Cleveland Schools Levy Passes With Strong Support

CMSD school buses outside last year’s State of the Schools. CEO Warren Morgan has long predicted a hefty budget shortfall if this year’s levy doesn’t pass. Credit: Mark Oprea

Clevelanders decided Tuesday that the health of Cleveland schools was worth more tax dollars.

About 66 percent of Cleveland voters opted to pass Issue 49, a levy increase that will cost your average homeowner here roughly $193 a year to bolster the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

“Our members have worked really hard to talk to the voters in Cleveland and make sure they understood why this was so important, and they’ve done a great job in doing that as evidenced by the outcome tonight,” said Cleveland Teachers Union President Shari Obrenski.

In return, CMSD will have about $52 million raised annually, according to Issue 49’s ballot language — money that will be used for the system’s sports programs, college-prep initiatives, mental health coordinators, security guards and so on. CMSD will also have an added $250 million in bond money for the next four years.

Cleveland’s chose such a financial boost for CMSD because of sympathy for the district, Issue 49 campaigner and CMSD teacher Kurt Richards told Scene Wednesday morning.

“Look, there’s hope for the Cleveland schools,” Richards said. “I think they see the value in education. They’re seeing we’re making progress in Cleveland. And they want to continue that progress.”

That’s progress in the face of a staggering budget deficit.

As CMSD CEO Warren Morgan lamented in his State of the Schools speech in September, the Cleveland Schools system is in pretty bad financial shape.

It’s about out of its American Rescue Plan dollars. It’s facing a $110 million deficit in the next three years—that is, Morgan said, if CMSD can’t find an outside way to cover the gap.

Morgan framed a new levy as CMSD’s saving grace. A way to deter the plausible cut of 700 teacher and staff jobs that would go along, as Signal Cleveland reported, with the 12-percent slashing of central office positions earlier this year. It would be a tough blow for a district typically rated lower compared with its suburban counterparts.

“We will not be able to provide the student experience our scholars deserve,” Morgan said during his speech. “And the cuts we will be forced to make would be drastic and unimaginable.”

“Not offering the basics—Algebra 1, a foreign language, the ability to learn an instrument or play a core sport,” he added, “we are robbing our children of the student experience they deserve.”

Although Morgan hasn’t yet released a detailed plan on how that added $52 million a year would be precisely budgeted, Richards has been promoting the tax increase as a win-win for Cleveland as a whole: more mental health coordinators, more security staff, more at-home football programs, more marching band involvement at each of CMSD’s two dozen high schools.

There will still be hard decisions on cuts coming, but the levy’s passage is a much-needed boost for the district.

“This is the Cleveland community saying our kids are showing up and doing what they need to do,” Warren Morgan told Signal Cleveland. “I’m grateful to every single Cleveland voter, even the ones that have asked the tough questions. That’s OK, they’re doing exactly what they need to do. It shows a really engaged community, and I’m proud to be a part of it.”

The success of CMSD’s Cleveland Plan, a decade-long strategy to raise test scores, is intertwined with the district’s ability to fund it, is the general sentiment behind the levy’s backers.

They say the 2016 levy did the same.

“Don’t you think there’s a correlation between finally having money in the last 12 years,” Richards said in October, “and the progress kids are making?”

Richards echoed the sentiment on Wednesday.

“We’re going to give kids a normal school schedule,” Richards said. “I mean, that’s pretty good right there.”