me out of the library and gave me a more in-depth connection with the community. I love being able to measure our success.”

Navigator support can include phone calls, in-person meetings, Zoom conferences, and online assistance navigating the tools and resources that are available to help Cleveland families searching for the “right fit” school for their children. With updates to the School Quality Guide (both in print and online), a new Family Resource Center, and a growing School Quality Ambassador program, the Transformation Alliance hopes to connect with and support more families through partnerships and referrals.

Would you like to be connected with a School Quality Navigator?
Please fill out this form.

Since 2012, Cleveland Transformation Alliance’s annual Cleveland Plan Progress Report has served as a community benchmark, highlighting bold ideas and incremental progress toward Mayor Frank Jackson’s transformative vision for Cleveland public schools.

In the eight years since its inception, the challenges affecting Cleveland’s education landscape have not changed — too many Cleveland families continue to live in poverty and racial and socioeconomic disparities are ever present. Nonetheless, The Cleveland Plan has created measurable, powerful momentum that will benefit generations of students and families.

“This year marks the first year that the CMSD’s high school graduation rate is over 80 percent. That is a 28 percentage point increase in a decade. This progress equates to millions of dollars in earning potential for thousands of young Clevelanders,” according to Cleveland Transformation Alliance executive director Meghann Marnecheck.  And with the launch of Cleveland’s Say Yes to Education program, the pathway to college for these high school graduates is clearer than it has ever been.

The 2020 report also celebrates goals met and exceeded for Cleveland’s youngest learners, such as kindergarten readiness (67% of students on track) and pre-school language and literacy (52% of students on track). PRE4CLE, Cleveland’s 2014 plan to expand high-quality preschool to all 3-and 4-year-olds has been instrumental in this progress.

Parents at the Center of the Conversation

More than any other external factor, the effects of COVID-19 have created disproportionate challenges for Cleveland public school students. And as we look ahead, overcoming those challenges has reinforced our commitment to connecting directly with parents/families to guide our work and partnerships. We recognize parents as the primary stakeholders in their child’s education. Through our 2020 family survey and informal “Family Café” events, parents/families have shared the following concerns about school choice:

Overcoming the Digital Divide

Another pressing concern is that Cleveland students should not have their academic progress threatened by the digital divide. With Cleveland ranking the highest percentage of households without broadband Internet accounts of any U.S. city with 100,000 or more households — i.e. the worst connected big city in America. As it became clear that schools would remain closed, “our educators responded in ways that some would argue is outside their responsibility,” said Marnecheck, noting the extensive supports, including meals and technology, provided through home/school connections during the pandemic.

“This community has come together to quickly respond to a crisis” with teachers, counselors, and community programs across the city working tirelessly to connect virtually with families and students since the pandemic transitioned all CMSD schools, and many Cleveland charter schools, to online learning in March of 2020. CMSD and our partner charter schools have distributed approximately 30,000 computers and 12,000 hotspots between last spring and this fall. These efforts have been generously supported by local philanthropy.

Per the 2020 Cleveland Plan Progress Report: “The Cleveland Plan is working. Students are reaching the highest achievement levels in recent history. As a community, we must work together to continue to build upon these gains so that our children can reach their highest potential. Much like we have come together to respond to the digital divide, we can continue to find ways to support students and their academic achievement.”

To read the full progress report, click here.

Supported by the Cleveland Transformation Alliance, school choice is an essential aspect of Mayor Frank Jackson’s Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools. Together with education leaders, community stakeholders and Cleveland families, our goal is to ensure every child attends a quality school, and every neighborhood has a multitude of great schools from which families can choose.

In support of this, the Navigator’s role is, primarily, to work directly with families whose children are transitioning from preschool to kindergarten and from 8th grade to high school. Navigators will guide families, help them learn about their public school options, and decide which school best meets their children’s needs.

Navigators will also help students/families enroll in the public schools they choose.

This is a part-time, seasonal role, up to 20 hours per week
Salary: $15 to $20 per hour, commensurate with experience
Flexible Remote and In-Office Work
Start Date: January 25, 2021
End Date: March 31, 2021
The position can be reoccurring during a summer employment cycle

To read the full job description and application details, click here.

Learn more.

Learn about the Cleveland Metropolitan School District levy on the November 3, 2020 ballot.  Funds from a successful ballot effort will also support partnering charter schools in Cleveland.

MetroHealth. Centers for Families and Children. United Way of Greater Cleveland.
Cleveland Public Library. Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. Esperenza, Inc. Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Murtis Taylor

What do all of these nonprofit organizations have in common? Aside from being allies in the effort to support Cleveland families and children, they also represent the first group of local partners with staff and/or volunteers who have completed the recently launched Cleveland Transformation Alliance (CTA) Ambassador Training Program.

Currently a virtual workshop, the Ambassador Training Program is led by program coordinator Eli Stacy with the goal of building a diverse community of school choice advocates for Cleveland students and families.

