The Cleveland Teachers Union is getting new leadership at a pivotal time, with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District in the midst of a major building consolidation plan that takes effect next school year.
Errol Savage, a school librarian who has worked at the district for 25 years, unseated Shari Obrenski, who has been president of the Cleveland Teachers Union since 2020. The vote Friday was 1,610 to 1,438, with about 75% of the roughly 4,000 educators who make up the union turning out to vote, Savage said Sunday.
"The members have spoken," Obrenski said in a statement Sunday. "I wish my opponent the best. It has been the honor of my lifetime to be the CTU president and to serve the members, children, and families of Cleveland."
Savage said he has worked at CMSD during challenging times in the past, including building closures in the early 2000s, and believes that experience will serve union members well.
"I think I've been through a lot of the issues that our regular members have been through, and the anxieties that many of them are feeling now, I lived as an experience. I was laid off for 11 months. I didn't have health care," he said. "I had to sub every day. You never knew where you were going to be or what you were gonna do. I didn't know when I was going to get recalled, when or if. So while I look forward to this with excitement and anticipation, I'm also well aware that there are some very real crises at hand."
Savage and Obrenski both have said they agree that consolidation is needed. The district says merging schools and closing buildings will save money and refocus resources at the buildings that remain. But both have also been critical of the roll-out of the plan.
Savage said teachers have not been involved enough with decisions about which schools will be closed and which will remain open next school year.
Savage also said the plan disproportionately impacts schools on the East Side.
"This is going to be a big change for parents that had neighborhood schools and now they're not going to have neighborhood schools. I don't think this was explained to the community or the parents, why this needed to happen," Savage said. "And I don't think the community or the parents that were alive, that had to live through the segregation era and the desegregation era, I don't think they were listened to. I think that was a mistake. I think we've got some fences to mend."
He said his immediate goal will be to work with the district to ensure the consolidation plan is not a "colossal failure." He also said he would prioritize listening to educators and the public's concerns about the district's operations.
Obrenski worked as a teacher at CMSD for 22 years prior to becoming the Cleveland Teachers Union president, and served in a variety of other roles with the union prior to that. She is also first vice president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and board chair for the North Shore Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO), according to the CTU website.
Savage will be sworn in on April 9.
