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On August 7, 2017, the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Transformation Alliance voted to recommend to the Ohio Department of Education that St. Aloysius Orphanage not be authorized to continue to sponsor charter schools in Cleveland.

Our role is described in Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools and codified in law through H.B. 525, passed by the Ohio Legislature and signed by Governor John Kasich in 2012. Through that legislation, the Transformation Alliance is granted the authority to review sponsors seeking to open community schools within CMSD boundaries and to make a recommendation to the Ohio Department of Education based on that review (ORC Sec. 3311.86(E)).

Alliance letter to ODE regarding St. Aloysius as a sponsor of charter schools

On August 7, 2017, the Board of Directors of the Cleveland Transformation Alliance voted to recommend to the Ohio Department of Education that the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation continue to sponsor charter schools in Cleveland.

Our role is described in Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools and codified in law through H.B. 525, passed by the Ohio Legislature and signed by Governor John Kasich in 2012. Through that legislation, the Transformation Alliance is granted the authority to review sponsors seeking to open community schools within CMSD boundaries and to make a recommendation to the Ohio Department of Education based on that review (ORC Sec. 3311.86(E)).

Alliance letter to ODE regarding the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation as a sponsor

Story by Justin Glanville     Photos by Julie Van Wagenen

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…”

She passes one classroom after another, pointing out students from Afghanistan, Nepal, Peru, Zimbabwe. It’s dress-down day, and some wear clothes of the typical American teenager — brand-name T-shirts, jeans — while others are dressed in the traditional headwraps or gowns of their native lands.

She tells bits of their stories as she passes. One fled war in her native Syria. Another came from Nepal, where in 2015 two cataclysmic earthquakes leveled entire cities and led to the displacement of more than half a million families.

The Academy, now in its sixth full year of operation, is Cleveland’s first landing place for students whose families have either emigrated to the U.S. or — as is increasingly the case — have been settled here as refugees of war or environmental disaster.

Nearly 1,000 students now attend kindergarten through 12th grade at Thomas Jefferson, though the actual enrollment number is fluid.

“It changes by the day,” Rhone says. “As of last week it was 940, but just yesterday we got six new students.” (She checks later, and the official number is 952.)

That’s up from about 150 when the school first opened. The exponential growth is the result both of improved placement policies and Cleveland’s rising refugee population. Almost half of Thomas Jefferson students are now refugees.

The school employs a roster of multilingual teachers and instructional aides that evolves based on the language needs of incoming students. Current teachers and aides speak Spanish, Arabic, Somali, Chinese, and Swahili, among others.

Spanish remains predominant, with 46 percent of students speaking it as their first language, but Arabic and Swahili, currently 19 percent and 13 percent, respectively, may soon overtake it, Rhone predicts.

“What ties students together, Rhone says, is their shared status as newcomers — a bond that allows them to transcend the political and cultural divides that may have forced them to be enemies in their homelands.”

“You may have kids from two warring nations who eat together in the cafeteria,” she says. “That’s representative of their ability to recognize they’re in a new situation here. They want this opportunity to improve life for themselves and also for their families.”

In her two years here, she says, she’s witnessed perhaps three physical fights. Teasing and bullying are rare.

“It’s the best of Cleveland,” says Joe Cimperman, president of Global Cleveland, a nonprofit that connects newcomers to resources, jobs and social networks in Northeast Ohio. “A myriad of cultures are coming together — and not just the students but also teachers and visitors — to help young people launch.”

That’s good for the city, he says, and also reflects the priorities of Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools, the comprehensive plan to provide effective public education options for all of the city’s students.

Perhaps the school’s biggest challenge, Rhone says, are the students’ internal states.

“Mental health concerns are huge,” she says. “We have students coming over from war-torn areas, and who knows what happened to their families. It’s amazing how well they do considering that, but many do need extra help.”

The school employs one full-time counselor and one part-time social worker who visits from an outside agency. Both are working at capacity.

Another daily stressor, for students and staff alike, is the Trump administration’s emerging immigration policy. The day after the 2016 election, special workshops were held because many students feared they or their families would be deported or penalized.

“I have to admit, at first I thought they were exaggerating,” Rhone says. “But their concerns ran the gamut — from kids who worried about not having proper documentation, to those who thought they wouldn’t be allowed to get a job or enroll in college.”

