CHUH School Board Election 2011: School Board Member Eric Coble

Editor's Note: As part of Cleveland Heights Patch's , we will provide profiles of each of the candidates running for City Council and the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School Board. These profiles will offer biographical and issue-oriented details about each of the candidates to help you, the voters, make more-informed decisions at the ballot box. We also offer to record a short video of each candidate that will help you learn more about them, and a special Facebook page dedicated to elections coverage. The profiles are completed by candidates and run once a candidate has filed with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Stay tuned for more coverage of the election.

Name: 

Age: 43

Occupation: Playwright/Screenwriter

Education: B.A in English, Fort Lewis College, Colorado. M.F.A. in Acting, Ohio University, Ohio

Political Affiliation: Democrat

Office Sought: Cleveland Heights-University Heights School Board

Previous Political Office Sought or Held: I've been on the CH-UH School Board for the past four years.

Candidate Statement: Our schools are moving in the right direction, and we have the momentum and potential to continue this growth. Test scores are up, enrollment is up, we continue to win state and national awards, we've cut over $6 million from the budget in four years, stretched a three-year levy into four years, and now asking for  in over 30 years. We have found a creative, , and are working to have a in place very soon. The high school swimming pool is open to the public once again, and we hope to have more such opportunities for ALL members of our community to use our facilities.  Relations with local governments are much stronger than they were when I took office, and I've done my best to be extremely responsive to calls, emails, questions and concerns from the public. 

This wouldn't matter much if we weren't seeing strides made inside our classrooms. Two years ago we had one building ranked Effective; this year, we have , with another ranked Excellent With Distinction (and the high school was only two points away from being ranked Excellent as well). To continue to build on this progress, we’re taking many exciting steps to continue to improve performance. A few of the many changes: increased classroom time, strengthened focus on literacy in the first four years of schooling, doubling the Math and English class time in the middle schools, expanding our laptop initiative, and opening the new  for students who struggle to learn in a traditional classroom setting. More college-level courses are available every year, we plan to , and are creating the “pathways” program which lets students learn core curriculum in the way that most engages them personally (through the arts, through science, through international studies). 

And the district is doing all this with fewer operating dollars. So I feel we've accomplished a lot, but there’s still more to do. There is the  to complete that will affect our cities (and region, honestly) for decades to come. There are changes in every classroom from K-12 that have only begun, and I feel I owe it to the residents of University Heights and Cleveland Heights to see them through. 

Editor's Note: The profiles are completed by candidates and run once a candidate has filed with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.