Emmy Award-winning Feagler & Friends is a lively, weekly half-hour television discussion of local and national issues impacting lives in Northeast Ohio. Hosted by award-winning journalist and former Plain Dealer columnist, Dick Feagler, Feagler & Friends explores the various issues behind today's news. With a changing ensemble of "friends" ranging from journalists to community and political leaders, Feagler & Friends takes on issues from many different perspectives. Always entertaining and never boring, Feagler & Friends is the program for people "in the know" in Northeast Ohio.

Friday, August 4, 2006

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Cleveland Municipal School District CEO Dr. Eugene Sanders: Began work at the Cleveland School district on July 1st, replacing former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Most recently he spent six years as superintendent of the Toledo schools, a system with many of the same challenges he'll face in Cleveland: declining enrollment and poor student performance. Sanders was able to improve student test scores, but was forced to take the unpopular action of closing five schools because of falling enrollment. In Cleveland, he'll find a similarly shrinking student body, a public disinclined to approve operating levies, competition from charter schools, and student test scores that are among the worst in the state. He'll talk with Mr. Feagler about his plans to make improvements. The interview was recorded in the library of the new John Adams High School.

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Mr. Feagler: When did you grow up?

Dr. Sanders: Well, I grew up watching you on television.

Mr. Feagler: You're an old man.

Dr. Sanders: Well, in some respects I am. I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, also known as Cedar Point Ohio. Grew up there, went to school there and went from there to Bowling Green State University, my alma mater. And, so I'm very close and generally familiar with Cleveland and with the Cleveland community and really excited to be here, very excited to be in Cleveland and in charge of the Cleveland Schools.

Mr. Feagler: Now, when you grew up, what did you want to do? You said, when I grow up I want to be Superintendent of a public school system? What did you think?

Dr. Sanders: Well, when I grew up I really wanted to be an attorney, and as I went along, my older brother actually became a teacher. And, I really became very attracted to education and really, after about ninth grade, my freshman year at Sandusky High School, I decided to go into education. I always wanted to be a teacher, I never really wanted to be an administrator, but as my career blossomed a bit, I really became very involved in leadership and really evolved into basically where I am right now.

Mr. Feagler: Now, they're two entirely different things. Right, teaching and administrating. I know. A friend of mine is Michael Schwartz from Cleveland State University, and he quit his job for a while at Kent State as an administrator because he said I got into this to be a teacher, I don't want to go out raising money and doing that stuff. Then he got back into it, so that really is quite a dichotomy between being a teacher and an administrator.

Dr. Sanders: Well, there's the scope of responsibility in leadership and public accountability that is certainly much different. As a CEO of the Cleveland Schools, people will look to me for leadership, they will give me credit for when things are going well, probably too much credit, and they'll give me blame when things are not going well, and probably too much blame as well.

Mr. Feagler: You can count on the blame, I'll tell you that.

Dr. Sanders: I've heard that about Cleveland.

Mr. Feagler: But, go back again, you began by teaching?

Dr. Sanders: Yes, I began by teaching in Sandusky. I taught history, social studies, in Sandusky from about 1980 until 1984. From there, I went back to graduate school to my alma mater at Bowling Green, got a couple Master's Degrees, I worked in Oberlin, Ohio, home of Oberlin College, I worked at the high school there, great little town. Was there about three years.

Mr. Feagler: Still teaching?

Dr. Sanders: No, when I went to Oberlin, I actually went into administration for the first time. I was an Assistant Principal in charge of discipline, student attendance, and that was a very interesting experience.

Mr. Feagler: I bet it was.

Dr. Sanders: It was. A lot of great kids, a lot of, a really nice city, great support form the college there, and I spent three years there at Oberlin, then spent a couple years in Lorain, Ohio at Southview High School as an Assistant Principal again, and then I decided I really wanted to grow up, and I decided to go back to school and get my Doctorate in Education. Then I was going to sort of, maybe, go back into high school administration again, and then I got attracted to research and teaching at the university level. So for eight years, from 1992 until 2000, I actually spent eight years as a professor, Department Chair of the Doctoral Program in Leadership at Bowling Green.

Mr. Feagler: So what switched you off that track and into the real administrative track in Toledo? Do we go right from there to Toledo?

Dr. Sanders: I did. I had a very interesting job, but it typically doesn't happen to most of us administrators. I was a professor at the University, which was a great job. I taught a couple classes per week. I worked with students, I did research, and I wrote a book in 1999 on urban school leadership. And, so I really was starting to get into this professorial kind of pace. And then what happened, quite frankly, is I became the committee chair for the Search Committee for the Superintendent in Toledo. To make a long story short, they ended up asking me to take the job in Toledo, which I did. And, I was there from 2000 until 2006. So I spent six years there as a superintendent.