For many students — especially those in the U.S. without a visa — their sense of vulnerability ran deep. Others feared returning to places where their lives had been a daily nightmare of bombs, shootings and death.

Rhone, who emigrated to the U.S. from Canada, says in her view the school continues a tradition on which the country was built: the pursuit of happiness.

“It sounds cliché, but to me this place represents the opportunity for a new life,” she says.

“It’s not a free-for-all — you need to be a contributing citizen,” she adds. “But I think anyone would want the same thing for themselves if they were coming from a country that’s at war, or where they’re starving. They just want a good life.”

Basil Abdeljawad, 18, has been attending Thomas Jefferson International Newcomers Academy since August 2016, when he emigrated from Jordan. He lives with his family in Rocky River.

My father had been working in the American embassy in Jordan for 22 years. He took immigration from the embassy and came here before me to see if life here was difficult or not. He liked it, and brought me back. He picked Cleveland because it’s not so expensive like New York or Chicago, but still has good opportunities.

I miss my country and my old friends. I can talk English, but not very well. But if I’m thinking, I want to stay here. If I go back to Jordan, the people have no work, no place to study. Here, I can make my future. I can go to college and find a job and become successful. I want to become an architect.

Many of my friends here are different from me because I’m an immigrant but they’re refugees. I have one friend, a refugee from Syria. He’s scared about if he’ll have to go back, like if Donald Trump says, ‘You go back to your country, you can’t stay.’ If he goes back, he’ll have to join the Army, and his life is over. He won’t be able to see his friends, family, anything. Just Army, Army, Army. He worries about that every day.

For me, I try to make relationships. That’s why I want to learn better English, to make relationships. I have new friends, and sometimes we go home and play cards, or go swimming, or play basketball. Or I live next to a guy with a dog. I talk to him about his dog. I know that’s how you make a relationship. You come out of your house and you talk to people.

A group of parents discuss a film students and parents watched at Facing History New Tech High School.

Story by Justin Glanville     Photos by Julie Van Wagenen
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.
Geographically, the school is half a world away from Cleveland. And while some of the girls’ situations — the need to drop out of school if one gets married, balancing education with outside pressures — elicit murmurs of sympathy or knowing tuts of disapproval from the audience, the severity of the Aghan girls’ situations seems to cast a hush over the students.

One girl in the film relates how her father is trying to force her to marry his young bride’s 70-year-old father. Another speaks of her fear that the school may be forced to close before she graduates because of war-related violence.

The mood is quieter, more contemplative, as the film ends and the kids return to their classrooms for facilitated discussion sessions.

In one classroom, about a dozen students sit in a circle as two teachers ask their thoughts about the film and what light it shed on their own experiences.

“I really liked it,” says a 9th-grade girl named Halima. “It was relatable but also not — to be in those situations all the time.”

She says the movie made her think about the backgrounds of her parents, who emigrated to Cleveland from Kenya, as refugees from the war in Somalia, when she was a little girl.

“There was always conflict going on where I’m from,” Halima says, and it limited her parents’ academic opportunities. “My mom didn’t have an education, and my dad had only a religious one.”

Those insights are exactly the point of showing the film, according to teacher Shante Woods.

“We’re trying to build empathy,” she says. “We want them to watch this film and think about how they relate to each other, how we can support each other and build community even though we come from different backgrounds.”

Empathy and community are among the core values of Facing History and Ourselves, the national organization that partners with Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) to help support programs and curriculum at the Old Brooklyn high school. Facing History also partners with four other district and charter schools in CMSD, as well as five private schools in Greater Cleveland, to implement curriculum and nurture a safe and inclusive school culture.

“The idea is to take these values of empathy and agency and embed them across whole schools,” says Mark Swaim-Fox, director of Facing History’s Cleveland office, which opened in 1999.

Teachers and administrators use various tools to do that, including movies, books, and art projects such as one where students were asked to construct masks to convey both their private and public personas (see sidebar).

Students aren’t the only ones who learn. The Afghanistan documentary, for example, will be shown at all five of the CMSD-Facing History schools this year. In February, teachers and administrators will gather to discuss how they and the students reacted to the film and brainstorm other ideas for building a compassionate school culture.

