Troubles mount for Richmond Heights schools

Yesterday I began a summary of my reporting on the colossally troubled Richmond Heights School District. I thought this would be beneficial as a review for those who have been following district events since last January’s revolt by the all-black boys basketball team against their coach, Jason Popp, for his unprofessional and we must say, racist, behavior towards the team. I thought such a summary was especially important because I believe a combination of factors is assembling that is likely to  force sweeping changes upon the District.

I promised Part II of the summary today. And then I received a document purporting to be from a major player in the district that lays out problems more extensive than even I might have imagined. So rather than proceed with Part II as planned, I offer Real Deal readers this status update and assessment.

1.    As expected the Richmond Heights Board of Education voted last night not to renew the contract of Superintendent Linda T. Hardwick. Dr. Hardwick was hired on an interim basis in November 2009 and given a contract the following month that expires July 31, 2012. Under Ohio law, had the board not passed a nonrenewal, Hardwick’s contract would have been extended automatically.

2.    This was actually the second time the Board had voted not to renew Hardwick’s contract. The first vote was last summer during a period of more or less open warfare between the board, then under a Josh Kaye-led majority, and Hardwick. That vote was premature and therefore likely unlawful. But it passed by a 3-2 majority as a slap in the face to Hardwick and a signal to the teachers union, headed by Hardwick nemesis Jason Popp.

3.    This year’s nonrenewal vote likely signals the end of the Hardwick administration. She has been on paid administrative leave since November while “under investigation” for various infractions, including alleged misappropriation of district property, insubordination, and sundry other offenses. There had been some speculation that with a new board majority and fresh leadership, Hardwick might be reinstated. That is not going to happen. In fact, on the agenda for this Monday’s special meeting, the second in four days, is a resolution to spend about $7,000 to hire a search firm to find and vet the next superintendent.

4.    Also on Monday’s agenda is a resolution to fire Timothy Pingle, the high school principal. He was just hired in August and lasted all of four months before running afoul of interim superintendent Robert Moore, who had been acting superintendent for only about a month. Moore accused Pingle of unprofessional conduct in December, at which time Pingle joined Hardwick on paid administrative leave.

5.    So, at present the Richmond Heights Local Schools have an interim superintendent, an interim secondary principal, and an interim elementary school principal. In many underperforming districts, experts cite the transient student families as a major factor in poor student performance.

6.    In October the District fired clerk-typist Margaret “Peggy” Parker for alleged dishonesty, insubordination, and neglect of duty. Like several other former district employees, Parker appears to have been the latest  employee targeted by the Board as a way to force Hardwick out.

7.    There are presently at least nine, and likely more, investigations pending against the school district, including at least three filed by Hardwick. These charges have been filed with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights. Some of these charges have been filed by parents on behalf of their children. There is also an indication that charges have been filed with the Ohio Department of Education.

8.    The lead actors in most of the pending complaints are board member Josh Kaye and teachers union head Jason Popp. Each seems prepared to maintain a defiant stance against all comers.

9.    Earlier this month attorneys for the school board proposed  separate settlements to Hardwick and Parker. Both offers were rejected.

10. Things are likely to get worse before they get better. At a time when planning should be underway for next year, every key position is without a settled incumbent, the accreditation push is on hold, adverse decisions by various investigative are likely to begin raining down with potentially comprehensive effects, teachers are apprehensive, the district is financially strapped, and may have to compete with the city over who gets to be a revenue measure on the ballot first.

Black History Month: Setting the Record Straight

I have just completed setting down some thoughts on African American Heritage Month for taping later this morning over at Civic Commons, a precious local gem for serious thinkers who don’t take themselves too seriously. The commentary will be aired next Tuesday at 12:30PM and also available via podcast, iTunes, and perhaps sundry other channels as well. We hope you will listen and let the folk over at Civic Commons  know what you think. We may print it here after it goes on air but it’s written for the ear rather than the eye, which in fact may be a higher standard. 

As a special present we offer a guest perspective today on Black History Month, penned by our friend Stephen G. Hall. We met Dr. Hall about a year and a half ago at a luncheon at Case Western Reserve University, where he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of African American History. He is also the author of A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America.[1] 

We are pleased to offer Dr. Hall the Real Deal platform to set the story straight on Black History Month. [Find more about Professor Hall here.]

• • •

Black History Month : Setting the Story Straight

By Stephen G. Hall

There are many misconceptions regarding the origins of Black History Month. Most of these misperceptions revolve around two issues. First, the erroneous belief that the observance was initiated outside of the African American community. Second, this idea is an outgrowth of the first issue, that the celebration was deliberately planned in the shortest month of he year, February. Introducing a few simple facts into the conversation will go a long way in clarifying both the origins and timing of the observance.

Contrary to popular belief, Black History Month was not initiated by majoritarian communities as a means of marginalizing African Americans or placed in February because it was the shortest month of the year. Not surprisingly these perceptions continue to persist despite the existence of diverse resources about the origins of this celebration.  Black History month began as Negro History Week in 1926.  Carter G. Woodson, the second African American to receive a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), established the observance as a means of informing Americans of the many achievements of African Americans.

Woodson believed the history and historical study of the past, what he termed “scientific history,” would contribute to challenge persistent and pervasive stereotypes regarding African American capacity and capabilities.

One of the most aggressive promoters of African American history as a legitimate scholarly specialty, Woodson also established the Journal of Negro History (JNH) in 1916, a scholarly journal focusing on the African American past and later, in the 1930’s, he inaugurated the Negro History Bulletin (NHB). This journal encouraged the study of black history in primary and secondary schools. In conjunction with Mary McLeod Bethune, President of the ASNLH from 1936-1951, Woodson worked to promote the celebration at the local, state and national levels. He is also credited with providing financial support and practical training of  associate investigators who became the first generation of African American historians between 1915 and 1950. Scholars, many of whom would distinguish themselves in various areas of African and American history, such as Lorenzo Greene, James Hugo Johnston, Alrutheus Ambush Taylor. Rayford Logan and Charles Wesley, benefited from their association with Woodson and the ASNLH. In this sense, Woodson, and these investigators, created what we know today as African American history.

Woodson’s sense of African American history, his involvement in its professionalization and its importance to African Americans was also reflected in the choice of February as the month for the observance. February was a logical choice for  Black History celebrations  because it featured the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, widely viewed as the Great Emancipator, and Frederick Douglass, the most prominent African American in the nineteenth century. These men were viewed as influential historical figures in the African American experience up to 1926. Both men were also Republicans, and this party enjoyed African American political support for the latter third of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Negro History Week became Black History Month in 1980. Today, the ASNLH continues to thrive as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and it produces a Black History Kit. This year’s theme is African Americans and the Civil War.

• • •

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[1] [In John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, October  2009)]

Richmond Hts. School Board takes step to end Hardwick era Part I

Richmond Hts. School Board takes step to end Hardwick era

Part I

The Richmond Heights Board of Education is expected to vote tonight not to renew the contract of superintendent Linda T. Hardwick when it expires July 31. The vote will take place in executive session at a 7PM special meeting called for this purpose.

Dr. Hardwick has been on paid administrative leave since November after a tumultuous two year in which a majority of the board seemed bent on thwarting her efforts to improve the quality of education in the small and shrinking school district.

In a city that is roughly fifty percent white, only about half of the school age population of approximately 1900 students attend the city’s public schools. Most white parents and a sizable number of black ones choose from an array of charter, parochial, other public, or private schools, or undertake to educate their children at home.

Leadership issues are key to the district’s woes, which also include a worn out physical plant, outdated textbooks, tightening financial straights, an anxious and disengaged faculty, and what has increasingly come to be seen as a hostile environment for the captive African American students and those administrators who are seen as sympathetic to the students.

Most of these problems have been a decade or more in the making. Voters rejected seven school levies in succession, a short but bitter teachers strike in 2007 resolved no key issues, and the district continued to unravel under the comings and goings of a host of new union leaders [five in five years], superintendents [four in seven years], and a school board that often seemed in need of musical chairs with training wheels.

The problems of the Richmond Schools are not isolated to the district’s single campus, which is effectively hidden away — it almost seems by design — behind a brand new municipal complex. The sparkling new city hall that shows its rear to the schools boasts a part-time mayor whose twenty year tenure is as tired as his city’s schools, though he pretends the school district’s sickness is unrelated to his city’s maladies. A lifetime company lawyer in his day job, Mayor Daniel Ursu seems wholly unsuited for the challenges of what are likely his final years in office. Colleagues describe him as secretive and conflict-averse, a fact this reporter observed first-hand in the mayor’s repeated refusals to be interviewed, even scurrying away on one occasion into the safety of City Hall and hastily locking the door behind him.

[It has been reported to us that the mayor, as he seeks to shape his legacy, is now in the midst of a fevered attempt to shred thirteen years of public records pertaining to his administration. His efforts, while apparently legal, do raise questions as to his rationale, since he reportedly has never bothered to dispose of a single record during his tenure.]

But while the mayor personifies Alice-in-Wonderland municipal leadership, it is Jason Popp,  a long time physical education teacher and current head of the teacher’s union, who brought instant notoriety upon the school district and hence the city when he was accused last January of perpetrating regular emotional abuse of the boys varsity basketball team. His alleged repeated belittling of his players’, their families, heritage, intellect, and morals — allegations which he has never denied and all but admitted — led to a revolt by the players and their parents, who presented school authorities with a choice: either replace the coach immediately or the team would boycott the remainder of their then undefeated season.  

After meeting with all parties over the next few days — players, parents, the coach, other administrators, and a few school board members — Superintendent Hardwick essentially put Popp on paid administrative leave from coaching in early February 2011. In so doing, she unknowingly put her own career as a first-time superintendent on the accelerated track leading to tonight’s expected action.

I previously reported on much of this last year in posts between May and November. As it appears that matters have gotten increasingly grave and are now coming to a head, I wanted to provide a summary that would prepare readers for what I believe is on the horizon. Part II will appear tomorrow.

Nonprofit Thursday: Schomburg director in town this Saturday

“Slavery By Another Name” panel adds Schomburg director

This Saturday’s panel discussion on the PBS documentary “Slavery By Another Name”, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name by Douglas Blackmon, now includes Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the renown Schomburg Center in Harlem. Previously announced panelists include: Susan Hall, community relations director for the Western Reserve Historical Society;  county councilman Julian Rogers; civil rights attorney Dennis Niermann; motivational speaker Basheer Jones; radio/tv personality Sandra Bishop; and filmmaker Marquette Williams.

A portion of the riveting documentary, broadcast last week in its entirety, will be shown before the panel discussion. The program begins at 6PM this Saturday, Feb. 25 at New Bridge, 3634 Euclid Ave., Cleveland OH 44115. Call 216.867.9775 for info.

Muhammad was appointed director of the Schomburg Center in November 2010. He is the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Learn more about him here and here.

League Park Update

If you are interested in learning more about the recently announced plans for the restoration and reconstruction of League Park and the redevelopment plans for the surrounding neighborhood, you are invited to attend the community meeting on next Wednesday, Feb. 29 at 6PM at Faith Temple Church of God, 7035 Lexington Ave, Cleveland OH 44106. The meeting is sponsored by the League Park Heritage Committee and the City of Cleveland.

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Cleveland State Black Studies Dept. hosts Ghana film festival

The School of Communication and the Howard A. Mims African American Cultural Center will be presenting an UMOJA Round Table event, “African Films Versus Reality: A Student Film Showcase”, on Feb. 29.

The event is free and will feature two former Imaging Africa (Com 428) students’ films from 4PM to 5:30PM in the Main Classroom Building, Room 135/137.

Mai-Kim Dang, a Cleveland State film graduate, and MiLisa Coleman, a digital media major, will be present to discuss their films and their experiences in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia.

Light refreshments will be served, and the event is open to the public. 
Dang and Coleman visited the African continent as a result of two different travel abroad programs.

