Councilman Kevin Conwell, Parent Activist Call Cleveland Schools CEO Peter Raskind Racist On School Closings

Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell [1] [2]Plain Dealer Newspaper photo of Cleveland Schools CEO Peter Raskind [3]Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor of the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog. Com and Cleveland Urban News.Com(

www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com [4])

A Cleveland City Councilman and Cleveland schools parent activist are calling schools CEO Peter Raskind racist and anti-student for asking the Cleveland School Board to close seven schools, all on the majority Black East Side of the largely Black city.

Raskind, they say, is ignoring and disrespecting Black leaders, Cleveland teachers, the religious community, and most of all, Black parents and others city residents that pay taxes and fund school levies.

"He [Raskind] did not consult the African-American leadership in this community, which is a disrespect of the Black community," said Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, one of 9 Black councilmen out of 19, all nine of whom represent constituents in either Wards 1 or 2 or one of Wards 4-10, all on the East Side of the Cuyahoga River where Blacks predominate in the major metropolitan city."He [Raskind] is dishonest and insensitive and  I will be pushing for a council resolution to support our request that the school board hold off until meetings can be held in each of the seven communities where the schools are, Black leaders, parents, teachers and other community stakeholders are consulted to participate in the process, and they go back to the drawing board and stop targeting only schools in the Black community."

The Cleveland School Board is expected to support Raskind's proposal and will vote tonight on the school closings issue and his recommendation to layoff 835 employees, including 650 of the district's 3600 teachers. Raskind says it is necessary to help defray a $47.5 million schools deficit brought partly because of declining enrollment.

"When I asked him on two occasions about the slated school closings only on the East Side, both times he just looked and said nothing," said Conwell.

The mayor could not be reached for comment.

A former banker who retired in 2008 as Chief Operating Officer for Nation City Bank when it was sold to PNC, Raskind was hired by the mayor's appointed school board as interim CEO in mid January and assumed the realm in Feb. after the surprised retirement of schools CEO Dr. Eugene Sanders, who is Black. Last year Sanders unleashed a multi-million dollar schools transformation plan and recommended school closings and employee layoffs. In turn, the school board closed 15 buildings or schools, 14 on Cleveland's predominantly Black East Side and some 90 assistant principals and principals, mainly Black women, were let go along with other employees, including several teachers.

Black parents are angry over what they say is Raskind's arrogant disregard of the Black community and its neighborhood schools, with one parent saying district officials renegotiated last year's collective bargaining agreement with teachers in bad faith by calling back 80 percent of the 650 laid off teachers, only to slate them for layoffs again this year.  

"It is racially motivated and targets Black schools, and how can they now layoff hundreds of the same teachers the school board brought back last year when they just renegotiated the collective bargaining agreement?," said Donna Brown, a Cleveland schools parent activist. "They negotiated the teachers contract in bad faith and they have no respect for Black parents or Cleveland school children."

Upon his hiring by the mayor's appointed school board Raskind agreed to work for one dollar, a dollar that Conwell says was not worth giving, if community relations is part of the job assessment criteria and Raskind, with no educational credentials and obviously no respect for community input, is seemingly too incompetent for the job.

"They keep saying that the interim CEO is only working for a dollar," said Conwell. "But a lot of harm can be done to the Black community and the school district while he works for a dollar."

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Posted By Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman to

THE KATHY WRAY COLEMAN ONLINE NEWS BLOG.COM [5] at 4/04/2011 09:00:00 PM

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