8/11/2017

 

As CMSD’s newest high school models make their debuts, seven recent additions are preparing to graduate their first seniors.

Growth in its portfolio of options is just one of the District’s headlines entering the 2017-18 school year. Most students will start classes Monday, joining those at a select group of schools that began returning July 31.

Other top stories include:

• Cleveland is forging ahead with its efforts to become the nation’s fourth chapter of Say Yes to Education, a program that helps students fill gaps in college funding, but, more important, aligns community services to keep them on track to high school graduation. The city is in what is called the “prelaunch” phase.
• The True2U mentoring program will broaden to serve all of CMSD’s 2,500 eighth-graders. The program, the work of CMSD and community partners, stresses high school choice and career and college planning.
• High schools will expand access to computer science and Advanced Placement classes.
• CMSD’s “Get 2 School, You Can Make It!” attendance campaign has entered its third year. The Cleveland Browns are the lead partner in the campaign against chronic absenteeism, which has helped reduce the number of students who miss more than 10 days of school a year.
• Construction is moving ahead on seven elementary schools that are to be completed in 2018.
• Campus International K-8 begins the year in a new four-story building that the District built on land leased from Cleveland State University. The popular International Baccalaureate school is a partnership between CMSD and the university.
• Parents and caregivers can now sign up for Bus Tracker, an online portal where they can monitor the travel of yellow buses carrying their children in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Student choice, a concept at the center of The Cleveland Plan for education reform, has widened with the opening of the six new high schools models. The models, designed to be small, personal and better able to meet student needs, include: Bard High School Early College East Campus, Campus International, Davis Aerospace and Maritime, John Adams College and Career Academy, Rhodes College and Career Academy and Rhodes School of Environmental Studies.

Bard East Campus, operated in conjunction with Bard College of New York, will allow students to earn both a diploma and tuition-free college associate’s degree under the same roof in four years. CMSD is now home to two of five such schools in the United States.

The year will bring graduation for the first seniors at the Cleveland High School for Digital Arts, JFK E3agle Academy, JFK PACT, John Marshall School of Information Technology, John Marshall School of Engineering, the John Marshall School of Civic and Business Leadership and New Tech Collinwood.