Eventually, Cleveland Transformation Alliance plans to expand the program to include parents and other community members, such as PTA volunteers, etc. Anyone can be an advocate for quality schools and school choice, especially in Cleveland, where city leadership has committed to building a portfolio of high-quality public schools, both district and charter, to meet the needs of every student and neighborhood.

“I’m really excited about this work,” says Stacy, noting that in the short time he’s been doing the training (since July 2020) he already sees a shift in community and family awareness that CTA is a place where parents can reach out for advocacy, information and support.

His favorite part of the training is being able to familiarize participants with the 3 primary tools that Cleveland Transformation Alliance uses to empower families:

1. The Cleveland School Quality Guide (available in print and online) annually with detailed information about all public, district and approved charter schools in Cleveland
2. The School Finder Tool, an interactive online tool designed to help families navigate school choice options based on the factors that are most important to them
3. The Family Resource Corner, which highlights resources and information to help families advocate for their children

While the training itself takes between 30-90 minutes (depending on which version is completed) Transformation Alliance sees this as “just the beginning” of their relationship with those who complete the course.  A self-paced, online training module is available at no cost to any participant who wants to become an Ambassador and take the training independently.

“We want to know how to make all of our resources as useful as possible for families,” notes Executive Director Meghann Marnecheck. And they also want trained Ambassadors to reach out for help if they have a student or family who needs additional support. “If it takes longer than 5-10 minutes to guide a family through the educational landscape,” says Stacy “then please use the referral link” and CTA will assign a one-to-one navigator to follow up. “You are not alone in this work, this should be a supplement and resource to you, never a burden.”

To learn more about the Ambassador Training program, contact info@clevelandta.org.

What is most important to parents in choosing a school for their child? What challenges do families face in their decision making? Through hundreds of emails and conversational interviews with parents, educators, and local/national community stakeholders, the Cleveland Transformation Alliance Family Listening Campaign has become a thoughtfully designed research tool that will answer these important questions and more when it comes to school choice for Cleveland public schools.

In hopes of engaging the city’s district and charter schools, parents and education decision makers, the survey results will guide the work of Cleveland Transformation Alliance and will be updated annually to inform the organizations programming and service model. “Does the information we provide match up with what parents are looking for?” This is the key question that led Executive Director Meghann Marnecheck to engage researchers Audrey Altieri and Hailey Oppenlander in the development of a family-centric research protocol for school choice.

Altieri, a high school math teacher turned education policy wonk, is excited about the potential of gathering research results that will directly impact the lives of students and families. “There are so many organizations doing similar things in other cities but have not gathered parent perspectives in this way. It’s pretty novel to directly reach out to parents, and we have no idea what’s going to come from this — the future for Cleveland Transformation Alliance is going to be driven by parent voices.”

Both Altieri and Oppenlander, an undergrad at the University of Notre Dame, are experienced researchers who have been pleasantly surprised by the level of excitement and support the Family Listening Campaign has generated from the organization’s community partners. “I don’t know of many other places where you reach out with this level of success and willingness to help. So many people have been willing to review the survey, partner with us to send it out to their trusted networks. That’s [usually] so hard to get in research.”

Launched on July 20, 2020 for a period of 2 weeks, the survey is open to anyone. To design the survey, CTA engaged numerous stakeholders with interest in the Cleveland education landscape — including teachers, parents, principles, housing organizations, city council representatives, faith-based groups, refugee groups, and a student focus group of 8th-grade students.

“We know that COVID-19 will affect how parents are looking at schools, and the survey will tell us what they would like to know about technology, masks, safety, etc.,” said Oppenlander. The pandemic has clearly changed the landscape of school choice, and so the survey tool was designed to evolve year after year to reflect the most up-to-date information and resources parents are seeking and making it available in ways that are most helpful to them.

“This is really meant to put parents and students at the center of the conversation,” is the collective sentiment conveyed by the researchers and the Cleveland Transformation Team who are excited to elevate Cleveland’s high-quality schools and dynamic school choice model into the national conversation.

The Family Listening Campaign takes less than 5-minutes to complete. Click here to take the survey and/or share with your networks

Image and resources from Ohio Dept. of Education website.

Education Planning for Ohio Schools and Districts

Planning Guide for
Ohio’s Schools and Districts

From education.ohio.gov: “Since the ordered school-building closure began on March 17, Ohio’s education community stepped up to ensure a student-centered approach to caring, teaching and learning. The entire system turned on a dime to meet the nutritional needs of the whole child through meal deliveries and grab-and-go sites, and through the delivery of remote teaching and learning opportunities that drove education continuity. These efforts were geared toward challenging, preparing and empowering students for future success—and they were unparalleled, especially given the challenges that accompany a pandemic.

The information provided is intended to spur local-level, partnership-based discussions and decision-making in areas critical to the start of the 2020-2021 school year by sharing a coordinated and collaborative approach for codesigning and framing various considerations in planning the Reset and Restart of Ohio’s schools.”