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 don’t just report the initial story—we follow through to its conclusion. Read and watch our previous reporting on this story below and see more stories that we've followed through on here.
Sara Kidner is the principal at the John Marshall School of Civic and Business Leadership here in Cleveland. A few years back, she had an idea to solve a problem she was seeing in the city’s classrooms.
“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.
“We have a diverse group of students right up the street at John Marshall who come over, they read with students, they work in the classroom with them and it’s a paid internship opportunity,” she said. Students who complete the program can apply to John Carroll, which offers a full-ride scholarship for Read Like Me graduates who want to pursue education.
All of this started with a single idea that Kidner pitched at an event called Accelerate, run by the Cleveland Leadership Center. Brittany O’Connor is the VP and Regional Public Affairs Market Manager at Citizens, a primary sponsor of the Accelerate pitch competition.
“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.
“It’s about making connections and kind of helping them move on to the next opportunity,” O’Connor said. “They could be rolled over into a nonprofit program somewhere and we’ve seen that happen over the years.”
Rob spoke with Laylah Allen, who was a finalist in the 2021 competition. Her COPE Box program helps kids learn healthy coping skills for dealing with big feelings.
“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.
“I assist with the application process, I do assess those that apply to pitch in the competition and also assist with crafting the pitches that are coming behind me,” she said. This week, it’s time for the next round of ideas. Thursday, there will be 26 new pitches of ideas designed to transform our region, from people looking to make some real, positive change.
“These are regular people working their jobs that, many have a lived experience where they see some problem and they have ideas to address it,” O’Connor said. Kidner is one of those people. We spoke with her about Read Like Me after she won Accelerate in 2021. We also heard from her when she was noticing another problem in her classrooms back in 2019.
“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.
So, she’s returning to the Accelerate stage, hoping to expand on Read Like Me with a new idea to help first-generation college students stay in school. It would offer micro-grants to students who fall short when just a few thousand dollars could mean the difference between a degree and a dropout. Ideally, Kidner hopes this new idea will create a self-sustaining cycle of support.
“To make sure they persevere and can earn their degree and they can go on to be the next generation of mentors,” she said. Kidner will have some tough competition. But when everyone is competing to make our communities better, we all win, right?
“You’re just surrounded by people who want to do good and make things better and you can’t help feeling great being around people like that,” said O’Connor.
The 10th annual Accelerate: Citizens Make Change competition is on Thursday, Feb. 22. Judges will choose finalists in five categories who all win $2,000. The audience picks the $5,000 winner. If you want to have a say, there are walk-in tickets available. Learn more about the event here.
