Pictured are Cleveland schools CEO Dr. Eric Gordon (wearing blue and white patterned shirt), Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (wearing grey tie)and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (wearing solid teal tie)
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CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio –Cleveland's K-12 schools will open via remote (online) learning the first nine weeks of the 2020-2021 academic school year as the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep through Ohio and the nation, the virus re-spiking in late June in spite of hopes that the curve would flatten.
Cleveland schools CEO Dr. Eric Gordon said that school district officials had hoped for a hybrid model of both online and in person classes but opted otherwise, sources saying the decision came following complaints and safety concerns from district parents and the Cleveland Teachers Union.
Gordon said it is not clear when or if the schools will reopen on a regular basis anytime soon.
Poor Cleveland schools families, a disproportionate number of them Black, remain concerned about remote learning after preparing for a school year with onsite free lunch and breakfast, school district officials not saying whether alternative measures will be taken to feed the city's poor children when schools are closed due to a pandemic.
Education advocates also say that poor kids and Black kids are being denied adequate remote learning resources, some of them denied individual computers from the school district and other necessary amenities.
The largely Black public school district once under a desegregation court order for discriminating against Black children and their families is led by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson per a state law that took effect in 1998, the year the desegregation of schools ended in Cleveland.
The mayoral control law eliminated an elected school board and handed control of the schools to the city mayor, then Michael R. White, the city's second Black mayor who was succeeded into office by Jane Campbell, the first woman mayor of Cleveland, and of whom Jackson, then a city council president, ousted in 2005 with the help of Black leaders.
A four-term Black Democratic mayor up for reelection in 2021, Jackson also appoints school board members under the applicable state law, and while critics complain that Whites run too much in a largely Black school district under Jackson's leadership over the schools, he is credited with minimizing the chaos that came with an elected school board, activists still against mayoral control of the schools as stripping residents of an opportunity to vote on an elected school board.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine closed all public, private, voucher and charter K-12 schools in Ohio temporarily in March for in-person classes when the pandemic broke and then for the remainder of the academic school year a month later.
Hence, academic learning occurred solely online, except relative to special situations.
At the time the governor said his decision to keep the schools closed followed advice from educators and public health officials and that “we have flattened the curve, but it remains dangerous.”
But the curve never really flattened and DeWine has since said that individual school districts should decide the course of school openings this academic school year using state guidelines and subject to Ohio Department of Education mandates, and other authorities.
Ohio has reported more than 105,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and 3,755 deaths since the pandemic broke in the United States more than four months ago.
Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs, has reported 12, 881 confirmed cases and 482 deaths.
Cleveland recorded 75 new coronavirus cases on June 28, the highest single day figure since the height of the pandemic in early April, a figure that that day brought the total number of cases since the pandemic broke out in early March to 2,245 cases.