Mr. Feagler: So, you left your safe job as an "egghead", to go to Toledo and really get down and dirty in the urban schools.

Dr. Sanders: Well, I did. I really wanted to begin to try to marry theory and practice together. I really thought that this was a great opportunity to prove that academics really can be successful in a practical environment.

Mr. Feagler: Can they?

Dr. Sanders: Yes, we can. And we have. And I think I'm one of many examples around the nation where we've done that. While in Toledo, we became the highest performing urban district in Ohio.

Mr. Feagler: What does that mean, by the way? When I say the word "urban school", uh, I think to a lot of our viewers, that means they get a lot of blacks there. Is that what it means?

Dr. Sanders: In some cases it means that we have a very diverse environment. It typically means we have significant numbers in terms of size. So in most cases you're talking more than a few thousand students. You're talking maybe fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty thousand students in Ohio. But, you're really talking about diversity and you're also talking about socioeconomic conditions.

Mr. Feagler: Is it a pejorative? If I say "urban youth" is that a pejorative?

Dr. Sanders: Some might think so, I think when we say "urban youth" we're talking about kids who are a part of a large, metropolitan community that is diverse, that may have multiple languages, may have multiple constituent groups, and as a result, the dynamic of educating kids who are facing a variety of challenges, now becomes a little bit more of a challenge than having 95% of your student body coming from one racial or ethnic group. It makes the challenge much more challenging, but it doesn't mean our kids in an urban context cannot be successful.

Mr. Feagler: Well, I'm sure you've heard that this town is racially divided by the river, pretty much. It's beginning to go away, but for years it was east side, that means you've got a lot of black people, west side, you've got, you know, no black, a lot of white people. Now, of course, we're getting, broadening, the word that works to include other people, Latinos, and people like that. But, there has been in this town, always a feeling of separation between the races. Was it the same way in Toledo?

Dr. Sanders: I don't think, quite frankly, it was as descriptive.

Mr. Feagler: Number one, do you agree with what I've said?

Dr. Sanders: Well, I don't know if I can agree to it, I certainly have heard that description in the last thirty-two days I've known the job.

Mr. Feagler: You got to put your toe in the water first to find out, right?

Dr. Sanders: Well, I want to make my own assessments on all the conditions about Cleveland before I make any definitive statements about what is and what isn't. But clearly the history suggests that race and the river, east side to west side kind of scenario, has been a defining variable in a lot of decisions, whether it's educational or economics or any other kinds of major decisions over the last fifty years in the city. What I hope to bring to Cleveland is a world-class school system where our kids can compete in a global environment, not just Ohio anymore. What people don't realize, Dick, is that back in the old days, maybe students who graduated in 1950's or so, what that might mean is that kids can actually leave this high school and go to anywhere; a factory, go to a college, or what have you. And, probably have a pretty good chance at a really good lifestyle. Particularly those who were in manufacturing and other kinds of production oriented businesses. Well, this is 2006. Now we're into the age of technology, quite frankly, advanced technology. And, as a result, our kids have to be able to compete at a whole different level now. Because those jobs, my generation, I graduated from Sandusky in 1976, from high school. And, I think our generation was the last group of kids that could literally walk out of high school, go across the street to General Motors and Ford, and get a good job, and retire thirty-years later with a great home, with a pension and those kinds of things. And today's context is a much more global competitive environment. And so our kids from Cleveland now have to compete not just with kids from Columbus and Cincinnati, but from other parts of our nation, and quite frankly, other parts of the world.

Mr. Feagler: While we're sitting here, you graduated in '76, I graduated from John Adams High School in 1956, we're sitting here surrounded by this marvelous new building, which both of us, us "Adamites" really have a strong sense of togetherness, we're glad to see it. When I went to school here, I would guess for you, I haven't done the math and the statistics, that it was probably about maybe 65% white, 35% black. But it was mixed. I mean, everybody came together, people lived in separate neighborhoods, but they got together in school and went back again. What I think really was the death mill, for the kind of schools we used to have in the city, which were mixed schools, mixed race schools, was busing. I wonder what you feel about bussing. I happen to feel that it was a terrible remedy to a crime. A crime had been committed. The remedy was not, did not serve well, I believe. What do you think?