The foundation for all that, according to Woods and Swaim-Fox, is encouraging students, staff and families to truly get to know each other, and to work together to build a school culture that is supportive for everyone.

Back in Woods’ classroom, students pair up to answer questions about themselves and the school.

One pair, a bow-tie-wearing 10th-grader named Manuel and a long-haired 12th-grader named Ninoshka, stand in the corner as they move through the list. They seem most engaged by a question that asks how people’s perceptions of them are different from reality.

“People think I have an attitude and I look so mean,” Ninoshka says. “But I’m not.”

“It’s true,” Manuel says. “I didn’t think you talked to anybody. But you obviously do. You’re smiling now.”

“Whereas you seem hyped every single day, like nothing affects you.”

“Things do affect me,” he says, “but I think it helps that this school is open-minded, that everyone’s connected.

“It builds that trust and responsibility thing. That’s what I like about being here.”

Halima’s Mask

As part of an assignment to understand the divide between people’s public and private personas, students at Facing History New Tech High School constructed masks to represent the full range of their personalities. The idea was to promote deeper empathy for what other members of the school community may be hiding beneath their external facades. Halima, a student in ninth grade from the Denison neighborhood, describes her mask below.

I’m from Kenya. We had a lot of conflict there with Somalia, and my parents and I came to Cleveland as refugees when I was young.

I wanted my mask to reflect my culture and tradition. The front has more traditional tribal colors and markings. On the back, I put sparkles — red, white and blue, because I’m in America now. The front of the mask is brown and the back is white, because I believe skin color doesn’t really matter.

I wanted to put a lot of words on my mask in different languages. I wanted some letters to be bold, and some faded. My English is strong, but I’ve started to lose some of my original language as I adapt to American society.

This assignment helped me see a lot about myself and also other people. Our identity changes all the time based on how we perceive ourselves in front of other people, and also how they perceive us. It was a really interesting assignment.

Connections made through Broadway P-16 helped Carlotta Jackson pay back rent and stay in her Slavic Village apartment.

In Broadway-Slavic Village, supporting students means supporting their families

by Justin Glanville     Photos by Julia Van Wagenen

A few months ago, we visited Fullerton School of Academics, a K-8 school in the Broadway-Slavic Village neighborhood. Fullerton is an investment school, meaning it receives special resources to provide in-school social services with the goal of improving academic outcomes for students. This month, we revisit the school to learn about the Broadway P-16 Program, a collaborative effort to boost the success of students in the Broadway-Slavic Village neighborhood.

Last November, with the holidays on the way and two kids in school, Carlotta Jackson was on the verge of eviction.

She was only a month behind on her rent, and had just started a new job. But her landlord had a strict policy of starting eviction proceedings for all tenants more than 30 days late on their rent.

“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.”

She’d relocated to Cleveland in 2014, so she didn’t yet have a strong local network of family and friends.

“But the main thing,” she says, “was I wanted my kids to be able to stay where they were comfortable.”

That meant not only keeping them in their current home but in their current school, Albert Bushnell Hart. Her 14-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son had both been thriving there, and she didn’t want to uproot them.

A network of support

Help ended up coming from the five-year-old Broadway P-16 Program.

P-16 is not an organization, but convenes and supports existing organizations throughout Broadway-Slavic Village and beyond. Supported entities include the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, the Literacy Cooperative, Slavic Village Development Corp., the Boys & Girls Club and the Cleveland Housing Network.

The idea is to bring together resources to make sure kids the neighborhood receive a quality education — from preschool through college. That often means helping not just students, but their families too.

Wraparound support is a key component of Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools, the guiding document of the Cleveland Transformation Alliance.

“A lot of families in the neighborhood feel isolated,” says Kurt Karakul, president of the Third Federal Foundation, which co-created, oversees and helps fund P-16 programs. (The Foundation is an arm of Third Federal Savings & Loan, which has been based in Broadway-Slavic Village since 1938.)

Families may not have reliable transportation to get their kids to school, Karakul says, or may feel their kids are unsafe walking to school. Many don’t have steady incomes.

“So we’re asking, how can schools be a source of support for entire families,” he says. “Because that’s how kids are going to have the best chance of success.”

