Breakthrough Schools play key role in The Cleveland Plan!

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer 4/29/12
by Patrick O’Donnell

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Charter schools were once the bad guys in the minds of school district officials, who considered them a horde of profiteers out to pillage students and dollars from traditional public schools.

Not anymore. At least not when it comes to the Cleveland school district and its chosen charter partner, Breakthrough Schools.

The group of six charter schools is the district’s model for a new educational order in Cleveland, one where the district sponsors new charters to help provide quality options for parents, creates partnerships with other successful charters and eventually shares property tax money with them.

It’s a model the Cleveland school district has been edging toward over the last several years and that will accelerate under the schools plan that district chief Eric Gordon and Mayor Frank Jackson have proposed to the state legislature.

Breakthrough, which has three flagship schools all rated Excellent or better on the state report cards – Entrepeneurship Preparatory School (E Prep), Citizens Academy and Intergenerational School – and three spinoffs too new to be rated, is poised to use that partnership with the district to expand aggressively. (con’t)

Read the full article – go to:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/04/breakthrough_charter_schools_p.html