Dang visited Ethiopia through a Fulbright research grant while Coleman visited Ghana and Burkina Faso through the Morehouse Pan African Global Experience (MPAGE) study aboard program. The ability to get first hand accounts of Africa should be useful in addressing many of the misperceptions Americans have about Africa.

Imaging Africa is a class taught by instructor Eric Siler and is designed to enable students to understand images, stereotypes, and myths associated with the historical development of film with African content.

Instructor Siler encourages CSU students to participate in the screenings and see what former students have done with information learned in his class.

For more information, please contact Prester Pickett, coordinator of the Howard A. Mims African American Cultural Center at (216) 687-3656 or visit http://www.csuohio.edu/class/blackstudies/.

Nonprofit Thursday: African American Heritage Month

Tip of the hat to Geoff Mwaungulu, M.D., my friend of more than four decades, for suggesting the term African American Heritage Month. I like it!

African American Heritage Month Calendar

February

Why I Had to Dance

Don't miss this choreopoem by Ntozake Shange choreographed and directed by Cleveland’s own Dianne McIntyre. Just two performances at Playhouse Square on Feb. 17 & 18. Tickets $10. Call 241.6000.

• • •

Library Programs

Saturday, Feb. 18 at 1PM:

The Role and Reality of Education in Freedom’s Struggle

Rev. Jawanzaa Karriem Colvin of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church will speak on the role of faith and education in the struggle for freedom. Martin Luther King, Jr. Branch

Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 3PM:

Black History to the Beat

Join Cleveland’s own Edward “Phatty” in creating an original musical composition about African American history. Woodland Branch

Saturday, Feb. 25 at 1PM: Natural Hair Care in the 21st Century Take part in Cleveland Public Library’s first-ever natural hair program. Fin out about the history, science and beauty of African American hair. Featuring a "real talk" informative and interactive session with advice from the experts. in creating an original musical composition about African American history. Main Library · Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium

Cleveland Public Library, Memorial-Nottingham Branch, 17109 Lake Shore Boulevard, Cleveland 44110. [216.623.7039 | Memorial.Nottingham.Branch@cpl.org :

Honoring Langston Hughes 

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 4:30 – 5:30 PM

Calling all young poets! Ages 10-12! In honor of African-American History Month, the Memorial-Nottingham Branch will celebrate this joyous month by honoring the famous American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist, Mr. James Mercer Langston Hughes.  Two of Mr. Langston’s famous titles, The Sweet and Sour Animal Book and My People, will be read.  Following the story, come create your very own poem to take home.

African American History Month Folktale Celebration

Monday, Feb. 27, 1:30-2:30 PM

 Children, young adults, and parents are invited to join Cleveland Public Library's multicultural storyteller extraordinaire, Ms. Donna Willingham for an hour of inspirational African and African-American folktales. 

 Ms. Willingham is currently a member of the Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers, Inc. and the National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc. She told the "tallest tale" and won the 1997 "Liars' contest" at the National Black Storytellers Festival and Conference, held in Cleveland, Ohio of that year.

• • •

America's First Black Entrepreneurship Day

and

Woodmere's Second Black History Month Celebration

This combination trade show/cultural fair is the brainchild of Woodmere councilman Azaadjeet Singh. It offers FREE admission, free food, and free multi-cultural entertainment.

Feb. 24 from 6PM-9PM at ETON Shopping Center, 28601 Chagrin Blvd, Woodmere 44122.

This event very well could live up to its billing: “Building Bonds, Breaking Barriers”

For more info: Azaadjeet Singh at 330.519.8977 or asiabizcomms@aol.com.

• • •

White House Hispanic Community Action Summit here this weekend

Senior Obama Administration officials from diverse policy areas with meet this Saturday with community  leaders, business owners, and other stakeholders to discuss issues critical to the Hispanic community, Cleveland, and the nation.

This White House Hispanic Community Action Summit will take place from 8:30AM to 4PM at the Lorain Community College in at the Spitzer Conference Center, 1005 North Abbe Rd., Elyria.