Many Cleveland parents end up in a predicament similar to Carlotta Jackson’s. During the 2014-15 school year, more than half (55 percent) of all students in Broadway’s four K-8 schools moved at least once, often because their families could no longer afford rent or mortgage payments. Frequent moves cause stress for kids that can lead to academic setbacks and sometimes dropouts.

Finding stability

That’s why the Cleveland Housing Network (CHN) is a key P-16 partner. The agency offers a variety of programs that provide affordable housing for the city’s families.

Through P-16, CHN offers targeted assistance to families of school-aged children in Broadway-Slavic Village. That includes short-term help with mortgage payments, rental assistance — and connections to a wider network of support.

“Usually when a family is facing a housing crisis, it’s a symptom of something bigger,” says Kate Carden, CHN’s assistant director of community training. “So for example, we’ll make a lot of referrals to workforce development agencies.”

Carlotta Jackson — in the midst of her eviction scare — heard about CHN’s P-16 program from Sharra Wimberly, Fullerton School’s wraparound site coordinator. Wimberly’s job is to connect families to outside support.

Days later, staff at CHN had checked Jackson’s income and employment status and called her landlord for a reference. The agency paid off her $500 back rent, and staff now calls her every month to make sure she’s staying above water.

So far, she is. She has a steady part-time job as a cashier at a drug store, she’s caught up on her rent and bills, and she’s engaged to be married. She hasn’t needed direct help since that single rent payment.

“Don’t get me wrong — I don’t have everything I want and I’m not rich,” she says. “But I’m taking care of my kids, and that’s the most important thing to me.”

Her son recently made honor roll for the first time, and her daughter is about to graduate from 8th grade. She says those things may not have happened if the kids had needed to change schools.

That’s exactly the idea of the Broadway P-16, according to Karakul.

“We need to support kids all the way through school so they’re prepared for college and then a good career,” he says. “If we’re going to turn Cleveland around, it’s got to be through the schools.”

Devonta’ James Edmonds is studying precision machining at Max Hayes High School.

At Max Hayes, students get hands-on preparation for life after high school

by Justin Glanville               photos by Julia Van Wagenen

This month’s stories feature voices of students at Max S. Hayes, a career and technical high school on Cleveland’s near west side.

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. Ensuring career and college readiness is one of the pillars of Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools. The school moved into a new building in the fall of 2015. The interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

Elizabeth Rodriguez, 17, is a junior at Max Hayes. She’s studying computer-aided design, one of nine career pathways the school offers to help prepare students for college or careers. She lives in Old Brooklyn with her mother and sisters.
In middle school, whenever I didn’t have anything to do, I’d sit down and draw — stick figures, flowers, cartoons. I’d show my mom, and she was like, “That’s amazing, I can’t do that!”

When it was time for high school, she said I could go anywhere I wanted. I ended up picking Max Hayes because they teach different trades. It seemed like a chance for me to expand the drawing skills I already had, to get out of my comfort zone.

What I love about computer-aided design (CAD) is it’s where everything starts. You go from making a sketch on the computer to seeing something made. Right now, we’re designing robots for a competition we’re doing in April. We sketch them in CAD and then we make them and see whose robot can survive the longest doing battle with the others.

Along with our classes, WIRE-Net puts us in touch with different companies. We went on a class field trip to Alcoa for our robot project, and recently I went to Jergens Inc. to shadow their engineers. I watched them designing tools, then sending those designs off to the manufacturers.

Our school is all about getting us prepared for the workforce. At other schools, the rules are more lenient. We have a dress code, for example. If you don’t dress nicely, there are consequences. So it’s like getting us ready for that next step when we’re out.

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do when I graduate. I’ve been looking into colleges like Kent State and Ohio State but probably I’m most interested in Case Western Reserve. I’m kind of nervous because I’ve heard college is more work and they’re on top of you more than high school!

Education is really important to me. My mom came from Puerto Rico and she didn’t get to graduate high school. So she puts that on me. She’ll say, “Don’t be like me, education is everything. It’ll let you go far.” I remember her saying she would have gone to culinary school if she could have.

I show her my robot designs and she supports me. She tells me I can do anything I set my mind to. She says if this is what I want, go for it.

