Alan Rosskamm

 

CEO of Breakthrough Schools

 

by Imari Bender, crew 6

 

 

Alan Rosskamm has enjoyed a lot of success in his career. His current job is being the CEO of Breakthrough Schools.  He manages nine Cleveland-area schools.  His goal is to create schools for children without proper education. He thinks every student deserves a quality education.

 

Rosskamm was born at Mount Sinai Hospital and raised in Cleveland Heights. He loves his hometown and is passionate about providing a quality education for every child in Cleveland. His favorite thing about Cleveland is the sports but his most favorite of all is all the new housing projects. “It occurred to me in my retirement that for some children . . . don’t have [good] opportunities because they don’t have a neighborhood quality school. That is why I work at Breakthrough, because every student deserves a quality education.”

 

After Alan Rosskamm graduated from college he had to make a hard decision. He had to choose whether his job was going to be an urban planner or to work in his family’s business.  He knew his family wanted him to join the business so he compromised and went to law school. “I didn’t follow my heart. I didn’t follow the money. I went down the middle to law school,” said Mr. Rosskamm. After working at a law firm for two years he joined his family’s business, JoAnn Fabrics.  He worked there for many years, and learned many lessons.

 

 Today he is now in a job he loves and will hopefully help Cleveland by being the CEO of Breakthrough Schools. Through this work he is helping children throughout Cleveland be able to attend a quality neighborhood school. He became interested in urban education back when he was in high school. There was a mentoring program with a Cleveland Public school. He would come down when he was a senior and worked with the freshman with reading and math. After he retired from his business career he remembered what he had learned from the mentoring program.  Mr. Rosskamm thought he was too young to retire and he wanted to start doing things for his community. As a result, he decided to find a way to renew his involvement with education. In 2009 he joined Breakthrough Schools in their mission to provide quality public schools for all students in Cleveland.

 

In his current job as the CEO of Breakthrough Schools, Alan Rosskamm believes that every student deserves a good education. Rosskamm’s job is to support the nine schools that are a part of the Breakthrough network. He tries to help with the business side of the schools. He makes sure all his employees have good insurance and the students have technology. “Breakthrough is like a support organization,” Rosskamm said. He supports great schools like CLA. This is also a benefit for Cleveland by making children’s educations better than before.

 

 Alan Rosskamm now serves 3000 students in the Cleveland area.  This is having a great impact on students’ educations. Over the next few years he is overseeing Breakthrough as they open new schools. One of Breakthrough’s schools will be an intergenerational school. He is also planning on opening up a new CLA in a few years. “Another part of my job is to have safe individual schools so that we can open up more excellent schools,” he said. He also thinks one of our jobs is to get the eighth graders ready to go to great high schools. Mr. Rosskamm explained, “We aren’t doing high schools ourselves but we want more and more 8th grade graduates going to high performing high schools”.

 

In 2020 Mr. Rosskamm hopes that he will have 20 schools in the Breakthrough network and serve 7,000 children. In four or five years he would like to think it is possible to make a Breakthrough high school.  If a Breakthrough high school would be created older students would be able to get the same quality of education like the younger children in the Breakthrough elementary and middle schools. He believes everyone deserves a great education, and is committed to providing this to all students in Cleveland.

 

Alan Rosskamm is an inspirational person. With being the CEO of Breakthrough Schools he can have a lot of impact on the students who attend Breakthrough schools. He believes that education is the key to the American dream. He explained why he is so passionate about improving education for all students saying, “We aren’t facing a legal battle with segregation but our lack of quality education is our civil right issue today.”