CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Metropolitan School District Board approved the layoffs of hundreds of employees during its Tuesday evening board meeting.
You can watch the full board meeting below:
On Friday, hundreds of CMSD employees received layoff notices. Cleveland Teachers Union President Errol Savage confirmed that teachers and paraprofessionals were among those notified.
In total, 278 CMSD positions were laid off on Tuesday. Their last day with the district will be June 3.
CMSD confirms that the 278 laid off were chosen based on seniority.
The district is considering slashing 410. As of right now, 132 remain on the chopping block.
This included eight teachers from Hannah Gibbons, which is the entire middle school teaching staff at that East Side elementary school.
Lora Stewart is one of them.
Stewart said she completed her student teaching career through CMSD and felt lucky enough to be offered a full-time job afterward.
"I'm still in the same building I did my student teaching. My first class were the babies I had as a student teacher, so they're our current second graders right now," Stewart said on Tuesday.
She described her students as an extension of her family.
"I'm also the chapter chair, so I was supposed to be with admin to deliver the news. I never thought my heart was gonna be broken, too. I went into the day like mentally preparing to maybe give bad news to like one person, and it ended up being eight of us. I got the first notice, so it was devastating," Stewart said.
She said she now worries for the educational future of the students she will have to leave behind.
"My kids were confused. They were angry. They asked to write letters to Dr. Morgan. They did," Stewart said.
The only positive piece of Tuesday night for Stewart was seeing the outpouring of support not only from other teachers, but parents and students.
"Put yourself in my shoes. I think some of them (CMSD board members) were teachers too, so imagine being in a classroom having to tell babies that you spent the whole school year with, some of them multiple school years with, to tell them that they might never see you again," Stewart said.
Parents, like Eric Halliday and Kim Victor, are frustrated to see the elimination of teachers.
"I live in Parma, and one of the reasons that I fought to get my kids into CMSD is because, unlike in Parma, CMSD has a lot of programs for kids with autism," Halliday said.
Halliday said he has never had a bad experience with CMSD until talks of layoffs and school closures came about.
"We actually found out that one of the people that's going to be working with my oldest, Damien, next year is one of the people affected by the layoffs because apparently math teachers are expensive, I guess," Halliday said.
He described the ordeal as nonsense and wants to know why the district seemingly isn't reviewing other options that don't result in mass layoffs.
"Basic math shows where the money is going, and they're taking it out on the people who do the most work, and it's nonsense," Halliday said. "There is someone named Kadira (Sahic) at campus who is phenomenal and works on the clock, off the clock, like actually cares about the kids. That was the one that Damien here was gonna be working with, and that was one of the people that they chose to get rid of."
He said even walking through his children's school campus on Tuesday, he could feel the uneasiness in the air, describing it like being at a funeral.
Victor has a 12-year-old in CMSD. Her child is enrolled in the special needs program.
She said she, too, is nervous about the fate of education in Cleveland.
"Now we're making the classrooms that are already big even bigger, which now entails you dealing with different behaviors. You don't have the staff to deal with said behaviors. You still have the special needs kids with the paraprofessionals losing their job who are helping the teachers with the special needs children, while we're firing paraprofessionals. As a mom of special needs and having a great paraprofessionals involved with Joseph (her son), I just don't understand how they say build a brighter future. I don't see how they see a brighter future in that," Victor said.
Her child will be transferring to a merged school as part of CMSD's consolidation plan, which she said will result in the school losing eight teachers.
"Who's gonna handle all this influx of kids?," she asked.
Once her son reaches eighth grade, Victor said they plan to leave the district as they've officially had enough.
"I don't want to be in this district anymore," she said.
RELATED: CMSD leaders defend plans to cut more than 400 positions, including 146 teachers
During Tuesday's meeting, chanting from opponents of the layoffs could be heard, prompting the board to go into a 10-minute recess.
When the board returned, it announced the authorization of layoffs of 278 district employees.
"Hearing these teachers, these parents, these students get as rowdy as they were, why not push it off even just like a day?" News 5's Kaylee Olivas asked CMSD CEO Dr. Warren Morgan Tuesday night.
"Ideally, if we could have done the notification process sooner or even work on mitigation strategies that we could have done to mitigate, and we have worked to bring the number down as low as possible," he responded. "The classroom teacher is very important to the instructional corps, and I'm all about the instructional corps... but we were at the point by not getting to an agreement around mitigation or an agreement around when we would announce. Per our teachers' union contract, we have to do it 30 working days before the end of the school year, and we're like right there."
I asked whether the decision to lay off 278 faculty members truly had to be made on Tuesday.
Dr. Morgan said, "Yeah. Within this timeframe. We're within a day or so of that 30 days before the end of the school year."
If no changes were made, the district would face a budget deficit by 2028, according to CMSD. It needs to save $150 million over the next several years.
"Every year, we have to submit a four-year forecast twice in a year. We need to be in the black for the current year, and we need to be in the black for two years out of there. When I first got here as CEO, this is my third school year, we were in fiscal precaution," Dr. Morgan said.
He explained that he has had to make continuous cuts across the board, not only in staffing, since his employment of CEO at CMSD.
"All tough but necessary so that we wouldn't have to get to this point. And then now this year, closing 29 schools. Maybe if we had done this over time, it wouldn't be so many at one point, but we're now here," Dr. Morgan said. "The layoffs we voted on tonight, plus the work we did at central office, which, roughly, through the central office budgeting process, we saved about $20 million a year, that will get us through fiscal year 2029, but there's still more work to do."
Dr. Morgan said the board has charged the district with goals through 2030 and that they are on the path to completing them.
"Right now, not all of our high schools offer college credit. In the fall, 100%. Currently, only 59% offer trades and career pathways. 100% will in the fall. Currently, only 38% of our elementary schools offer enrichment courses beyond art, music, or PE. In the fall, 100% will. So there is a brighter future ahead of us. We're working to make sure that 100% of our students are in new or upgraded facilities," Dr. Morgan said.
He said the present climate of CMSD is unfortunate, but the district has to continue making tough decisions.
"I understand the passion in the room. There are conversations I directly had to have with people that will no longer be in our system. Then there were people who I know who I've worked with personally, I consider friends, who called me because they got a letter and they weren't calling Dr. Morgan, CEO of the district, they were calling Warren, and they said, 'I don't know what to do.' It's a hard time," Dr. Morgan said. " I prayed with those and talked about next steps and talked about what I know."
The remaining 132 proposed staff cuts will go before the school board before the end of the school year. When exactly that'll be is unknown right now.
Earlier on Tuesday, dozens of students participated in a planned walkout to show support for those who will lose their jobs.
Students at Campus International School on Payne Avenue staged a walkout with their parents' permission.
RELATED: Students at Campus International School walk out in support of teachers being laid off by CMSD
The layoffs are part of the district's consolidation plan, known as Building Brighter Futures, which aims to save the district $30 million a year through downsizing.
Also part of the initiative is the plan to restructure the district's school system by operating 29 fewer schools next school year, resulting in 39 total mergers and moves. Eighteen CMSD-owned buildings and five leased spaces will not operate as schools next academic year.
Dr. Morgan said the district is working with all those affected to ensure a smooth transition out of their current jobs.
CMSD is partnering up with the city of Cleveland for job fairs, job search resources, and more, according to Dr. Morgan.
RELATED: What's next for CMSD's buildings as restructuring plan progresses?
On Wednesday, the district sent a letter to families about its decision and what happened at the board meeting. Read the full letter below:
