Is the Transformation Plan really helping our public schools?

As a concerned resident of Cleveland, I have been wondering how the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) will implement its transformation plan to improve our public schools. What criteria will they use to make their decisions and how will they get input from parents and students, about what they want to see happen? 

Any parent or student who has ideas should be able to  give their opinions at meetings or directly to the CMSD. It should be an open discussion, not a behind closed doors relationship with the Boston Consulting Group, "a global management consulting firm and the world's leading on business strategy," (http://www.bcg.com/).  Why did the CMSD hire a consulting firm, whose customers include: World Food Programme, News International Limited, and the Rockefeller Foundation?

How will working with the Boston Consulting Group help understand the needs of our inner city youths? How can a management consulting group instill goals and hopes in students who live in a city that is losing its residents, many of whom come from broken homes with no guiding parent?  What do they know about youths who might not have hope for the future? The way to help our schools is to help our students with better programs and teachers who care! Our students need vocational classes that augment regular classes, and a new guidance program where they can go for the support they might not be getting at home.

It seems that the CMSD is only helping itself, and its CEOs. How much is this costing? Couldn't the money have been better used to save our teachers jobs? Good teachers are losing their jobs, and teachers with less seniority are the first to be let go. Why? This is not the way to fix out school system. But it is the way to get the extra funding needed to pay the consulting group!  What is really going on here?

In any school system, every student needs to be given a chance to develop their skills. And the students who excel need to be encouraged, also. In my alma mater, Collinwood High School, an excellent teacher, Lynn Haney lost her job. She engaged English students to write for this paper, The Collinwood Observer."  What an excellent opportunity she gave to these students. Who will help them now? 

I personally had a chance to experience first hand the reasoning behind the CMSD's gathering of input from the community.  On May 18, 2010, Pat Henry Market Research held a focus group in Tower City, to "discuss the transformation plan recently announced by CEO Eugene Sanders for the Cleveland Public Schools..." and only 10 to 12 people could attend. Someone phoned me and I registered for the event, but later had to cancel, because there was no evening bus service, and I had no way to get home. So I had my sister sign up in my place. But on the day of the focus group, they would NOT let her sign in.  She was told they "had their quota." This was especially upsetting, because a few moments later, another woman arrived and was let in.  

The next day, I called Pat Henry Market Research, and spoke to a woman who declined to give her name, "that's our policy, my name is irrelevant," she said.  She did not give me a straight answer about what happened, and said they had enough people. This did not make any sense. 

When I wanted to know if the client conducting the focus group was the  Boston Consulting Group, she said "why are you asking these questions?"  And when I wanted to know where we could give our opinions, and she said "there are avenues through the school system to participate."  So I am now asking the CMSD, what avenues are available, how are they made known, and who is allowed to participate?

If only 10-12 people were allowed to attend the focus group, and if they were chosen from a list of previous focus group attendees, this does not seem like a fair representation of the city's population. It seems like selective listening.

If this is how our city's parents are treated by the Cleveland Metropolitan School System, how are the students being treated? How will the transformation plan help our students?  How will it help our schools?