A scholarship fund needs accountability

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wrote a let ter this week to Terrance C.Z. Egger, the president and publisher of The Plain Dealer, about a city-funded scholarship fund. He sent copies to a group of people he addressed as friends.

In the absence of a meaningful mayoral re-election campaign or an opponent capable of evoking more than Jackson's yawn, the mayor's letter should be required reading for anyone who cares about the future of Cleveland and its leadership.

Candor and straight talk are Jackson hallmarks. This letter keeps with that tradition, and it sheds light on why Cleveland is dangerously close to becoming a third-rate city on Jackson's watch.

Next stop: Detroit.

In his letter, Jackson spotlights all of his undeniable earnestness and compassion for poor children while highlighting his inability to muster the creative desperation, genius and leadership to transform a dying city.

Jackson expresses his concern with the paper's recent coverage of a college scholarship fund that the mayor heavily supports. Jackson suggests that Plain Dealer coverage of the high dropout rate among recipients of Frank G. Jackson scholarships and the Cleveland Scholarships for Education and Training - including a column that I wrote last week - has been needlessly critical, uninformed and unappreciative of the student successes that the scholarships have already fostered.

"Your paper has suggested that I set a minimum GPA criterion to ensure what your paper defines as success. I will not do so. It reminds me of the times that I have been asked, Why are we spending this money on these children?' I will not set a minimum GPA for the [scholarship program] because I do not have any throwaway children. I will not say to any child that you are unworthy of an opportunity for higher education," Jackson says in the letter....