The Observation Deck

Mike Davis wrote:For the record, the moderator requested that those tables verbally reporting their results, were asked to not repeat supporting reasons that had already been given. In addition, we were not asked to rank our supporting reasons when identifying them. Many tables did not verbally report their results because they would just be repeating what had already been communicated by a previous table.

My table had a very interesting and engaging discussion . . .

It was not requested that repeat reasons not be given, it was said that table moderators don't have to. Even so, among the tables supporting Lincoln, it was repeated again and again, table after table, like a mantra, that the reason to close Grant was "land re-use". (That's why I said "#1 reason", not because each table ranked their reasons.) If there was something more "interesting and engaging" among the reasons to close Grant, certainly no one heard it. "#1 reason" is actually an understatement. I can't remember a single other reason given.

It's not such a mystery: Let it be known that the Linclon PTA actually instructed Lincoln parents to give that as their reason for deciding on closing Grant, hence the mantra. Presumably, because no other sensible reason could be found.

Now, what again were the only four stated criteria that the Phase Three Commitee was to use for evaluating both District Configurations and Building Sites?

1) Does it work for 50 years?
2) Does it have the least negative impact on families?
3) Does it enhance teaching and learning?
4) Does it take the entire community into account?

Where does "land re-use" fit among these considerations? And even if can be construed to be implicit among them: How did it become the #1 consideration for making the decision on which school to close? These are not rhetorical questions, but ones worth answering.

Did "city planning" suddenly and spontaneously replace the stated goals of Phase Three decisions? (That one is rhetorical.)

No one wants a train wreck, but if the train is running people over, maybe it should be wrecked.

If you read the posts. No one said anything about the participants in the forum. If you look at my post, I'm concerned that they weren't heard. They weren't acknowledged during the presentation and that it is a major disservice to the 300 people that took part and in a great degree the citizens that did tge difficult and very time consuming committee work.

I will admit I was a bit negative about the outcome of the forum because I was disappointed. I was appalled by the four people at my table that dismissed my concerns about title one services saying the district can pay for the teachers if the state won't (???) and that buying homes next to Lincoln isn't a big deal because they don't cost that much and that the worry about children without cars having to walk long distances isn't a big deal because hopefully if we have less services for the disadvantaged that will discourage poor people from moving into Lakewood as we don't really need them. And the fact that I knew more than the facilitator at my table was a bit annoying, she kept leaving to see if I was correct in my statements and then glossing over the fact that I was. I even had Betsy come over and explain the density map that was conveniently left out of the presentation. But yet all my concerns were dismissed because apparently Elmwood Avenue is a commercial district and Grant will make a great potential shopping center even though the last time I checked it's surrounded by houses on three sides. Yeah I walked out pissed. I walked out dismayed. And as a parent, as a taxpayer and as a resident I have the right to voice my concerns. So call it a train wreck if you wish but when people stop voicing their concerns then we have a real problem.

Danielle Masters wrote:So call it a train wreck if you wish but when people stop voicing their concerns then we have a real problem.

Danielle

Fear not, as you know, if they cannot control it, they must marginalize it.

One name, one voice, one seat at the table, where EVERYONE is equal.

Oh the horror, equality, transparency, accountability!

Oh the horror.

.

Just to answer a point that Justine brought up about Lakewood Alive earlier, there may be "registered R's" in that organization but they are not supportive of any Republican efforts that I have experienced since my time in Lakewood (8yrs). Which may make you like them more, I am not sure.

Usually they are just dragged out for a "Lakewood Republicans" for some Democrat mail piece sent out to Ward 1 residents during a city election.

I am going to say I know a bunch of Lakewood republicans, I will not blame them for this. This goes beyond anyone political group. And I know Colleen put a lot of hard work into the committee. I don't even blame the committee, they did a lot of work, a lot of work that was conveniently ignored.

And Jim they can marginalize me all they want, no skin off my back. At least my concern isn't just about potential development, I can sleep at night knowing that my concerns are about Lakewood's children and the best possible educational opportunities for them, especially the kids that seem to be deemed unimportant.

Danielle Masters wrote:And Jim they can marginalize me all they want, no skin off my back. At least my concern isn't just about potential development, I can sleep at night knowing that my concerns are about Lakewood's children and the best possible educational opportunities for them, especially the kids that seem to be deemed unimportant.

Danielle

Not just you. I watched them marginalize, the paper, the website,me,my board, now,
all changed, and they still marginalize. The facts are those that marginalize ideas cannot
stand the light of day.

Colleen

I would agree, more like a third party hybrid backroom economic political machine.
Filled with loss souls from from both parties, so you end up with government backed.
social programs for businesses they can choose.


FWIW

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Colleen Wing wrote:Just to answer a point that Justine brought up about Lakewood Alive earlier, there may be "registered R's" in that organization but they are not supportive of any Republican efforts that I have experienced since my time in Lakewood (8yrs). Which may make you like them more, I am not sure.

