Jackson, school board switch course, name internal candidate Eric Gordon as new Cleveland schools CEO

A surprise announcement from Mayor Jackson and the Cleveland school board this morning: They've named Eric Gordon, the district's chief academic officer, as the new schools CEO.

The school board rejected the search committee's top three candidates, all from outside the district. They went back to Gordon, who had made the top nine, but not the final round of interviews.

Gordon, 40, is not the sort of leader who dominates a room. He's more the smart guy who writes the plan and carries it out. He played a major role in creating the academic transformation plan, the Cleveland schools' strategy for reforming itself. He worked his way up from school principal in the Toledo and Columbus areas.

I encountered Gordon several times while writing my profile of interim schools CEO Peter Raskind. It was clear that Raskind was relying on Gordon to bring him up to speed on the schools' key issues. Raskind played a substantial role in the CEO search, and I wouldn't be surprised if he spoke up for Gordon's talents when the front-runners came up short.

Clearly, Jackson and the school board were underwhelmed by the top three finalists. Patrick O'Donnell's Plain Dealer profiles of them made the dilemma clear. Grand Rapids, Mich. superintendent Bernard Taylor has gotten results and impressed his school board, but antagonized the local teachers' union. Chris Scott of Lowell, Mass. was the opposite, beloved by the union but on the outs with her board. Cheryl Atkinson was respected for steering the Lorain schools out of crisis, but the district had not made great progress on state report cards.

With those profiles in mind, maybe the move back to Gordon isn't such a surprise after all.

Update, 5:25 pm: Cleveland.com just posted a sharp article on Gordon's appointment. Patrick O'Donnell reports:
- Raskind was offered the permanent CEO job and turned it down.
- Gordon will get only a one-year contract. "I plan to earn my right to continue," he says.
- Teacher's union president's reaction to the choice: "Wow. Really?"
- Jackson calls Gordon an attractive choice "for what we need to do in a short period of time."
- The mayor predicts the district won't need serious cuts or a tax increase for another two years, thanks to Raskind's work.
- The school board thought the three finalists hadn't innovated much compared to the reforms Gordon has helped implement here.

Update, 6/9: Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O'Brien reacts with measured praise for Gordon, but predicts he'll eventually have to "execute a graceful exit" once the transformation plan "drifts into the rocks of union resistance and the shoals of student and parental apathy." O'Brien's advice for Greater Clevelanders is also rather cynical, but mostly wise: "Don't suspend your disbelief. School superintendents are not magicians." It's a good antidote to the savior/disappointment clichés that attach themselves to big-city school leaders.

To read Gordon's resume (as a pdf), click here. To read "Quick Fixer," my profile of interim CEO Peter Raskind, click here.

As district lays off 643 teachers, closes 7 schools, Raskind absorbs the anger

Last night, Peter Raskind did the job no one else would want. Facing a crowd of angry teachers, parents and students, the interim CEO asked the Cleveland school board to lay off 643 teachers and close seven schools. They did.

“These are very, very tough recommendations to address what is obviously a very, very tough and difficult situation,” the former National City CEO said.

When I wrote my profile of Raskind, “Quick Fixer,” for the April issue, he was still in the honeymoon phase of his job, forging goodwill. But when an interim CEO has five months to confront growing deficits, the honeymoon is short.

Now Raskind’s key transitional in the schools’ future becomes clear. It’s not just to apply his bank-CEO skills to find surgical, strategic cuts – though he’s done some of that, ending 50 administrators’ $500 car allowances and the practice of paying 29 supervisors’ share of their pension contributions. Raskind's temporary position gives him unusual freedom to confront the district’s financial dilemma and act.

The schools are caught in a fiscal vise, pressed by cuts in state aid on one side and a shrinking city on another: falling tax revenue, fewer students. The teacher’s union’s preferred answer, a new school levy, would likely fail at the polls. The union is worried about class sizes growing, and rightly so -- but with the district closing half-empty schools, it’s hard to doubt that it needs fewer teachers than it used to.

Raskind, who’s working for $1 and leaving this summer, can absorb the anger at last night’s meeting, deflecting it from the school board, Mayor Frank Jackson, and his future successor. His layoff and school-closing resolutions, adopted last night, didn’t just cite the $47 million deficit for the 2011-2012 school year, but also a cumulative $398 million deficit projected for the next three years.

So by confronting two or three years of deficits this spring, by absorbing the anger and taking it with him when he goes, he hopes to hand a manageable, right-sized district to the as-yet-unchosen new schools CEO. It’s a test of an unusual idea: that sometimes, some of a community’s problems are best solved by an outsider with nothing to lose.

Update, 4/7: Today's Plain Dealer has lots of details about the layoffs (the district has only 15 social workers, and they'll all be laid off? Really?). An editorial is mostly supportive of Raskind's cuts, but says he "must be far more transparent about the extent of cuts he's making to central office staff -- and more relentless about trimming that and other school overhead." He's promising deeper central office cuts by April 26.

Quick Fixer: my profile of Peter Raskind, interim schools CEO

Peter Raskind will only be CEO of the Cleveland schools until summer, but he wants to solve two years of budget troubles in the next three months.

Last night, Raskind proposed closing seven schools and laying off 650 teachers, part of his plan to manage the shrinking district. Facing a $47 million deficit, he wants to cut $74 million. He knows that a worse deficit is projected for 2012, and he wants to deal with it before he leaves.

Raskind, the last CEO of National City, says he learned lessons during the Cleveland bank’s decline that motivate him to bold action now. “It’s better to get out ahead of issues and confront them than hope they go away,” he told me recently. “Being proactive beats being defensive, even when it's painful.”

My profile of Raskind, “Quick Fixer,” appears in the April issue of Cleveland Magazine and is online now. The April issue is available in bookstores this week and will be on other newsstands by early April.

Most Clevelanders know Raskind as the CEO who took charge of National City just as its aggressive push to grow from hometown commercial bank to a leading national mortgage lender began to bear rotting fruit. Now Raskind has a chance to be known in Cleveland for something other than bank failure. He's taken on an unlikely second career as an interim CEO for troubled government agencies.

Last year, he stabilized the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and killed its grandiose $600 million relocation plan with a single, swift stroke. Now, after former schools CEO Eugene Sanders’ abrupt departure for Maui, Mayor Frank Jackson has asked Raskind to step in, tackle the deficit and advance the unfinished "transformation plan" to reform the schools.

The peculiar job of an interim CEO gives Raskind unusual freedom to act, without a career-minded leader’s caution. Sanders, faced with a similar deficit last year, closed 13 schools and balanced the budget, but didn’t push hard enough to prevent this year’s sequel.

Still, Raskind’s decisions are sure to provoke controversy. School closings change a neighborhood, and Raskind and the school board will likely hear from upset parents at community forums (pdf) next Tuesday and Wednesday. (Is Raskind “on the right track, or is there another way?” asks Dan Moulthrop on the Civic Commons web site.)

Raskind is also thinking about selling the district’s headquarters, the 1931 board of education building on East Sixth Street. Roldo Bartimole — blogging again after a long break — is upset, pointing out that selling the building would mess with Daniel Burnham’s 1903 Group Plan for the Malls and that public outcry nixed a plan to sell the building in the 1980s. It’s one example of the critical moment the school district faces and Raskind’s brief but key role in its future.

You can read my Raskind profile by clicking here. If you’d like to link to it, you can use this shortcut: tinyurl.com/CM-Raskind.