A Cleveland Heights mom is blaming mismanagement for problems her son has experienced catching a ride to school.
Ebony Payne said her 13-year-old son Hy’suan Payne had already missed several days of school because of a lack of bus service to East Academy in Cleveland. The single mom said he goes to school when she’s already at work.
Once those problems were resolved, she said the school placed his new bus stop too far from their Cleveland Heights address at Superior Avenue and Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland.
On Tuesday, Hy’suan said he caught an RTA bus to his school bus stop, only for the school bus driver to pass him by while he stood in the rain.
A school spokesman told newsnet5.com a problem with a previous transportation vendor forced them to abruptly switch vendors at the start of the school year. That forced some students to go without transportation for about a week. They added that concerns about the East Cleveland bus stop were addressed with a new stop that’s closer to Hy’suan’s Cleveland Heights home, but said they neglected to tell Hy’suan or his mother about the new stop.
“They’re confused. They don’t have anything together. They’re unorganized,” Payne said. "It’s just a lot of problems going on with this school.”
East Academy is a free taxpayer-funded community (or charter) school, that’s run by a for-profit company called Accel Schools.
According to the most recent state audit, Accel and the company it acquired in 2015 took in 95 percent of the school's taxpayer funding in the 2015-2015 school year, totaling nearly $3 million.
The school scored an F in student performance in the most recent state evaluations.
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