Usually they are just dragged out for a "Lakewood Republicans" for some Democrat mail piece sent out to Ward 1 residents during a city election.

Lol Thanks Colleen but I do have some friends who are Republican and I actually like Mary Ann Crampton in terms of personality. I just keep hearing all these agendas that the group supports and I am not even sure who funds the group or who is employed there. Of course I was curious since it was mentioned they have a dog in the fight in terms of the school. I am not educated enough of the Grant and Lincoln debate since my kids go to Hayes, but of course am interested and hoping for the best results.

Yes Jim, I firmly believe the reason less people post here is because the identity is mandatory. Connie Shultz did a column awhile back on the dirty and angryhateful blogs of the "anonymous" poster. Venom and lies. Like men who hid behind sheets and those who hide behind other things to meet their agenda and spew negativity, blogs without accountability can spew false truths and hate. The fact that the LO has the integrity to continue a blog that represents all people, AND ALL TAXPAYERS who deserve a voice, says a lot. The fact that some can't handle that is telling.

I have no idea if there is a hidden agenda for the schools but have the right to ask.
LIfe is a mirror and we are what we choose to see.
Some of us post and read here simply becaue we are invested in our city and want the best for the city. It doesn't mean we will always agree, but what I see is a lot of differing opinions. You see a train wreck.

I took a quick drive tonight and drove down Elmwood. I counted 8 homes between the Huntington Bank building and the entrance driveway to Grant. The back parking lot and playground area would probably add another 4-5 (if not more homes) between the second drive on Elmwood and the back of the Grant property. Meaning on Elmwood alone a minimum of 12 homes would need to be purchased to make any commercial use of the property viable. Now in addition to that Victoria borders the other side of Grant so at bare minimum 4 homes would need to be purchased on Victoria to make any commercial property viable. Now that would take up a good portion of a RESIDENTIAL block between Detroit and Hilliard. I would imagine that would decimate the remaining value of the properties on the block. So basically taking a residential chunk in Lakewood and turning it into a commercial area. Of course the value of all the homes in the immediate area would also be affected, I am sure they would all be thrilled that the selling point of being near downtown and schools would be replaced with downtown in your backyard.

Now clearly I am not a professional but I am certain we have zoning ordinances to keep our residential areas residential, I would imagine there might be a teeny tiny uproar if someone's nice residential zone with a nice neighborhood elementary school was destroyed for some developement.

Now that might be a train wreck. But what do I know.

I heard that they were saying at that meeting that there wouldn't be any "imminent domain" involved in this process. So all these home owners will be more than happy to give up their properties? And any houses demolished for Lincoln expansion would be sold for a HUGE sum to be paid for with tax dollars? Are we supposed to approve another school levy for this crap?

I also heard that when asked what the estimated cost for purchasing adjacent properties for the Lincoln expansion would be, one of the Board said it would ONLY be about a MILLION dollars. Well isn't that special?

Oh but Sharon like I said the people at my table said buying homes to expand Lincoln wouldn't cost that much, I think their definition of not that much is a wee bit different from mine.

The estimate from the architect was that purchasing 2 homes south of Lincoln would be about $400,000 (this is in the architectural report the committee as a whole has had since spring).

With regard to table report-outs, what my understanding of what I heard from those guiding the process was that they didn't have to repeat if what their table's reasons were had already been stated, in the interests of time. After that was said, a significant majority of the tables standing up and saying Option B (keep Lincoln) ONLY sited land reuse/economic redevelopment as their rational. My own table did not reach consensus and my facilitator did not report out (even tho a woman at our table - who I know - pushed her to not only do so, but to also place our dot on the board. Our facilitator consulted Don Dyck and was told not to place the dot if the table didn't have 100% consensus).

From the "discussion" at the table, there was only maybe one person who didn't give the strong impresssion of having come to the "forum" with their minds already made up (yes, me included) - he barely spoke at all, though his wife spoke up vociferously in support of land re-use. Interestingly enough, there was also mention of him having a law degree and he filled out his preference sheet for either A or B.

As part of the committee process, we had had discussions repeatedly about getting the discussion materials out and available to the public earlier, let them have accees to ALL the data gathered by the sub-committees so that they could digest it ahead of time and come prepared for a full discussion. That didn't happen. Now I don't see any signs of seeking input from people who couldn't attend the forum. Less than half a per cent of the population of Lakewood was present at that forum. The "subject pool" was skewed to people who could afford to be there on a work/school night - something that single parents, working-class people with non-9-5 schedules, and many others couldn't possibly hope to attend. It has also been put out in the community vocally for a long period of time that the Powers That Be will never let Lincoln close, so proponents of keeping Grant were thereby discouraged from wasting several hours of their life to go to this forum (me, I sometimes feel like I've wasted several weeks worth of hours of my life over gathering this data and trying to get it presented, plus going to these committee meetings every two weeks where people have repeatedly tried to dismiss and play down the data in favor for keeping their preferred school).