Dr. Sanders: Well, I have a couple perspectives on that. I think that the busing phenomenon nationwide really was met with a great deal of anxiety and frustration on both sides. Why should a family have to put their child on a bus at six in the morning to take a two-hour ride to get a good quality education? And, the other perspective is that why should kids on one side of the river, if you will, have a better quality instructor, or facility or technology, than kids on the other side? So I have some, I can see the issue from a historical point of view of a need to say, how can we kind of merge this together to give our kids an opportunity?

Mr. Feagler: But, there might have been other ways to do it. Magnet schools, for example, might have been a way.

Dr. Sanders: Well, I think the marketplace really can determine what happens in a school setting. In other words, magnate works well, because you attract a certain kind of kid, in a certain kind of context, in a certain kind of curriculum or certain kind of perspective. The real answer to educational challenges, whether it be busing or race or ethnic issues, really lies in the quality of education that we need to have in our schools. And, what this new high school gives students in the John Adams community and district-wide is a school facility that now is on par with any other quality high school in our state, or the nation.

Mr. Feagler: That's marvelous.

Dr. Sanders: And so, now, Dick, is the challenge of kids and parents and families, teachers and administrators, taking advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to have quality neighborhood schools where kids can go. I'm a little biased because I grew up and we went to a neighborhood school, the school was down the street, you live in that area, you went to that particular school and I got a great education in Sandusky, Ohio. So, the issue to me is not about having a certain race or ethnicity sitting next to you in the next seat, but having a quality instruction, having quality instruction.

Mr. Feagler: Sure. Which it was. The reason I, let me tell you why, because it seems to me, having gone to school here, having covered the schools here, that the busing thing really ruined the school system in this town. I'll tell you why. There was an awful lot of predictions about "white flight", the whites who leave. Nobody counted on "black flight". The blacks left too. They didn't want to send their kids across town to sit next to Johnny Jones, a white boy, and figured this is going to somehow rub magic off on him. So basically what happened back then was anybody with the means to leave town, left and went to suburban schools, which left the student body in the city, mainly coming from terribly poor homes, and I don't think the system has ever recovered from that.

Dr. Sanders: But, this has happened nationwide. The people choose schools primarily for the quality of education. But really people choose homes on the basis of the quality of life and schools become a bi-product of that. You show me a great neighborhood, and I'll show you a great school in that neighborhood. And, there are the reverse of that. You can have some very challenging neighborhoods and have a good quality school within it as well. And so, I think the issue here, from a historical point of view, is that, could there have been some different choices around bussing and Brown vs. Board from 1954 up until now? Perhaps there could have been. My introduction to the Cleveland community over the last thirty-two days says to me that the most pressing issue I see here is strong, quality education for a predominantly number of students who are from minority homes, who are from tough socioeconomic kinds of conditions. But, I say to you, and I say to the Cleveland community, this is our opportunity with these facilities, and with the teachers and parents working together, this is an opportunity. Education really is the great equalizer. And, without it, our opportunities at any kind of menial success is highly unlikely.

Mr. Feagler: You mentioned before that you spent some time studying, or enforcing, discipline. I keep hearing that one of the big problems in the Cleveland School System is discipline. It's a problem not just because it obviously is, kids can't learn if you're not disciplined, it's also a problem because there are a number of kids who want to learn and are distracted by those kids who don't, and who spoil it for the ones who do. How do you address such a problem?

Dr. Sanders: Well, I think . . .

Mr. Feagler: You can't raise them.

Dr. Sanders: Yeah, well I think that you have to do a couple of things. One is, we really need a very strong parent engagement base. Here's the bottom line, the most significant variable to impact student behavior, conduct and grades, are the dynamics that take place within the home. Go back to when you were in high school. And go back to the kind of engagement, or the kind of rules that you had to abide by when you got to school. Those rules were enforced at home and they were enforced at school as well. So, one of the things that we hope to bring to Cleveland is a very open policy with parent engagement and give our parents an opportunity to learn about the importance of school, to learn about the value that it can have to their children, and to also have policies and procedures that are consistently applied to students across the board. Now, I imagine if we went back to high school sometime ago, we'd find kids who also had challenges, whether it be discipline, or behavior.

Mr. Feagler: '56 Adams, right here they did.

Dr. Sanders: I would imagine . . .

Mr. Feagler: Sure, one day somebody pulled a knife on a kid with a gun right outside of homeroom. This is not new.

Dr. Sanders: Not in the 1950's?

Mr. Feagler: Oh yes. In the 1950's.

