07/19/2026
I haven't been online much since the April 14th protest because of the retaliation our family has endured from the protest. Less than 24 hours after we publicly protested the district's failure to provide my children with a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services was at my doorstep. CMSD weaponized children's services to launch a coercive investigation against us. Rather than addressing the severe, systemic harm that educators at Riverside have subjected students to and answering the legal procedures our family rightfully requested, the district completely flipped the narrative, deflecting their own failures by accusing us of neglect.
This exhausting investigation wasted critical government resources that were desperately needed for actual vulnerable children elsewhere, all to intimidate a family standing up for their rights. Our family has since been fully cleared, and these malicious allegations were officially ruled unsubstantiated. We are back, we are not silenced, and we are not backing down.
Our family has had a hell of an experience trying to navigate the wreckage of the Cleveland school system, and I am constantly balancing how to expose this corruption while strictly respecting my children's privacy. I am a tenacious advocate for public education because of the dramatically better experience our children had at Newton D. Baker School of Arts compared to West Park Community Elementary School, a Constellation charter school. When our kids transitioned to Newton D. Baker School of Arts from West Park Community Elementary, I met incredible, dedicated CMSD educators. Since the school's closure, I have met even more amazing CMSD educators. I believe in CMSD educators so deeply that it compels me to fight every single day for them and for my children's right to a FAPE, even when that fight has had to happen behind closed doors. Unfortunately, our family's experience with the staff at Riverside was not just deeply troubling; it was outright disturbing. And rather than addressing the systemic issues, the district's response has been to shield the adults responsible instead of protecting the children in their care. But now that the malicious CPS case against us is officially closed, our public silence is over. My public advocacy is about to get much louder.
Because instead of receiving support, Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services put one of our kids in a much worse situation than he was in prior to their involvement, and as a direct result of their involvement. We have been completely forced out of the school district. CMSD and children's services backed us into a corner, explicitly threatening our family with court-ordered protective supervision unless we immediately removed our children from the district and placed them into a Catholic school or an online program. They used the threat of state intervention to force us to remove our children from the very public schools we fought to improve. Riverside and CMSD has continued to deny our family a 504 meeting to discuss the district's noncompliance with federal and state laws. They may have forced our children out of CMSD schools, but they will never silence our fight for their right to a public education. We will fight until our kids have an appropriate, accessible public school placement again.
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