Amanda Merrell a senior producer for News 5 Cleveland.
CLEVELAND — The path to change often starts with a single idea. But having the right idea with no support to execute it won’t get you far. That’s where the Cleveland Leadership Center comes in. News 5’s Rob Powers got a firsthand look at how it’s helped bring positive change to our communities and how it plans to keep building on that momentum. And we’re following through with one Cleveland educator who’s hoping for a second grand prize.
“We’re trying to get a pipeline of diverse teachers,” she said. “It’s very difficult to hire teachers who look like our population of students.” She started a program called Read Like Me that brings high school students who are interested in teaching, into elementary school classrooms. “It’s an opportunity for individuals with ideas to improve our region to win seed money to bring their ideas to life,” she said. The annual pitch competition is now in its 10th year. Kidner won the competition with her Read Like Me idea in 2021. It earned her $5,000 in seed money to get started, which she grew into hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grants to keep the program running. That kind of continued growth is all part of the Accelerate process.
“Bridging the gap between our community members, our youth and their families and then the mental health services that are actually available,” she said of the program. Allen saw the benefit of the Accelerate process. Now, she helps other participants set themselves up for success. “A lot of our students are working still full-time while they’re in high school, so they’ve never benefited from this type of hand-up on this type of level and they’re just now starting to realize what a game changer this is going to be for them,” she said of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s Say Yes to Education initiative, which offers a path to free tuition. But Kidner wanted to do something to help more students achieve their dreams.
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