CLEVELAND — For two weeks, Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School students have been protesting the school district considering moving their year-round school year to a traditional calendar.
It's not just Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School that would be impacted, either. It, alongside 20 other Cleveland schools, would transition to an August through May school year.
CMSD is also proposing that all schools operate on the same number of instructional minutes as opposed to some schools receiving an extra 30 minutes/day.
The district said right now there are five different calendars for the 99 CMSD schools, and standardizing the calendar would save the district millions of dollars.
CMSD has identified a goal of saving $150 million over the next three years to maintain a positive cash balance forecast.
With the transition to traditional schooling, CMSD projects it will save at least $9 million per year, which equates to $27 million over three years.
“This may feel like a large change to the students, but the real change is frankly financial,” CMSD District Communications Officer Jon Benedict previously told News 5.
Many students, parents and educators took to the mic at the CMSD Board meeting Tuesday night to express their disinterest in moving to a unified schedule.
Xavier Avery, a junior at Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School, was in attendance. He's been spearheading the previous protests against the proposal.
"I feel like the school board fails to see how crucial it is of these four weeks that they would be cutting out due to the fact that we are in Cleveland with the terrible weather that we have. There are many students in the aviation route who were planning to do their solo flights all the way from August to November, but they had to cancel all of their schedules from October and November because of how bad the weather was. For me working on the maritime side it's the same thing," Avery explained.
While Avery will soon be an alumnus of Davis, he said he is continuing to fight for a year-round schedule because his younger brother wants to attend the school.
"I have a little brother who wants to come to Davis and his goal is to make it into NASA and there's a whole bunch of other students who plan to come to Davis due to other programs in the year on schedule, so I don't want them to miss the same opportunities that I was able to have," he told me.
Regardless of the several public speakers at this week's meeting, the Board unanimously approved the unified schedule.
"We’re looking holistically at the ways we need to do this without making a reduction of force in our teaching staff," CMSD CEO Dr. Warren Morgan II said on Tuesday.
"I feel like we did as much as we could do in the short time that we knew. We only had about two weeks and we were able to get a lot accomplished. We had 900 signatures for our petition. I spoke at City Hall. I spoke today here at the board meeting, so I feel like we did as much as we can do and we just hope that the future of Davis continues to grow," Avery stated.
Avery said he feels the decision was ultimately a money-driven one rather than one that's best for students and the career paths they're pursuing.
"I feel like at this point they're mainly just focusing on the financial burden instead of the future and success of the students at CMSD or specifically at Davis," Avery added.
While Owen Pennington, a junior at the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine, understands the decision the Board made on Tuesday, he told me he is disheartened by it.
The Cleveland School of Science and Medicine offers an extra half hour of instructional time each day, but will not after this school year finishes.
"Some of our board members grouped [the additional 30 minutes/day] up with other stuff, like dismissal and whatnot, but for our school in particular, these 30 minutes are very crucial to the flow of education within our school," Pennington said. "I currently, as a junior, like many of my peers, take four AP classes. These advanced placement tests, they go off a different curriculum than normal, so that requires us to cram in a lot of information to take an achievement tests."
He said he will continue fighting for quality education not only in his community, but across the nation.
"I'm not here to polarize myself against them (CMSD Board members), nor am I here to polarize the student body against them," Pennington said. "I am here specifically to advocate for the students. While we have disagreements, I hope that our continued advocacy will inspire you all to hear us out and give us opportunities to really make change in the district."
Avery's message to the CMSD School Board members is also simple: "Just keep in mind the programs that we have and try their best to keep them going."
The elimination of extended instructional time per day, as well as having every Cleveland school on a traditional school year schedule, will begin this fall.