Dr. Sanders: Those were the "good old days".

Mr. Feagler: No, no, no.

Dr. Sanders: Everything was great back in the 1950's.

Mr. Feagler: This happened then. But what we had then, in the school, was a critical mass of school and teachers, of students and teachers who made up the culture of the school.

Dr. Sanders: Sure.

Mr. Feagler: I think that's what you have to have. Don't you? Is a critical mass of parents and students and teachers who make up the culture of the school.

Dr. Sanders: But if you go to any successful organization, whether it's a school or a business or a TV station, what you're going to find is highly dedicated people, who have a passion for what they do and a group of stakeholders, or shareholders if you will, who want to see this opportunity to engage with us as meaningful and productive. And so, there are several key pieces here. There are basically three key pieces. There's a home, there's a school, and there's a community. And when those three, what we had and what we now refer to as the "good old days", is the home, the school and the community, not necessarily communicating, but having a shared understanding and a shared vision about what we're trying to do. We call it critical mass now, we call it consensus now.

Mr. Feagler: That's what I called it. I think it's true.

Dr. Sanders: You can call it what you want to call it, but what has to happen is a clear understanding of what are we doing, how are we going to do it, and how are we going to evaluate what we're doing. And when everybody understands how those things work together, we have an opportunity. And I think, being here at your old high school, that's now a new high school, gives us, gives Clevelanders, a grand opportunity to access a great, quality education. I can assure you, teachers are going to be so excited to get in this building, parents are going to be very excited to have their kids go here, kids are going to be so very excited to be here. And, what we have to do, Dick, is capture this opportunity while people are excited, while there's energy and synergy and banners outside welcoming me, welcoming the school leaders here. You know, I saw banners saying "Welcome Back John Adams". People are excited again. You know? And so, how do we capitalize on that and not just in John Adams, but in every single school in our district. And that's what our biggest challenges is as we move forward.

Mr. Feagler: Our John Adams clan was a closely-knit clan. As I told you before we went on the air, our 50th anniversary this year, which is going to be fun and I'm sure we're going to come back and see the school again, be glad it's here. As a matter of fact, when they tore down the old one, I came up and got a brick from it. And when they announced they were going to build a new one, I brought the brick back. I said "please put it in" so I hope it's in there somewhere. But, let me ask you this, Dr. Sanders, I mean, I've done a lot of interviews with incoming school superintendents, too many. I remember the days when we used to have to pay them money to go away. That's when we had a school board; an elected school board, which was a terrible travesty of justice. And, it got . . .

Dr. Sanders: I think the current school board is outstanding, by the way. Should I mention that?

Mr. Feagler: I do too. Well, go ahead, and thinking back on what I said, an appointed school board, you think is better than an elected school board? Too much politics in an elected school board?

Dr. Sanders: Well, I think in certain context . . .

Mr. Feagler: What did you have in Toledo?

Dr. Sanders: We had an elected school board, but we had not gone to . . .

Mr. Feagler: And there was some politics, I read the clips.

Dr. Sanders: Imagine that, politics in education. I have a whole course in that at the university, you know. I think that given the context of where Cleveland was, given the 1990's, some of the financial and other kinds of challenges, the state takeover, I think there was a call for a dramatic governing structure, and the Mayor's role and the role of appointed board members, the board and this community, we need to be about education. We need to get rid of the drama and all of the extra-curriculars that go into our delivery of services to students and families. One of the reasons I think I was hired, in addition to being the best candidate, is that fact that my desire is to engage, not just our school board, but to get down to where it really makes a difference. And that's with parents and students and teachers. Teachers have the most dramatic ability to impact the lives of our kids. You still remember, I guarantee, you still remember your favorite teacher. You remember your favorite teacher from this very school.

Mr. Feagler: Oh yes, sure do.

Dr. Sanders: And it's been fifty years ago. Why do you remember her? Because she or he had a dramatic engagement with you that perhaps led you into your career or made you think about decisions you were making that impacted your life, for the rest of your life. That's the kind of . . .

Mr. Feagler: I've got to tell you this. My favorite schoolteachers from John Adams, I could name them, Elizabeth Herbert and Virginia Fallon, are far more memorable to me than anybody I encountered in college. Because, maybe they caught me at the right time in my life and were able to motivate me at the right time. That is so important.

Dr. Sanders: There's always a hook. And I still remember my favorite teachers from . . .

Mr. Feagler: Who was that?

Dr. Sanders: Mrs. Fronise was my favorite teacher in fourth grade.