For what it's worth, there were other reasons cited by the tables for keeping Lincoln (they made up maybe 1/3rd of the number of reasons cited). I jotted some of them down, but the bag with that paper in it is apparently back in my vehicle. I will try to remember to grab it and share what some of those reasons were. I do remember the 3 north/3 south configuration preference being named (which is a very simplistic form of city planning, since it does not take into account even the simplest of housing density zoning, a map that is readily available from the County Auditor's website - I can screen-cap it and post it later if desired). Also mentioned was the quality of teachers at Lincoln - a rational that wasn't challenged with the information the committee was given, that teachers WILL NOT be lost in this process, the number of teachers is tied to the number of enrolled students, the teachers will be shifted to the new schools and/or transfered to the other schools with higher enrollment. This is what happens regardless of how many schools we have. Having seen the absurd behaviors of one Lakewood teacher who was a part of the committee in particular, I would sooner homeschool my children than have them in this person's classroom for any length of time, but that's another story (and part of why I was irritated with having the majority of people on the committee not simply community members, but school board employees - if school board employees who were not also Lakewood residents were not permitted to be part of this process, the committee would have been only about 60% the size it was, if even that large - or maybe fewer community members who weren't employees would have dropped out of the earlier stages of this process, if they hadn't felt so marginalized from the get-go).

Self-interests have been served much more than our children's interests. Repeatedly. We were charged with looking for the lowest impact on the fewest families. The results of the community forum have absolutely NO relation to that charge.

I have created a petition regarding this. It's online at http://www.petitiononline.com/lkwdelem/petition.html and titled "Use Evidence Instead of Assumptions to Decide Which Elementary School to Keep".


Ahmie

I signed it but it will take more than this to derail that train.

Thank you for your honest and intelligent post Ahmie. I am sorry that you were not heard.

The fact of the school board employees, who don't even live in Lakewood being on the committee. That is the most blatant abuse I can imagine.

This is a crock.

sharon kinsella wrote:..The fact of the school board employees, who don't even live in Lakewood being on the committee. That is the most blatant abuse I can imagine.

I don't have a large stake in this school discussion currently, but if the statement above is true that is just sad...same would go for city workers, etc.

J Hrlec wrote:

sharon kinsella wrote:..The fact of the school board employees, who don't even live in Lakewood being on the committee. That is the most blatant abuse I can imagine.

I don't have a large stake in this school discussion currently, but if the statement above is true that is just sad...same would go for city workers, etc.

Approximately half of the email addresses of the list of people on the committee were to their school email addresses. I took the liberty at one point in May to cross-check the ones who were using private email instead of their work email address and turned up a few more. I am unsure what percentage of those folks are also Lakewood residents, but given past experience (I've been a teacher myself, I'm married to a CMSD teacher, and I actually talked to my own Parma High teachers like they were human beings and am still in touch with a couple of them nearly 15 years later), it's generally a very tiny percentage of a school district's teachers who also live in the district. Some teachers really don't want to live anywhere near where they teach because they don't want to run into the kids in the community - they want to be able to leave work at work when the day is done. I understand that, but it's not my or my husband's philosophy - he's only teaching in Cleveland because Lakewood didn't snap him up when they had the chance, and now he's got enough years in with CMSD that transfering to Lakewood would result in a significant loss of years (on the pay scale - they only credit for 5 I think) and seniority.

Speaking of years of service, if Lakewood schools are in such desperate financial straits that economic land use concerns are really something our board should consider first and foremost when choosing which school to decommission, where are the retirement incentives for teachers in the later years of their career? That's a standard practice when a school district needs to reduce their expenditures - encourage some of the older teachers to retire so that they can hire younger teachers with less years of experience (which result in a yearly or every few years bump up in salary, without any additional training/degrees required from the teacher other than standard professional development to maintain their licensure, which is pretty minimal really)? Other districts do this, and from what I've been able to observe of the district's employees (at the schools my son and others that I've picked up have attended, as well as those that participated in the Phase III project), there's a significant number who look old enough to have likely put in their 30 years and be elligible for the State Teacher Retirement program funds, or very close there-to, especially considering older teachers were more likely to have gone straight from college into teaching (started teaching when they were in their mid-20s, as opposed to the recent spate of career-switchers). There are a LOT of young, good teachers looking for work in the area. If finances are as extreme as some folks seem to think they are, wouldn't that valid, already done in other areas, tactic be better for the community than closing the only central-latitude elementary school we have left - especially since back when we had a 10 elementary school configuration, HALF of them were on/between Madison/Detroit? The 3 north/3 south configuration leaves us with NO elementary schools between Athens and the train tracks instead.

Oh, and since folks are asking about data that was collected - I'm attempting to attach the data matrix that I helped create for the District Configuration sub-committee. The first tab of the spreadsheet is the snapshot view, with a separate tab for each configuration, another for maps, another for some explaination of the "extreme walkers" numbers, and a final one that has my own calculations -based upon county auditor information and census averages - for the number of kids to expect from the various areas most impacted by this process.