Running for her second term on the Cleveland Heights-University Height Board of Education, Malia Lewis is a champion for those who do not always have a voice at the table. Malia believes in equal opportunity across the CH-UH district. She encourages the community to face and improve the achievement gap between minority and immigrant students and white students, and special ed students and regular ed students. During her first term on the Board, Malia has cut the district’s budget by a cumulative $5.2 million over three years, successfully negotiated a teacher’s union contract, and has continually served as the voice of CH-UH in Columbus, advocating tirelessly for the Fair School Funding Plan.

Malia and her wife chose Cleveland Heights 17 years ago because they found it to be a welcoming, diverse community in which to raise their adopted African-American children. Since then, Malia has been active in the district, including being a founding member of the Early Childhood for the Heights Organization (ECHO), serving as the Treasurer at each level, chairing the Career and Technical Education Working Group, helping to start the Many Villages tutoring program at Fairfax, and forming the Career and Technical Working Group (now Advocacy Group). In her own words, Malia is a “staunch supporter of public education as an institution: its embrace of all who enter, its responsibility to forge an engaged citizenry, its commitment to supporting each student’s specific needs, and its training of productive members of the economy.”