CLEVELAND - Supporters of the levy for Cleveland Public Schools are warning against laying off teachers, and a potential $50 million deficit. Over the weekend in an east side church basement, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers and concerned citizens met up for a voter registration drive. This group is part a coalition of local churches, synagogues and mosques in Cleveland trying to get voters to pass the Cleveland Municipal School District's levy on the November ballot.

An increase to Baltimore's bottle tax — the linchpin of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's plan to raise funds to renovate the city's decrepit school buildings — received preliminary approval from the City Council Monday, likely assuring the measure will become law.  The legislation would raise the tax on bottled beverages from 2 cents to 5 cents in July 2013. Supporters hailed the tax increase as a key step toward the biggest overhaul of city schools in decades.

Religious leaders joined hundreds of children and parents in a march around Baltimore's Inner Harbor on Thursday afternoon to protest Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's proposed budget cuts to after-school programs.  "Our children are our jewels, not the Inner Harbor," Bishop Douglas Miles, co-chair of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, said in front of the Baltimore Convention Center as children and parents cheered.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In its first major public action, Greater Cleveland Congregations, a newly formed coalition of churches, synagogues and mosques, is calling on the Cleveland school district to restore programs recently cut to save money.

Looming state budget cuts directed at Baltimore city’s school are facing strong resistance from the  Baltimore Education Coalition, a group of non-profits, churches and schools planning a major rally in Annapolis on February 28th.

The group’s main message is that, despite the way Gov. Martin O’Malley’s budget was initially framed, it does represent a significant slashing of the city’s school budget.

Contrary to both the prepackaged reports that some media outlets have produced and the myths created by the opponents of mayoral control, parents all across the city favor the mayor's role in leading the public schools. It is not news; this movement began nearly 20 years ago...

It is the single biggest project in the biggest school construction plan in the history of New York City: a $235 million campus of four schools, with a football field and basketball courts, to be built on old railyards in the South Bronx. Local groups that pushed for the plan cheered wildly when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg endorsed it two years ago.

But yesterday, the project, intended as a hallmark of the mayor’s effort to improve education in neighborhoods with historically lower-performing schools, was stalled by City Council members who said they wanted to force Mr. Bloomberg to give them a greater say in school admissions rules, especially for the dozens of small high schools he has created in recent years...

The sanctuary of a Northeast Baltimore church shook with applause yesterday as members from dozens of religious congregations demanded that children not be affected by the fiscal crisis in the city public schools, and that control of the system return to the city and its residents by 2006. "We demand that the children of Baltimore be held harmless," said the Rev. Stephen Tillette of Mount Zion United Methodist Church, one of several clergymen addressing the crowd of about 500 members of BUILD - Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development...