2026 OSBA President · Princeton City Schools Board Member
Great Oaks Career Campuses Board Chair
For fifteen years, Mary Cleveland has sat at the board table — not as an observer, but as the person making the calls that shape what education looks like for tens of thousands of Ohio children. She built The Cleveland Way because she knows what most board members don't yet know, and she thinks that's a problem worth fixing.
"Too many board members walk into their first meeting with no map. I spent years figuring out how to govern well — and I kept thinking, someone should have handed me this. So I built it."
Began what would become one of the longest continuous tenures on a Southwest Ohio school board — three terms elected, serving as Board President for four years.
Served as Past President of the Southwest Ohio School Board Executive Committee, building relationships and advocacy capacity across the region's districts.
Took the chair at one of Ohio's premier career-technical education institutions — a role that deepened her conviction that CTE pathways are non-negotiable for student success.
Recognized statewide for exceptional leadership in career-technical education governance — one of the few board members honored for sustained CTE advocacy.
Elected to lead the Ohio School Boards Association — the organization representing all 700+ public school districts and over 1.7 million students in Ohio. The highest office in Ohio school board governance.
Mary's legal training and business education aren't credentials for a résumé — they're the tools she brings to every board table to read a contract, question a budget, and hold administrators accountable.
The gap between a well-governed school district and a struggling one isn't usually money or talent. It's knowledge. Board members — most of them volunteers, most of them parents — are asked to oversee billion-dollar budgets, negotiate superintendent contracts, and interpret education law, often with no training beyond a brief orientation.
Mary Cleveland spent fifteen years earning that knowledge the hard way: through contested elections, difficult budgets, legislation she had to fight or champion, and students she kept at the center of every vote. She built The Cleveland Way to compress that learning curve for every board member in Ohio — not as an abstraction, but as a practical toolkit grounded in real governance experience.
As 2026 OSBA President, she has the platform to change how Ohio school boards operate. The Cleveland Way is how she extends that reach beyond the boardroom.
That's not a mission statement. It's a plan.
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