John Zitzner

 

President of Friends of Breakthrough Schools

 

by Immanuel Gainer, crew 4

 

 

This amazingly accomplished man did a lot to make sure students in Cleveland could be something. This man went to college, got a business degree, started a company, sold it, and then started his own branch of schools. This man’s name is JOHN ZITZNER.

 

Zitzner, now 59, started his own software company, Bradley Company, and had been doing business with a company called XEROX. His company wasn’t doing so well; his net worth was going down drastically. At 5:03 p.m. on March 10, 1998, at 1300 East 9th Street on the 13th floor he sold his company to XEROX. Zitzner stayed at Xerox for a few years that he calls the “hangover period.” A good two years pass, and a 45-year-old Zitzner goes down to Florida to attend a conference for CEO’s who don’t know what to do with the rest of their lives. That’s where he meets Mariotti and his life changes forever. Mariotti, a big part of Zitzner’s inspiration, had been mugged by teenagers in New York City and responded by becoming a teacher. When Zitzner returned to Cleveland, he was determined to make a difference.

 

In 2002, Zitzner decided to start a program called E CITY, which stands for Entrepreneurship: connecting, inspiring and teaching youth. E CITY was a 70-hour program in which Zitzner and other volunteers teach Cleveland public-school students the basics of operating a business. That was Zitzner’s wake-up call. He was 45 years old and had never set foot in an urban school before. One afternoon as he was going to teach in a classroom that was supposed have 12 students and one teacher; instead there were three students and no teacher. That sparked the idea in his head - to start a school where he could have the kids for eight hours a day for five or four years and hopefully make a difference. Even though he knew nothing about starting a school, he just went for it. That was November of 2004.

 

During a meeting with then-CEO of the Cleveland Metropolitain School District, Barbra Byrd-Bennett, Zitzner told her they should start a school together called Entrepreneurship Middle School. Byrd-Bennett agreed that they would sponsor Zitzner’s charter school. Not knowing how to start a GREAT charter school, Zitzner contacted a group called Building Excellent Schools, located in Boston. They told him to visit 12 schools on the East Coast, and Zitzner says what he saw was phenomenal, and he said to himself, ‘We can do that in Cleveland.’ He went back to Cleveland and started talking about a place where all kids are going to go to college, a school where kids are 100% college bound.

Zitzner hired a head of school, who studied for one year at Building Excellent Schools, while Zitzner stayed in Cleveland gathering up the essentials to start a charter school. The first location for the school was on the fourth floor of the Shorebank building on 105th Street. Entrepreneurship Preparatory charter school opened in August of 2006 with 125 6th graders, and Zitzner considers it one of the best middle schools in the entire county.

 

Zitzner, however, desired an even bigger impact. In 2010, three charter-school models - Zitzner’s E Prep plus Citizens Academy and The Intergenerational School - joined forces. All three are highest-performing, non-selective, college-preparatory urban charter schools in Cleveland. Breakthrough Schools hopes to further Greater Cleveland’s transformation by providing distinctive school options for no fewer than 6,000 kids in 19 schools by 2019. They currently have nine schools serving more than 2,500 students throughout Cleveland. Zitzner serves as the President of the Friends of Breakthrough Schools, which encourages supporters to donate, advocate, and volunteer.