• • •

Thoughts on Black History

If you haven’t participated in or supported at least two events by today’s halfway point in this Leap Year African American History Month, then get your act in gear. And this injunction is intended for you irrespective of your race, ethnicity, place of national origin, gender, age, or sexual orientation. [See the last paragraph].

Black history is of course American history. I, for one, would hate to be ignorant of a substantial portion of my fellow neighbors. I never cease to be amazed at how little so many of us know about so much of American history, especially as it relates to black people. It’s simply not possible to understand much of anything in today’s world without an appreciation for what has taken place.

This country is home to just about the most ahistoric people on the planet. An American culture that exalts youth, instant gratification, and the next big thing, has little appreciation for the traditions that inform far older cultures on distant continents, i.e. Europe, Asia, and Africa.

We give only lip service to history in our society. We’re so far out of touch with the country’s origins that we credit folks who offer up pseudo historical accounts [think Newt Gingrich and George Will] as having big brains or being super smart, when all they are doing is relying on some coded account of events that supports their present day political views.

All too often those historical accounts are coded to express American superiority and exceptionalism, the notion that the United States is uniquely virtuous, indisputably blessed by Providence, justifiably entitled to rule over lesser nations, and endowed with a right of  supreme veto.

February, thanks to Carter G. Woodson, offers us at least four weeks a year when healthy antidotes to that warped view are at least on the agenda.

You may already have missed one of this month’s best such antidotes, “Slavery By Another Name”, which aired this past Monday on PBS television. Based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Douglas A. Blackmon, the show offered an understanding of how southern state governments colluded with private enterprise to establish a system of peonage after the Civil War that in some ways was more brutal than slavery had been.

It was hard to watch the program and not relate the world it revealed to today’s system of incarceration. It seems that we are becoming increasingly exceptional in our knack for the forced rendering of a distinct segment of humanity into an alternate or surplus labor force for private economic profit. Read either Blackmon’s original work or that of Michelle Alexander [The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness]   And we offer a hat tip to Deuteronomy 8:3 Café for hipping us to this work, a predecessor to Blackmon’s: Slavery Revisited: Blacks and the Southern Convict Lease System, 1865-1933 by Milfred C. Fierce.

If you missed last week’s panel discussion of “Slavery By Another Name” at Karamu last week featuring both the book’s author and the film’s producer, you have a second chance to view a portion of the documentary and participate in a community discussion. On Saturday, Feb. 25 there will be a panel conversation at New Bridge, 3634 Euclid Ave., Cleveland OH 44115 around the film and related topics. Guests and panelists include: Susan Hall, community relations director for the Western Reserve Historical Society,  county councilman Julian Rogers, civil rights attorney Dennis Niermann, motivational speaker Basheer Jones, radio/tv personality Sandra Bishop, and filmmaker Marquette Williams. Call 216.867.9775 for info.

Finally, we commend to all Real Deal readers this recent piece from Diverse Issues in Higher Education: Why Ethnic Studies Courses Are Good for White Kids Too.

GOP victory would restore outdated worldview

As I sit here writing this at the kitchen table, I have had to move the computer screen as the streams in over my shoulder. 

Perhaps it’s the spring-like winter we are experiencing here in Cleveland. It has brought the early return of my backyard cardinals and bluebirds.  But for the second consecutive day I am feeling optimistic. Yesterday, it was the signs of community collaboration and engagement on the part of Cleveland’s too-often dormant and disengaged black middle class. Today, it’s the cumulative effect of the Republican effort to find a suitable candidate to take on President Obama. I have swung back and forth between thinking that the Republicans were soaking up all the ink with their relentless — and generally false — attacks on the President, and then enjoying their increasingly savage attacks on each other.

In past election cycles, it’s been Democrats beating on one another while the Republicans watched and waited for the chance to bomb the Dems for being “soft” on defense, appeal to the baser racial instincts of the GOP base, and tout their presumptive superior economic policies.