Mr. Feagler: What'd she teach?

Dr. Sanders: Well, she was, back at that time, she was basically a general teacher, so she taught several subjects, math, science, and we stayed in the same class pretty much the whole day and went out for recess. What I remember most about her, she was very, very fair. Very fair, very kind, and the day she fell in the playground I was the only student who didn't laugh. I think she liked me a lot after that.

Mr. Feagler: Were you a straight "A" guy?

Dr. Sanders: No I wasn't. I didn't get to . . .

Mr. Feagler: What was your worst subject?

Dr. Sanders: Probably in high school, my mother will be able to recall all of my difficult subjects, but I would say probably biology and the sciences were my most difficult. I loved Social Studies, I liked English.

Mr. Feagler: How'd you do with math?

Dr. Sanders: I was pretty good with math. I did some algebra, did some geometry, in high school. Here's what I always tell folks, when I, from eight to ninth grade I had a little mix-up in my schedule. I actually got promoted to the accelerated classes at the high school.

Mr. Feagler: Was that good?

Dr. Sanders: Well, it was a wrong schedule for me. So the first day of school in high school, I go up to my classes, I don't recognize any of these kids. These kids are like really smart. Thick glasses, you know, pocket protectors, you know, that kind of thing. And so, I go to my counselor and I say, look, I'm in the wrong classes and the counselor says, no, no, you're in the right class. So, to make a long story short, a whole semester goes by and I start competing against these very highly skilled kids and I find out that I really can't compete at a very high level. And, by mid-semester, the counselor called me back and said, gee, you're in the wrong class, but I was doing okay.

Mr. Feagler: So it was good for you.

Dr. Sanders: It was excellent.

Mr. Feagler: Let me ask you this question. We've had quite a deceleration in the amount of vocational education in public school education the past couple of years. We have a program here in connection with Tri-C, which is pretty good, but is vocational education, is it still valuable?

Dr. Sanders: I think it is valuable. I think the school district has to offer a variety of choices. All kids are not going to go to college. Some kids want to go into trade schools and other types of post-secondary schools that are not your traditional mainstream college kind of thing. So I think schools have a responsibility to offer those kinds of options to kids. What has happened, though Dick, over the last twenty years that college has become the mantra for everyone, that, you're not of substance or value unless you go to college. And that's not necessarily true. But all kids, though, do need some form of post-secondary education. Whether it's a community college, whether it's a trade school, because the old days of being able to secure a manual related job, where you do the same thing, you punch the same button eight hours a day for thirty years, they're gone.

Mr. Feagler: They're gone. I'm still doing it.

Dr. Sanders: Some of us are still doing it, but for most of those are gone. And our kids have to have some kind of trained skill or some kind of professional ability to engage in our culture today to be successful.

Mr. Feagler: We're getting very short on time, but I want to ask you, and that means you have to be succinct.

Dr. Sanders: Okay. I'm a professor so you know I have a tendency . . .

Mr. Feagler: I know. What about the notion that the funding of education is totally screwball? I mean, the Supreme Court of Ohio issued an edict saying you've got to fix this and everybody ignored it. What do you feel about that?

Dr. Sanders: Well, we fought that, we've been fighting that battle for a long time. I think the next governor's race, the governor's race this fall will be a real determiner in how that issue will be addressed over the next several years. My basic position is . . .

Mr. Feagler: Will you be vocal in that, yourself, do you think? Can you be?

Dr. Sanders: I'm going to be vocal about Cleveland Metropolitan School District. That's what I'm going to be working on and I'm going to be engaged with our kids and our families on what I think matters most. Those issues will take care of themselves and in some cases, Dick, it doesn't matter who's in that office, but I do think from a financial perspective, there are significant inequalities and a district like ours in the, really on the short end of the stick.

Mr. Feagler: What's the very first thing you want to find out about this place?

Dr. Sanders: Well, I'm still trying to find out. I want to meet families, I want to meet students. I haven't had a good opportunity to do that just yet. I want to hear what their interests are, what their concerns are, before I put together any kind of plan about what needs to be done. I need to talk to real people. Not met all the big shots, or meeting all the big shots, I want to get to the little shots, the first-graders and fifth-graders to find out.

Mr. Feagler: We hope you have, number one, a very happy honeymoon.

Dr. Sanders: Thank you.

Mr. Feagler: And number two, we wish you good luck, because, we need it here. And thanks a lot for this interview today.

Dr. Sanders: Thank you, my pleasure. Nice to see you.

Mr. Feagler: Take care.

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