Devonta’ James Edmonds, 18, is a senior at Max Hayes. He’s studying precision machining, and lives in the Central neighborhood with his mother and sister.

I wasn’t necessarily the best kid. I was fat, and the other kids talked. When I got skinnier and taller, I started fighting and got a reputation. Everybody said, “Don’t mess with him.”

In eighth grade, I was told I had three chances to shape up. I blew two of them within a month. Strike three came a few months after that when I got in a giant fight. I could either be expelled or moved, so I went to PEP (Positive Education Program, a nonprofit dedicated to kids with special needs). That’s where I started high school.

Another girl at PEP was attending Max Hayes half days. I’d always wanted to go to Max Hayes because I like to be hands-on. I don’t care for writing on paper and sitting in a classroom all day. So I thought, “If she can get there, I can too.” I told her I was coming to Max Hayes, and she didn’t believe me because I wasn’t the best kid.

I put myself on the right track. I made myself stop fighting and misbehaving and all that. After a year and a half at PEP, I got to start coming to Max Hayes. I saw the girl from PEP in the lunch line. I tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Here I am, I told you!” She gasped and gave me a hug. She was happy for me.

Once I started working on the machines and getting my hands dirty, I fell in love with it. I like a challenge, and measuring parts down to the thousandths of an inch — that’s a challenge! I also like being good at something, knowing “I can operate this machine but you can’t.”

Machine operating is a really in-demand job. They’re looking for machinists everywhere, and the typical hourly rate is $21 an hour. It feels good knowing I have a skill coming out of here.

I’m in an internship right now at Buschman Corporation. They make rods that distribute ink onto paper, and I operate the lathes. I’m here at school until noon, then I go over there. I can walk home because they’re at 41st and Payne, really close to my house.

When you get up in the morning you’re supposed to feel like you’re having fun. That’s how I feel. When I go to work, it doesn’t feel like I’m going to work. I get off at seven and someone has to tell me to stop working.

On March 7, 2016, the Transformation Alliance Board of Directors approved a recommendation to the Ohio Department of Education that the state’s Office of School Sponsorship deny the application for sponsorship by Virtual Schoolhouse, Inc., a charter school located in Cleveland.

Ohio Revised Code (3314.029) gives the Alliance authority over charter schools seeking direct sponsorship from ODE.

Alliance letter to ODE regarding Virtual Schoolhouse, Inc.

Passionate principal oversees the ‘low hum’ of student creativity

Jacqui Miller is leading a tour of Stonebrook Montessori School, the new public charter school where she’s principal, when she stops in the middle of a hallway.

“Ooh, there’s a beautiful thing happening on the floor right there,” she says. “Come on.”

She steps into a classroom, followed by a small group of visitors. Three girls, ranging in age from three to five, sit together on a blue rug. The girls work together, talking quietly, to match shape cards – squares, triangles, circles.

“That’s the goal,” Miller whispers, watching them. “You want to see small groups breaking off like that, working on something they find engaging.”

In another corner, the classroom’s teacher, Jen Cerny, sits on the floor with a larger group of kids, holding up flash cards of different animals.

“Police car!” one boy shouts at a picture of a sturgeon fish.

“That’s not a police car, silly!” Cerny says. “That’s not even a car!”

Mass hilarity ensues – kids falling into each other, laughing.

That’s still only about half of what’s going on. On a sunny deck just outside, teacher’s assistant Ben Stein shows kids how to compost banana peels and apple cores. And one group of kids has chosen to go a different direction entirely, staging their own private dance party.

This is only the fourth week of classes at Stonebrook. But in this classroom, at least, the multitasking is a sign that things are exactly on track.

“We like to hear what we call a ‘low hum,’” Miller says. “It’s a sign that there’s activity, life, creativity.”

Not chaos, though. Miller is quick to point out that while the popular perception is that Montessori kids can do whatever they want, that’s a myth. Teachers follow a set curriculum, but never at the cost of discouraging kids’ creativity.

Down the hall, another classroom of first- and second-graders is quieter. Half of the class is in another part of the building, taking a diagnostic reading test, and the kids who remain are mostly copying passages from picture books.

The atmosphere is almost too quiet, in Miller’s estimation, though she’s not going to try to correct it.

