Late Push for CMSD Levy Raising Awareness Before November Vote

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

The weight of this November’s election will undeniably be hefty — President, Senate seats, Ohio Supreme Court spots, and a litany of local issues are on the ballot.

Among those: Issue 49, the second levy for the Cleveland Metropolitan Schools District in the past four years. One that would, if passed in November, give CMSD $52 million per year from Cleveland residents. About $200 to $300 a year for owners of your median home here in the city.

But, while yard signs dot yards for other issues and incessant Senate ads plaster screens, are Clevelanders even aware of the impending issue?

“I mean, in the last week or two now, people are aware of it,” Kurt Richards, the campaign chair of Citizens for Our Children’s Future, which is spearheading outreach for Issue 49, said. “I think it’s because the billboards we have up, people are seeing those. And the more homes we get to, more word of mouth occurs.”

That’s included, in recent weeks, ads from Mayor Justin Bibb and Cleveland Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan (who’s long been a fan of playing chess against CMSD students).

“Keep teachers and programs kids needs,” Kwan says in the ad, which is running on YouTube and Facebook with possible plans to hit the airwaves. “Keep students safe and healthy. Keep kids on track for college and good jobs.”

Richards, who’s also been a teacher at CMSD since the late eighties, has been guiding hundreds of on-the-ground volunteers who have been canvassing across the city since September 7. Just as long as Richards, and Burges & Burges, the levy’s advertisement firm, have been promoting Issue 49’s perks on billboards and TV commercials.

CEO Warren Morgan, seen here at his inauguration in 2023, has fashioned Issue 49 as a lifeboat for a school system in dire need of millions. Credit: Mark Oprea

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. School closures are all but guaranteed regardless.

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 with , as Signal Cleveland reported, 12 percent slashing of central office positions earlier this year. What would be a tough blow for a district typically rated lower compared to 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 I, 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 levyas 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 or making summer school access ubiquitous. (A leftover of 2020’s ask under previous CEO Eric Gordon.)

It’s just the success of CMSD’s Cleveland Plan, a decade-long strategy to raise test scores, that Richards feels is intertwined with the district’s ability to fund it. With, of course, 2016’s levy.

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

Progress that he argues is regardless of any individual’s situation.

“I like to say that every kid deserves to live in a community with great schools,” Richards said. “I mean, don’t we want an educated society living next to us?”