CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland school district is asking parents and the public to lobby state officials to preserve some state funding of the city's school construction project.

District CEO Eric Gordon and Chief Operating Officer Pat Zohn used much of a community meeting Tuesday night at Gallagher Elementary School on the West Side to lay out details of the district's ongoing fight with the state over school construction costs.

See their presentation below.

They then urged the crowd of 50 parents, teachers and other residents to call their state legislators, the governor's office and the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC) - the state panel overseeing state-funded construction - to oppose a cap on state construction aid.

They even called on residents to attend an August 16 OFCC event in Independence and that board's regular quarterly meeting on October 25 in Columbus.

"The district cannot do this alone," Gordon said.

Joining in that call were Cleveland Teachers Union Vice President Tracy Raddich and City Councilman Matt Zone.

Raddich told residents that if people bombard their legislators and the governor's office with calls and letters, they can make this issue a priority.

Zone said residents should feel frustrated at the reduced state support of new schools in Cleveland.

"We're all a little disappointed with the news we received, but we're a little more enlightened and we'll go into advocacy mode," Zone said, pledging to rent a van or bus to take people to Columbus in October.

Though the district is promoting its series of nine meetings across the city as "community meetings to discuss plans for schools in your neighborhood," Tuesday's gathering had almost no discussion of what would happen to Gallagher or other nearby schools. There was only passing mention of enrollment and the need for new schools, while attention focused on the funding fight instead.

That complicated dispute centers on how much the state should contribute to Cleveland's school construction costs.

There's no argument over the biggest factor in construction funding: The state will continue paying 68 percent of all approved costs to build new schools in Cleveland, as it has done since 2001.

But the district and state cannot agree on what costs qualify and whether the state should pay the full bill for schools costing 12 to 14 percent more to build in Cleveland than in the rest of the state.

Neither the district or state has provided a clear breakdown of why costs in Cleveland should, or should not, be higher. But in the past, the state has adjusted its payments to match the higher costs here.

Now the OFCC wants to cap what it will pay, which would force the district to meet a lower budget or to cover extra costs on its own. Paying more, the district says, will eat quickly through the $200 million voters approved in 2014 to build new schools and will prevent as many as five promised schools from ever being built.

"The district cannot in good conscience essentially accept a deal that will cost us the schools that the state helped us plan to build and walk away from their responsibility," Zohn said Tuesday.

Gordon said that if the state covered costs as it has in the past, the district could finish its construction in a few years and stop bothering the state. Now it has to fight.

"We can make them uncomfortable enough that they take care of our kids," he said.

Construction that has started or is about to start at the following schools is not affected by this funding fight: Fullerton, Skyline/Sunbeam, Waverly, Rainey Harper, Eliot/Whitney Young, H.B. Booker and O.H. Perry elementary schools, plus the JFK and new West Side high schools.

But schools scheduled for work in the next two planned phases of construction could be.

Those include the Bolton, Case, Marion Sterling, Marion Seltzer, Joseph Gallagher, Douglas MacArthur and Valley View elementary schools, along with Lincoln-West High School, in the planned Segment 8.

Segment 9 schools include Clark, Denison, Iowa-Maple, Michael R. White and Tremont Montessori elementary schools.

Here are the remaining community meetings:

Central Neighborhood

Monday, June 18

Dike School of the Arts, 2501 East 61st St., Cleveland OH 44104

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Dike School of the Arts Marion-Sterling

Ohio City - Tremont Neighborhood

Tuesday, June 19

Tremont Montessori, 2409 West 10th St., Cleveland OH 44113

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Tremont Montessori

Fairfax Neighborhood

Wednesday, June 20

Bolton School, 9803 Quebec Ave., Cleveland OH 44106

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Bolton

Clark / Fulton Neighborhood

Thursday, June 21

Lincoln-West High School Campus, 3202 West 30th St., Cleveland OH 44109

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Clark School Lincoln-West School of Global Studies Lincoln-West School of Science & Health

Kamm's / Bellaire - Puritas Neighborhood

Monday, June 25

Douglas MacArthur Girls' Leadership Academy, 4401 Valleyside Road, Cleveland OH 44135

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Valley View Boys' Leadership Academy Douglas MacArthur Girls' Leadership Academy

Glenville Neighborhood

Tuesday, June 26

Michael R. White School, 1000 East 92nd St., Cleveland OH 44108

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Iowa-Maple Michael R. White

Hough Neighborhood

Wednesday, June 27

Case School, 4050 Superior Ave., Cleveland OH 44103

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Case

Brooklyn Centre Neighborhood

Thursday, June 28

Denison School, 3799 West 33rd St., Cleveland OH 44109

Discuss Master Plan updates for: Denison