🧸 It's Care Bears Share Your Care Day. The multi-colored bears were created in 1981 by Cleveland-based American Greetings.

🌧️ Today's weather: Partly sunny then chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a high of 88 and a low of 70.

🎧 Sounds like: "Cornelia Street" by Taylor Swift.

Today's newsletter is 1,034 words — a 4-minute read.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is crossing its fingers that students and educators will adhere to its new AI policy safely and responsibly.

Why it matters: School officials and policymakers nationwide are grappling with AI's potential to simultaneously enhance and undermine learning.

• CMSD's new policy treads a fine line: embracing "AI literacy" while trying to prevent students from outsourcing learning itself.
• New York City, by contrast, last week imposed a one-year moratorium on generative AI through the eighth grade, arguing there isn't enough evidence yet that the technology benefits younger students.

Catch up quick: Ohio law required every public school district to adopt an AI policy by July 1.

• CMSD approved its version in June, closely following a state template designed to encourage AI integration while establishing safeguards around academic integrity, privacy and security.

Zoom in: "AI implementation shall be human-centered and shall empower students, educators, and communities," CMSD's policy reads.

• "It is a tool to support learning and teaching, not a substitute for student effort or the role of the educator."

Friction point: The policy prohibits students from submitting AI-generated work as their own, a rule that has becoming increasingly difficult to police in the age of sophisticated large language models.

Reality check: Students are already side-stepping the policy. One CMSD student described a popular use of AI to Signal Cleveland as a "study buddy, which can do your homework for you."

• Not help with your homework. Do it for you.

By the numbers: A recent study of nearly 27,000 middle and high school students in China found generative AI improved homework performance by 18% but reduced exam scores by 20%.

• "Our findings show that generative AI … has a substantial negative impact on student learning," researchers wrote.

Zoom out: That's precisely the concern driving New York's more restrictive experiment.

• Students "learn best when they are wrestling with hard problems, when they're getting it wrong, when they're trying again and finally getting it right," NYC schools chancellor Kamar Samuels recently said. "No app, chatbot, or algorithm can replicate that productive struggle for a child."

What's next: CMSD's policy calls for an ongoing AI workgroup to advise the district as the technology and research evolve.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's new Northeast Ohio mansion comes with something even their massive fortune can't easily buy elsewhere — a whole lot of house.

Why it matters: The couple's $5.35 million Bratenahl estate shows how much further luxury home dollars stretch in Cleveland than in some of America's priciest cities.

By the numbers: "Tayvis" paid about $253 per square foot for the roughly 21,000-square-foot mansion, which sits on 3.5 acres overlooking Lake Erie.

• The property includes eight bedrooms, a guest cottage, pool, sauna, wine cellar, home theater and five-car garage.

Here's what roughly $5 million will get elsewhere:

🗽 New York: A $5 million Gramercy penthouse in Manhattan has three bedrooms and 2,233 square feet — about one-tenth the size of the Bratenahl mansion.

• Swift owns several properties in New York and each is much smaller (yet way pricier) than the Northeast Ohio estate.

☀️ Los Angeles: A single-family home near the Sunset Strip, with three bedrooms, a pool and guest house, will run you around $5 million.

🏖️ Miami: A condo at the luxurious Paramount Miami Worldcenter offers four bedrooms at $5 million for 3,814 square feet. You could always rent it for around $40,000 a month.

🌬️ Chicago: $5 million gets you a six-bedroom mansion in the Windy City's Lincoln Park neighborhood.

🏙️ Pittsburgh: $5.35 million even buys substantially more house than roughly the same money buys in nearby Pittsburgh, where a $4.95 million custom home offers 7,849 square feet on 3 acres.

The bottom line: $5 million buys luxury almost anywhere. Around Cleveland, it can buy an estate.

🚨 The Toledo Blade will close at the end of 2026 if the newspaper's owners, Block Communications, can't find a buyer before then. (Toledo Blade)

🍕 Danny Boys pizza will open a downtown location in Playhouse Square early next year. (Cleveland Scene)

🏥 The Cleveland Clinic's proposed new emergency department on Cedar Avenue is projected to cost $230 million. (NEOtrans)

🎙️ Ideastream is bulking up its newsgathering force with a slew of editorial hires, including former Cleveland.com city hall reporter Sean McDonnell. (Instagram)

Nothing has improved my work and life more than my new operating philosophy: "Simplify," writes Axios co-founder Mike Allen.

• I've seen such a dramatic improvement at Axios, and in my personal life, that I co-wrote a new book explaining step by step how it works. It's called "Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less."

Why it matters: Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Roy Schwartz and I dig deep into real-world experience and science to show you why most people waste years of their lives doing needless stuff out of habit or inertia.

• You'll learn the three-step Simplify operating system we've personally stress-tested: Confront what you do, Delete what you shouldn't do, and Amplify what brings you joy and achievement.

"Simplify" is a method and a mindset — a set of power tools to help you kill complexity in your life and work so you can be happier and more productive.

• "Smart Brevity," our first book, was about simplifying how you communicate. "Simplify" extends that superpower to how you lead, manage, work and live.

Preorder "Simplify" today from a spot in your area like Mac's Backs-Books on Coventry or wherever you get your books.

🚘 Sam is staring a costly car repair in the face that's making him consider exploring the used car market, which he hears is as brutal as it's ever been.

• Let me know if you've had anything other than a crushing experience at a dealership recently.

👀 Troy can't stop watching the trailer for A24's "You Can See Everything," a surreal documentary about Elizabeth Holmes.

This newsletter was edited by Tyler Buchanan.