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George Nemeth · The right stuff
May 21st, 2008
I’d think the right people would be the ones you want to, and can afford to live downtown:
[Scott Wolstein] sounded quite pleased to share this nugget with the audience about echo boomers: “they demand a great education and you start to see a lot more progress . . . parents (will) follow-through the way they do in the suburbs. That will happen if you get the right people living in this town.”
So, who are the right people? I am guessing he means affluent and probably white. His generalizations about the parents who live in Cleveland and send their children to public school are an insult…
Last 5 posts by George Nemeth
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May 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am
Education in Ohio is broken…
People just accept that CMSD is broken. If Beachwood’s or Westlake’s schools were broken, people would raise unholy hell.
The outrage at CMSD is there among the parents but the most influential aren’t listening.
I have been saying this for a while but one countywide school district (the same for the other 87 counties as well) is an idea that deserves consideration. The suburbs would mean nothing if it weren’t for Cleveland. Without the working class folks of Cleveland and the inner-ring, the exurbanites would have to do their own damn work and would not be as prosperous.
Gentrifying downtown Cleveland does not help the region. The only people it seems to help are the developers.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Well. I know some Cleveland school teachers. Some have worked in the system twenty years and more. The lack of parental involvement has been an ever-present concern in some schools. That is from the standpoint of the individual student’s progress, to simple field-trip participation, to PTA activities.
Some schools can not entice anyone with a little discretionary income.
Some principals (and this is true in the suburbs also) can not abide an independent minded PTA and don’t encourage it.
The biggest benefit in a county-wide system might be in having one central records office, as ‘transient families’ flow in and out of the district and custodian- guardian- ships seem to change on a whim. Special education where needed is often halted because the paperwork is left behind.
Tell parents to bring along copies of their children’s files to a new school. It would be a godsend to the principal and the teachers, even if some paperwork will need to be redone.
Face the facts. Some Cleveland neighborhoods and the schools in those neighborhoods can’t do better until crime is beaten down, the housing stock is improved, and local jobs are available and stable.
Some of these teachers I mentioned look at neighborhood poverty statistics when a transfer is in the offing, so they can choose from the lesser of evils.
Some neighborhoods hold a preponderance of the broken. Broken children in broken homes sheltering a broken family where at least one adult is broken (mentally or physically) and most likely broke.
Getting anyone to increase property values and occupy downtown is a godsend. Gentrification it may be and you don’t have time to look back, ’cause something is gaining on you. $5 a gallon for gasoline, among other things.
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 am
Parental involvement (or lack thereof) is not the whole cause of the underperformance of the CMSD. Parents have to work more to make ends meet whether there are one or two parents in the household. This is universal, unfortunately.
Your presumption that people with discretionary income are the saviors of these “broken” people is disgusting. Had the CPS (in my day)/CMSD not been a failure in some areas even then, maybe these people might not be broken. In reality, the broken state of many neighborhoods is the overdependence on manufacturing jobs and underemphasis and underdevelopment of other avenues for self-reliance (e.g. education and sustainable entrepreneurship).
Smaller classes could counterbalance lack of parental involvement. That requires more teachers which, in turn, requires more funding. The same school funding which has been deemed unconstitutional 4 times. When will someone do something about that? This good school neighborhood roulette is not conducive to anyone…
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I agree with Derek that the issue with CMSD is a combination of socio-economic reality caused by an outmigration of well-paying employment opportunities and the unconstitutional funding system for public schools in Ohio. These realities are compounded by the leaching of public school funds into under-performing charter schools through the voucher system. I think parents who care-and there are a lot of them-would have more time to give if they didn’t have the stresses created by poverty and underemployment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for an influx of afluence into the Flats, just don’t expect it to produce marvelous results for CMSD.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
Wolstein has it exactly wrong. What he’s talking about is what will make him the most money.
The city & we are making a big mistake because you can’t have a downtown “neighborhood,” as they enjoy calling it, without a mixture of people… not just young (or old retired) people who can simply afford to live in an expensive place, not the outer suburbs but a created luxury downtown.
If there isn’t a mixture of people and incomes (likely not possible giving the Wolstein profit motive now) we won’t have a real community or “neighborhood.” If that’s so it will not function to anyone’s benefit.
As a society we’ve boxed ourselves into the essence of the two Americas John Edwards tried to ride himself into the presidency.
The problem is we become more and more divided. The rich depend more and more on luxury & protected settings; the poor have no choices and become more and more imprisoned in desperate situations, which demand the desperate reactions we see over and over on the daily news reports. Kids killing kids… you know the rest.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
New models of inner city development are emerging around open networks. Gentrification rhetoric (“the right people living in this town”) and “fixing problems” (housing, education, crime) reflect tired thinking that do not lead anywhere.
The challenge and opportunity for wealth creation come in re-imagining communities and economies in our inner city neighborhoods.
This is the strategy that is taking place in Shreveport, LA (and 10+ other cities) with Community Renewal International. I-Open is working with CRI on replicating this network-based model to build prosperity.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
‘Your presumption that people with discretionary income are the saviors of these “broken” people is disgusting. Had the CPS (in my day)/CMSD not been a failure in some areas even then, maybe these people might not be broken. In reality, the broken state of many neighborhoods is the overdependence on manufacturing jobs and underemphasis and underdevelopment of other avenues for self-reliance (e.g. education and sustainable entrepreneurship). ‘
I did not say discretionary income will save anyone but the child of the parent who can live outside the worst neighborhoods. I have no doubt about the advantages of small classrooms.
I lived my early years at 126th and Brackland. Our family had a corner grocery at 79th and Kinsman. What broke the Cleveland schools were IMHO:
segregated schools, busing and white flight,
CMHA housing development patterns,
Kucinich’s confrontations with the local industrial leaders of that time and the abandonment of downtown by the latter,
welfare funding that encouraged fathers to abandon mothers and children (although I only remember the rhetoric, not the facts, so it’s probably an ill-informed opinion),
anything else Mr. Bartimolo is prepared to mention (I was a young and naive reader of your newsletter in the ’70s).
What’s that got to do with a supposed over-dependence on manufacturing which was 10-20 years later? I’d sooner blame .
I don’t believe Scott Wolstein believes he has a cure-all. He is simply doing what he knows best, commercial development, and engaging in hyperbole for the sake of his project.
I don’t know about Shreveport. Friends of mine from Chicago and now living around Cleveland don’t hesitate to tell me how screwed up Cleveland is on all fronts in comparison.
I am a bit of a contrarian, myself. Putting local people back to work where extravagant machinery took their place is going to be energy conserving. Lights-out warehouses and automated inventory carousels would be the first to go, I imagine.