Among those getting a pink slip is Terrance Spivey, the Karamu House’s artistic director since 2004. The Karamu House’s daycare center, Preschool of the Arts, is no more, with eight staffers cut. The daycare was opened in 1945 and served kids ages five months to 4 years old.
Other programs that made the cut will now work with fewer staffers. The after school program for kids 6 to 12 is down two workers; operations there are suspended beginning next Friday and lasting through to the fall.
In the meantime, CEO Tony Sias says he and the remaining staffers are revamping its programs and services. The nation’s oldest African American theater, the Karamu House opened in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood in 1915.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2016.
Why is it that Greater Cleveland community can find money for grants and endowments for the equally venerable Cleveland Play House, and Great Lakes Theater Festival. Both of which moved to a tax-payer funded theater rehabs in the Playhouse Square Complex.
The Cleveland Playhouse’s move in 2011, abandoned a multi-million dollar theater complex redeveloped in the 1990’s, designed by world-renowned architect Philip Johnson at East 85th & Euclid Avenue, and located on the RTA’s venerated “Health Line”, all of which were also taxpayer funded.
When one compares the visible physical plant offered other arts organizations at Playhouse Square, and the 1941 settlement house facility that Karamu has to work with at East 89th and Quincy Avenue, I’m sure we could all agree that the physical disparity sure makes it looks like they’ve been short-changed by Cleveland’s movers and shakers for a rather long time.
It appears that only CHASE Bank, and later PNC have offered corporate support, in exchange for retail banking space at the Karamu House complex.
The one obvious conclusion I have been able to parse is that, Black Lives and Institutions DON’T Matter to the Movers, Shakers, City Hall, or Cuyahoga County government here in Cleveland.
The Cleveland Foundation was Reggie Rucker’s private bank account to party all the time……a step forward to show donors a renewed effort in doing what’s right would be a commitment to Karamu House, while making the necessary phone calls to galvanize a long-term effort to save this community treasure.