Above photos courtesy of Leah Szalai, Ph.D., president of Coach Sam’s Scholars
On Wednesday May 27, Coach Sam’s Scholars (CSS) will honor Third Federal Bank’s CEO Marc Stefanski at its 2026 Cleveland Legends celebration. The annual fundraising event for the nonprofit that provides free educational programming in Northeast Ohio will take place at Huntington Bank Field from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
CSS is named in honor of former Cleveland Browns Head Coach Sam Rutigliano, for his lifelong commitment to the education and wellbeing of his players and students.
According to Leah Szalai, Ph.D., president of the organization, the special evening is dedicated to celebrating leaders who have made a lasting impact on the community while raising critical funds to support the next generation of scholars.
In 2025, CSS implemented several new approaches to improve young students’ reading capabilities.
Designed to focus on developing the foundational literacy skills of children in first throuh fourth grades – considered the pivotal ages when students shift from learning to read to reading to learn – Coach Sam’s Scholars provides tutors to underserved students who are most in need of improving their reading skills.
All of the tutoring services the organization offers are driven by the fact that 92% of Cleveland’s fourth graders aren’t reading at grade level.
According to “The Nation’s Report Card” issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) on Jan. 24, 2025, Cleveland was ranked 24th for fourth and eighth grade reading out of 25 major cities across the U.S. The testing indicated that 8% of all Cleveland students scored proficient in reading.
“We know that students who aren’t reading by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school,” Szalai said. “That results in a whole host of downstream effects such as lower income, poorer health outcomes, higher chance of incarceration, so to have the opportunity to change our students’ life trajectories is amazing.”
On October 1, 2025, CSS premiered its new partnership with Children’s Hunger Alliance to overcome one of the most basic barriers to education many of their students face: hunger. The program enables CSS to provide after-school tutoring students with a complete, balanced and nutritious meal every day throughout the school year.
“We intended to provide something for them after school but our budget didn’t allow us more than just a granola bar, so this was an exciting partnership because we can give the kids a full meal,” Szalai said. “Some of the students have told our tutors they were starving because they hadn’t had breakfast or lunch, which was heartbreaking.”
CSS also has bins filled with granola bars and bags of Goldfish crackers to provide an additional food supplement for the students.
Changing their tutoring model
Another major change last fall saw CSS offering some of its tutoring programs during the school day rather than after school. The change arose from the decision by the financially strapped Cleveland Metropolitan School District to eliminate after-school programming.
Two years ago, CSS tutors were working in 14 schools, but that number dropped to four after CMSD eliminated after-school programs. The new model will allow them to increase the number of schools that participate, by offering in-school programming.
“Even trying to bring our programming at our expense into their schools, there are a lot of barriers in covering our costs,” said Kerry Rutigliano, Sam’s daughter and vice president, business development for CSS. “So, they’ve been receptive to our program, but they are also facing a financial crisis that is precluding them from having our programming in their school.”
Thus far, CSS has found there are benefits for everyone with the school day programming.
“It should help facilitate deeper learning, because the students’ school day is not stretched,” said Rutigliano, who has taught middle school and high school English in the Mayfield City Schools for nearly 30 years. “The kids are already there, and they’re not facing fatigue or other barriers that would prevent them from attending.”
Szalai explained that although CSS has always been an after-school program, they’re now considering making school-day tutoring the new flagship program and not doing as much after school. That model allows CSS to reach more students at a lower cost, a major consideration because finances are the group’s biggest limitation since it relies entirely on donations and grants for funding.
“With the school-day tutoring, we don’t have to provide as many hours,” she said. After-school programming is 10 hours a week because we also serve as childcare for the family, keeping the kids until 5:30 p.m., because most parents can’t pick up their kids at 4 o’clock if they work.”
Szalai added that they’re finding that the schools prefer it, too. In the past, they haven’t received a lot of requests for after-school tutoring but have already had two unsolicited requests by schools to add CSS tutoring during the day later this year.
New gamefied programming already demonstrating strong results
Another major change CSS rolled out last fall is an online teaching program they have licensed called Nessy.
“Our Nessy program uses the Science of Reading to help kids improve their literacy skills but in that fun game environment,” Szalai said. “That solidified the type of impact that we’ll have with this new software because the Science of Reading has dramatic results with improved literacy skills.”
According to Szalai, the Science of Reading improves reading skills significantly over alternative methods, and the program utilizes this research-backed method. She and Rutigliano cited this article in PBS Newshour about the success Mississippi has had with this method to radically improve its students’ reading scores.
Thanks to Nessy, CSS tutors have already seen dramatic improvements in their students.
