Cleveland Public Schools CEO Named Urban Educator of the Year

MIAMI, Oct. 20 – Chief Executive Officer Eric Gordon of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District tonight won 2016 Urban Educator of the Year honors at the Council of the Great City Schools’ 60th Annual Fall Conference here.

Nine big-city school superintendents competed for the nation’s highest honor for urban education leadership, recognizing in alternating years an outstanding superintendent and school board member from 70 or the largest urban public school systems in the country.

Urban school leaders recognized Gordon during the Council’s 27th Annual “Urban Educator of the Year” award banquet, where he received the prestigious Green-Garner Award by his peers.

Sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Council, Aramark K-12 Education and Scholastic, Inc., the top prize is presented each year in memory of Richard R. Green, the first African American chancellor of the New York City school system, and businessman Edward Garner, who served on the Denver school board.

Gordon took the reins of the Cleveland school district in 2011 – at a time when the 43,000 students he served lived in neighborhoods suffering from the worst economic decline in the region since the Great Depression. He made a commitment to the children and parents in the community to “do 10 times the work in half the time and do it twice as well.”

As the architect of “The Plan for Transforming Cleveland’s Schools,” the CEO has seen graduation rates increase, more and more families involved in their children’s schools, and an upturn in student enrollment for the first time in decades.

“Eric Gordon has made a profound difference in the lives of thousands of Cleveland’s students, helped propel a once-struggling school system forward, and significantly contributed to the future of the Great City of Cleveland. Well done, Eric Gordon,” says Council Executive Director Michael Casserly.

As the recipient of the 2016 Green-Garner Award, Gordon receives a $10,000 college scholarship to present to a student.

CMSD News Bureau

Resident of neighborhood since 1956. Worked on East 185th street since 1970.

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Volume 8, Issue 11, Posted 7:00 PM, 11.07.2016