That’s another part of the Montessori philosophy, she says: Not to control the mood of a classroom, but to let it evolve and change on its own. It’s an approach mirrored by the simple pendant she wears around her neck, engraved with the word “Peace.”

She leads the tour group down a freshly painted hallway where a young boy named Mar’quel is scrubbing away scratch marks with a wet sponge. The marks appeared mysteriously one day, Miller says — likely the result of kids’ fingernails. Mar’quel, who may or may not have been one of the perpetrators, volunteered to clean it up.

“Mar’quel? Look at me,” Miller says.

He turns and looks her straight in the eye.

“Thank you. Do you hear me? Thank you.”

He smiles and returns to scrubbing.

The promise of new schools

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.

A report released earlier this year by the Cleveland Transformation Alliance, the group overseeing progress on the Cleveland Plan, found that while significant progress has been made toward that goal, improvement needs to happen faster.

Starting new schools is one of the Cleveland Plan’s four main pillars. The thought is that a wider variety of schools, following a range of proven educational approaches, will enable families to choose schools that fit their kids’ learning styles.

“Stonebrook is an example of what we’re looking for,” says Piet van Lier, the Alliance’s director of school quality, policy and communications. “It uses an established educational model run by people who know how to start a school in one of the city neighborhoods that needs it most.”

That neighborhood is Glenville, which was identified last year  as the Cleveland neighborhood most in need of high-quality schools.

Stonebrook occupies a 1930-vintage brick building on East Boulevard that once housed a nursing home for women. It’s nestled between the boulevard’s grand mansions and across the street from the stone fountain and fluted columns of the Italian Cultural Garden in Rockefeller Park.

The school is sponsored by the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, meaning it shares a portion of the operating levy approved by voters in 2012. The remainder of its funding is being raised by the local nonprofit Montessori Development Partnerships. A $6.23 million capital campaign is more than two-thirds complete.

There are 92 students currently enrolled, ranging from pre-K to second grade. Most come from Glenville, though a few live in other city neighborhoods or inner-ring suburbs. The long-term plan is to expand through ninth grade.

A learning curve for all

All is not perfect or easy at Stonebrook, of course. Its first days have been a learning experience for everyone – teachers and administrators included. The space, while newly renovated and light-filled, is still unfamiliar, and the students are still getting used to the Montessori method.

Two students who aren’t acclimating well to self-directed study, for example, have been escorted from classrooms to do “practical work” – manual labor meant to focus their energy and attention. One boy who’d been knocking over shelves earlier in his classroom spends the morning cleaning windows outside with a teacher’s assistant supervising.

And although Miller is clearly more than competent, it’s her first year as a principal – an adjustment in itself. Prior to coming to Cleveland in 2013 to set up Stonebrook, she worked for 20 years as a Montessori teacher at private schools in suburban Atlanta.

She says she’s had to learn fast about charter law in Ohio and learn to be an effective administrator – balancing her own vision for the school with support from others.

“It’s going to be a learning curve for her,” says Debra Hershey Guren, board president of Montessori Development Partnerships.

“But from the moment I met her, I knew she was the right person. She takes the time to be with every person and give them what they need. That’s what makes a great leader.”

At the end of her 12-hour-plus days, Miller goes back to her home in Cleveland’s Lee-Miles neighborhood “exhausted,” with enough energy to feed her cats and eat dinner.

Sometimes, she manages to take a walk, too.

“I’m an Atlanta girl,” she says, “so I want to enjoy the warmth while it’s still here.”

What she feels most, though, are gratitude and a pervasive sense of responsibility.

“I’m not creating Stonebrook myself in any way, shape or form, but to be involved in starting a public, urban Montessori school has been a goal of mine for a long time,” she says.

“And then the responsibility to serve, to do right by kids and families in this community – that’s what I’m learning, and I’m grateful to be able to do it.”

Story by Justin Glanville

Photos by Julie Van Wagenen

Stonebrook Montessori’s passionate new principal oversees the ‘low hum’ of student creativity

John Marshall attracts students to classes in business, computers — and robots

Story by Justin Glanville       
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, founding principal of the engineering school. “They didn’t think we’d have enough time to cover both subjects in one class period.”