“In just 13 days of programming, two students have already reached grade-level reading and/or spelling, and nearly 30% of others have improved by half a grade,” Szalai said. “Because students have been enrolling at different times over the past few weeks, we expect even stronger results as everyone gets into the routine and time spent in programming becomes more consistent across the board.”
Karl Lloyd, who is in his fourth year of tutoring for CSS at E. Prep Breakthrough Public School’s Midtown campus on East 36th Street in Cleveland, has seen the advancements in his after-school tutees that are the result of both the new meals program and Nessy.
“I like everything about Coach Sam’s Scholars,” he said. “The whole program is vital and important to the students and families and to the school districts and communities. It’s a necessity to help kids get to the next level academically.”
The importance of legacy
The CSS promotional brochure features a headshot of its namesake, Sam Rutigliano, now 94 and retired from public life.
The photo accompanies a letter from him about why he launched his literacy organization that reads in part: “When I think about what matters most in life, it’s not wins or records — it’s legacy. It’s what we leave behind for the next generation of learners. Years ago, I stood on the sidelines coaching the Cleveland Browns under stadium lights. Today, I stand beside children in Cleveland’s most underserved neighborhoods, fighting for the opportunities they deserve. “
Now his daughter Kerry continues to build on her father’s legacy that started when he co-founded the innovative Inner Circle Foundation for the Browns in the early 1980s with Dr. Greg Collins from the Cleveland Clinic. The entirely anonymous and volunteer participation program was designed to counsel and guide players who were experiencing the negative effects of substance use disorder.
In 2009, Rutigliano and Collins founded Coach Sam’s Scholars as an evolution of the successful Inner Circle to provide educational and social-emotional support to at-risk children through enhanced literacy skills. Ten years ago, Collins, who has since retired from the Clinic, asked Kerry Rutigliano to join the organization.
“I joined as a board member with natural kinship because as an English teacher, I understand and know firsthand the importance of reading just as a thoroughfare to facilitating critical learning and how it impacts students’ learning across every subject area,” she said.
Today, Kerry oversees CSS’ annual fundraising efforts that culminate every May with the Cleveland Legends event. Each year, the event honors a famous Cleveland athlete and a high school coach or well-known educator. Last year’s event was held at Drug Mart Club at Progressive Field and honored Guardians Manager Terry Francona. Previous winners include Cleveland Cavaliers star Austin Carr and Browns greats Clay Matthews, Doug Dieken, Dick Ambrose, Cleo Miller and Greg Pruitt.
According to Kerry, the goal for 2026 is to raise between $100,000 and $125,000 through the Legends event, along with about $60,000 to $70,000 for their summer golf outing and another $30,000 to $60,000 through their annual appeal.
“My long-range dream for Coach Sam’s Scholars would be for us to raise enough money to build it into a national program,” she said, possibly through the support of NFL teams in their cities. “We want it to be systemic, scalable and sustainable because, unfortunately, the literacy crisis is not exclusive to the Cleveland community.”
Partnership with two other youth-focused organizations
Working closely with one of their benefactors, Dan Dreiling, CSS participates in a community partnership with two other local, youth-focused organizations called CBA Partners. Dreiling, principal and co-owner of North Point Portfolio Managers in Cleveland, founded CBA by joining CSS with two other of his favorite nonprofits: She Elevates out of Canton, which empowers girls ages 10-15 with essential life skills, and First Tee – Cleveland, empowering kids and teens through golf.
“I’ve chosen to work with these three organizations that are serving similar populations because there’s a benefit of collaboration once they’re connected,” said Dreiling, who first got connected to CSS after meeting Sam Rutigliano in 2017.
He has since gone on to donate several gifts of $10,000 or more to support CSS’s work. In addition to his admiration for Coach Rutigliano and all he accomplished with the much celebrated Kardiac Kids, Dreiling recalled being highly impressed after observing CSS tutors interact with their students.
“I remember the smiles on the kids’ faces, the engagement in learning, which is one of the biggest obstacles in any learning opportunity,” he said. “They do a fantastic job engaging young people across the social-emotional learning spectrum, and for a variety of reasons, many of the kids they tutor don’t have a lot of strength of resources at home.”
For Kerry Rutigliano, everything comes back to the inspiration she and everyone involved draws from her father, Coach Sam.
“Our reason for being was born out of love and a commitment to children because we believe every child should have opportunities,” she concluded. “The heartbeat of the organization is a sample of what I saw in my dad’s life. He devoted almost 70 years to improve the lives of others through his talent in coaching, so to honor his legacy through supporting kids is all a reflection of his spirit.”
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