All of that is at the moment turned on its head.  Gingrich and Santorum have provided great campaign fodder for Obama’s re-election effort against Mitt Romney, the likely GOP nominee. And Mitt himself continues to show how disconnected he is from the masses of Americans.

So while I never underestimate right-wing willingness to appeal to the fears of its base, I am for the moment feeling pretty good as conservative overreach has stirred up women and even working-class Joes, who, if they are unable to identify with Obama, will nonetheless vote to keep him in office.

Retaining the president is important not only to prevent a rollback to the loot and steal policies of the Bush years, but essential to finding a way to navigate an increasingly complex world. When Bush I proclaimed a “new world order” after the fall of the Soviet Union, he had the right term but the wrong understanding.  He clearly envisioned a world in which the United States would be unchallenged militarily and politically.

The past twenty years have shown just how wrong Bush I and “Mission Accomplished” Bush II were in hewing to American military might and the US as the world’s police force. Both Romney and his main GOP challengers — Gingrich and Santorum — are even further to the right with their trumpeting of “American exceptionalism”.

While the domestic political landscape can change on a dime, what doesn’t change is the need for the President of the United States to have an understanding of the rest of the world.

The pandering of Romney and his rivals to those who long for what is basically a vision of international white supremacy is increasingly out of date in a world that is more intricately colored day by day. Nobody talks about this more clearly than a “colored” American named Fareed Zakaria, about whom I have written briefly before here. Here is his open letter to Mitt Romney:

The world has changed, Mr. Romney

 “Dear Mitt Romney,

… I’d like to call attention to a line you have used repeatedly: “This is a president who fundamentally believes that this next century is the post-American century.” … [L]et me make sure you know what exactly you are attacking.

 … the age of American unipolarity — which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union — has ended. For a quarter-century after the collapse of communism, the United States dominated the world with no real political or economic competitors. Its ideas and its model — the Washington consensus — became received wisdom everywhere.

Today we are in a different era. In 1990, China represented 2 percent of global gross domestic product. It has quadrupled, to 8 percent, and is rising. By most estimates, China’s economy will become the world’s largest between 2016 and 2018.

… It is not just China that is rising. Emerging powers on every continent have achieved political stability and economic growth and are becoming active on the global stage. Twenty years ago Turkey was a fragile democracy, dominated by its army, that had a weak economy constantly in need of Western bailouts. Today, Turkey has a trillion-dollar economy that grew 6.6 percent last year. Since April 2009, Turkey has created 3.4 million jobs — more than the European Union, Russia and South Africa put together. That might explain Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s confidence and his country’s energetic foreign policy.

Look in this hemisphere: In 1990, Brazil was emerging from decades of dictatorship and was wracked by inflation rates that reached 3,000 percent. Its president was impeached in 1992. Today, the country is a stable democracy, steadily growing with foreign-exchange reserves of $350 billion. Its foreign policy has become extremely active. President Dilma Rousseff is in Cuba this week, “marking Brazil’s highest-profile bid to transform its growing economic might into diplomatic leadership in Latin America,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Brazil’s state development bank is financing a $680 million rehabilitation of Cuba’s port at Mariel.

… I could go on.

This is a new world, very different from the America-centric one we got used to over the last generation. Obama has succeeded in preserving and even enhancing U.S. influence in this world precisely because he has recognized these new forces at work. He has traveled to the emerging nations and spoken admiringly of their rise. He replaced the old Western club and made the Group of 20 the central decision-making forum for global economic affairs. By emphasizing multilateral organizations, alliance structures and international legitimacy, he got results. It was Chinese and Russian cooperation that produced tougher sanctions against Iran. It was the Arab League’s formal request last year that made Western intervention in Libya uncontroversial.

By and large, you have ridiculed this approach to foreign policy, arguing that you would instead expand the military, act unilaterally and talk unapologetically. That might appeal to Republican primary voters, but chest-thumping triumphalism won’t help you secure America’s interests or ideals in a world populated by powerful new players.

You can call this new century whatever you like, but it won’t change reality. After all, just because we call it the World Series doesn’t make it one.”  Source

I couldn’t have said it better. Find the entire column here.