Cleveland Public School Students

Wow Crowd at Foundation Meeting

Margaret Bernstein, The Plain Dealer

View full sizeMarvin Fong / The Plain Dealer

All the seniors from the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine will attend college.

CLEVELAND, Ohio, June 10 -- Cleveland Foundation leaders enlivened their annual meeting Tuesday at Severance Hall by spotlighting several examples of hope hewn from poverty.

President and Chief Executive Officer Ronald B. Richard said signs of success are sprouting for the 10 "innovation schools" his foundation has helped fund in the Cleveland school district in recent years.

He then wowed the crowd by telling them that 100 percent of seniors at the School of Science and Medicine on the John Hay campus have been accepted to four-year colleges.

The audience of about 600 cheered and some wiped away tears when nine John Hay youths in lab coats trooped on stage to announce, in confident voices, the colleges that accepted them and the scholarship dollars they won.

"Fixing America's failing public school systems is, at present, the single most important mission of our nation, and of our city," Richard said, to enthusiastic applause. "And for the Cleveland Foundation, it's priority No. 1."

He updated attendees on several other foundation projects, including the worker-owned Evergreen Cooperative in University Circle, which has created 38 jobs so far for Cleveland residents, with potential for 500 more.

Keynote speaker Lily Yeh, who transformed a poor Philadelphia community into a colorful arts village, said she was moved to hear of Cleveland's philanthropic activism. "It takes my breath away," she said.

Established in 1914, the Cleveland Foundation is the world's first community foundation. In 2009, it gave out $79 million in local grants for education, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, youth and human services and the arts.

Board Chairman David Goldberg said that after a difficult 2008, the foundation has rebounded financially and reclaimed its position as the nation's second-largest community foundation. Its assets stand at $1.8 billion, and are surging back after dropping to $1.6 billion in 2008, he said.

Nationally, grant dollars given out by community foundations fell by about 10 percent in 2009, but the Cleveland Foundation's grants dropped by less than 6 percent, he said.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mbernstein@plaind.com, 216-999-4876

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