When Equity Became a Brand: Shari Obrenski's Union Leadership Failures

 As both the President of the Cleveland Teachers Union and a member of CMSD's Equity Task Force, Shari Obrenski had a dual responsibility to protect the well-being of educators and to fight for real equity for students. But instead of using her position to prioritize what matters most,  safe, functional school buildings and equal access to basic resources,  she chose to champion equity training for professionals while ignoring the total absence of equity in the day-to-day lives of CMSD's children.

Let's be clear: equity doesn't begin with a seminar. It begins with a safe classroom. It begins with clean air, drinkable water, heat in the winter, and full, nutritious meals served with dignity in a cafeteria,  not cold food eaten from a Styrofoam tray on a kid's lap in a hallway. It begins with ensuring that every school,  not just a lucky few, has what students need to feel valued and supported.

Infrastructure is not secondary to equity, it is equity. But while schools literally fell apart around students and staff, Shari Obrenski stayed silent on the City of Cleveland's failure to inspect buildings as required by law. She never publicly questioned how conditions were allowed to deteriorate so badly under CMSD's watch, despite sitting on the very task force responsible for equity oversight.

Then, when the truth about school conditions became too obvious to hide, Shari didn't confront the district leadership or demand accountability from the city. No, she turned on school-level administrators and blamed them for the decay, calling for firings instead of structural reform. She scapegoated the few while shielding the powerful.

And in one of the most shameful moments of her leadership, Shari chose to side with CMSD executives, not the teachers she was elected to represent, when they voted to close a beloved neighborhood school. She backed the bureaucracy instead of the people. She stood for the system instead of standing up to it.

Equity should never have been a branding tool. It should have been the foundation. And for someone with influence in both the union and the district's equity apparatus to prioritize abstract education about equity over actual material equity for children is not just misguided, it's a betrayal.

Shari Obrenski had the power to demand real change, to elevate the voices of teachers and families, and to insist that every child in CMSD be treated with dignity. Instead, she helped launder a lie, that it's acceptable to educate professionals  about equity without delivering it.