Cleveland schools officials back off of closing Collinwood High School following claims of racism and the targeting of Black neighborhoods.... By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon

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By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon has backed off of a recommendation to school board members that Collinwood High School on the city's majority Black east side be closed following community outcries and claims of racism against Black students and their families leveled by community activists and State School Board member Meryl Johnson, a retired Cleveland schools teacher and former  Cleveland Teachers Union official.

They were also up against outspoken Ward 8 Councilman Mike Polensek, who organized his constituents of the Collinwood Neighborhood against closing the nearly all Black high school in his ward. 

Ohio state school board member
Meryl Johnson

In recent weeks Gordon proposed the closings of historic public schools in Cleveland, Oh, a largely Black major American city, including Collinwood, Jane Addams and Martin Luther King Jr high schools and some four k-8 schools, namely Case, Iowa Maple, Michael R. White and  Willow, practically all of them located on the city's largely Black east side.

The school board is expected to vote on Gordon's proposal at its meeting on Nov 18. 

Cleveland voters approved a $200 million bond issue for school construction in 2014. 

Gordon says the school district will close some schools, merge others, and also rebuild build new one's such as a new John F. Kennedy High School on the city's east side.

More than 11 schools will be impacted by the closing and merging of schools districtwide.

Gordon's proposal also calls for Lincoln West High School on the city's west side to be rebuilt like John Marshall, also a west side school.

The school closings, said Gordon, are set to impact some 5,000 students. 

District parents have sounded off against the school closings at school board meetings and during recent community meetings at Collinwood and Glenville.

Some  300 MLK students, MLK located in the ward of Councilman Basheer Jones, or Ward 7, will be sent to Glenville in the historic Glenville neighborhood, also a Black east side school like Collinwood and MLK. 

Jane Addams Business Careers Center students will  be sent to East Technical High School  on the city's east side as well as students from Washington Park Studies school, also an east side high school.

Community activists were upset over the targeting of the Black community relative to school closings.

Educational activist Donna Walker-Brown

"It is always the east side that takes a hit and they make up excuses for the white schools to stay open on the west side," said educational activist Donna Walker -Brown, a 1980 Collinwood High School graduate who leads the Urban Educational Justice League. "Mayoral control has ruined the school system and it has been ruined since they got rid of the elected school board."

The slated school closings are part of a comprehensive reduction and reorganization plan.

Gordon did not say, with any specifics, what would happen to the school level administrators affected by the reorganization plan and school closings, in particular principals and assistant principals, or whether Black administrators will disproportionately lose their administrative positions, those who are laid-off as administrators and tenured of whom can, by state law, revert back to the classroom. 

School district officials say more than 7,000 unused classroom seats on the city's east side and 700 on the west side are costly and the monies can be put to better use such as for school renovations and repairs, and for operating costs. 

The district currently has some 68 kindergarten- eighth grade schools and 38 high schools, Gordon disputing that number and saying there are some 170 schools.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

Since 1998 the Cleveland schools, which then had a population of some 77,000 students, have been under mayoral control per state law, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson of whom, by law, appoints the school board that will act on Gordon's school closings recommendations, Gordon a White man who leads a largely Black school district, and who has managed to escape controversy since he was appointed CEO in 2011. 

The school board has nine members, four of them Black, and is led by board chairwoman Anne E. Bingham, a corporate banker who is White and resides on the city's largely White west side where the school closings are not largely impacted.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog .Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.