A month into the new school year, though, students are clamoring to enroll in the combined classes. Working with robots is fun on its own, and it’s made studying algebra a lot more engaging.

“I guess you could say with kids, robots are an easy sell,” Primus says with a laugh.

The School of Engineering isn’t the only one of Marshall’s three new academies attracting students. The School of Information Technology and the School of Civic and Business Leadership are also proving to be strong draws. Nearly 1,400 students are enrolled at the new Marshall building, designed to hold about 1,300 students.

Each of the academies, which enrolled only 9^th and 10^th-graders this year, has its own principal. A fourth principal oversees the traditional high school, which serves 11^th and 12^th grade and will be phased out over the next two years, and the Marshall campus as a whole.

Students in Cleveland can attend any district or charter school they wish, so strong enrollment suggests that the new academies are resonating with families, says Piet van Lier, director of school quality, policy, and communications for the Cleveland Transformation Alliance.

The Alliance is the nonprofit organization overseeing progress on Cleveland Plan’s for Transforming Schools, a public-private effort to ensure every student in Cleveland gets a quality education.

“The challenge for high schools is to engage students so they’re prepared for college and career on whichever path makes the most sense for them,” van Lier says. “Offering different approaches is a way to open up new possibilities for all students.”

Clear expectations

The school’s popularity is apparent in its packed cafeteria, where students sit at round lunch tables doing what teenagers do: Checking their phones, talking to friends, joking around.

Primus spends part of every day here, making himself available for kids if they want to talk and ensuring the horsing around doesn’t escalate. On a recent afternoon, dressed in a dark suit and red tie, he keeps a watchful eye on two boys giving each other playful shoves. The interaction stays friendly.

A less positive encounter awaits in his office. Two students showed up late today after missing detention last night. Primus escorts them to class and tells them to find him at lunch for a longer talk.

“When it’s all said and done, kids are kids,” Primus says. “Wherever I’ve worked, whether it’s in the suburbs or the cities, there are constants.”

The main thing, he says, is that kids need to know that the consequences of their actions – whether positive or negative – are consistent.

“They want to make you proud, but some of them have had a lot of disappointments,” he says. “So my solution is to make it really clear what I expect of them. Then the word gets out to other kids that I’m fair, that I say the same thing to everyone.”

His biggest pet peeve is disrespecting teachers. “I tell them to treat your teacher like your grandma,” he says.

Learning leadership

This is Primus’s second full year in Cleveland, and his first as a full-time principal. A year ago, he left behind a job as a teacher and assistant principal in Durham, N.C. to move here with his wife, who’s from Northeast Ohio and wanted to raise their one-year-old child closer to her family. He’d also worked as a teacher in an affluent suburb of Atlanta.

He spent his first year in Cleveland in the Aspiring Principals Academy, a program of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD).

The Academy teaches future principals to be autonomous – managing their own budgets, for example, and crafting curricula. They also learn how to mentor upperclassmen looking to define their next steps in life, says Heather Grant, the Academy’s director.

“It’s not just sitting in a meeting learning from a PowerPoint,” Grant says. “There’s role play, discussion – it’s very hands-on. They go through all the same professional development a principal does.”

Empowering teachers and administrators to be more autonomous is another goal of the Cleveland Plan.

Graduates of the Academy aren’t guaranteed jobs, but must apply as any candidate would. That’s how Primus, one of 10 participants in last year’s academy, got his position.

“Tim was receptive to feedback,” Grant remembers. “He brought what he had to the table, but he also had a growth mindset. He was willing to let us mold him.

“He told me he’d never worked so hard for anything. I said, ‘well, then you’re learning the work ethic and stamina it takes to be an effective principal.’”

Collaboration forthcoming

Primus says he’s looking forward to the launch next month of a collaboration with St. Edward High School, a private Catholic school in Lakewood, which has a long-established engineering curriculum.

St. Ed’s students and teachers will come to John Marshall four times in October to work with students there on robotics and computer labs. Marshall students will repay the visit later in the school year.

He says he’s looking forward to the opportunity to bring together students and teachers who’d otherwise probably never meet each other.

“I like the challenge of that – breaking down barriers,” he says.

He glances at his daily schedule, which he keeps on a whiteboard on the side wall of his office.

Then he’s off to go look in on that crazy robotics class.