This article originally appeared in Ann Doss Helms' weekly education newsletter. To get the latest school news in your inbox first, sign up for our email newsletters here.
Thankfully, Charlotte’s light rail system has not experienced a literal train wreck. But the clichéd metaphor seems apt for the recent series of belated disclosures about problems with safety, maintenance and transparency in the city’s transit department.
John Lewis, CEO of the Charlotte Area Transit System, resigned in December without explanation. He quickly took a job with TransPro Consulting, which CATS had hired to track performance metrics and do an employee satisfaction survey. Well before the job switch, TransPro had touted Lewis as an executive inspired by his work with TransPro “to create a consistent culture that delivers industry-leading customer satisfaction.”
Those aren’t the words being used to describe CATS these days. Instead, interim CEO Brent Cagle, Mayor Vi Lyles and others have used the term “culture of silence” to describe the withholding of crucial information from supervising bodies and the public while Lewis was in charge.
We don’t know much about what led up to Lewis’s departure from CATS. North Carolina law says that when a public employee is fired, the former employer has to release a termination letter outlining the reasons. But when a person resigns, personnel records that might have documented problems remain confidential.
Charlotte Talks host Mike Collins and others have drawn parallels to the departure of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools superintendents Heath Morrison and Clayton Wilcox, who resigned under pressure with confidentiality agreements. In a must-listen interview last week, Lyles told Collins she wants to focus on the future of CATS, rather than answer questions about what went wrong in the past. She sounded a lot like school board leaders did when talking about the district’s churn in the top job.
But leadership problems don’t just vanish. In fact, within three years of Wilcox’s departure, CMS found itself doing the superintendent shuffle again. This time, Earnest Winston opted not to resign quietly, which pushed the board to demonstrate another approach. After voting to terminate Winston, the board also voted to release a job evaluation and investigative report that otherwise would have been protected under attorney-client and personnel privileges. State law allows that when disclosure is deemed essential to maintaining public confidence.
Now CMS is seeking a new superintendent and the city is seeking a new transit chief. And you can bet that candidates for both jobs are intensely concerned about what kind of culture they might be walking into. Public confidence — or lack thereof — is part of what will shape their chances of success.
As WFAE political reporter Steve Harrison wrote in his Friday newsletter, the Metropolitan Transit Commission now faces important questions about how deep an outside investigation of CATS will dig — and how much of that public officials will reveal to the public.
Transparency goes beyond leadership change
Last week brought another fascinating Charlotte Talks segment, this one on public transparency. It was based on an Axios Charlotte/WBTV report on ways the city of Charlotte leaves the press and the public in the dark. And while the city was on the hot seat again, the things they talked about apply to all sorts of public bodies.
For instance, in Fort Mill a group of parents concerned about reading instruction are trying to find out how much the school district has spent on material they consider misguided. When they filed a request for six years of invoices, they were told they’d have to pay more than $2,300 for the staff time required to produce that information. That’s legal, but it’s hardly conducive to public access.
Of course, this isn’t just a Charlotte thing. Pretty much every entity I’ve covered, worked for or volunteered with defaults to glossing over its own problems.
But in more than 40 years as a journalist, I’ve also encountered people who appreciate the “public” in public employment. They actually want others to understand what they do and how they do it. If there’s a problem with a request for information, they pick up the phone and talk through it, rather than hiding behind it.
We all need to keep pushing for elected leaders who embrace public access, reward employees who excel at it and step in when the people they hire fall short. Because we’re seeing how bad things can get when a culture of secrecy prevails.
Opportunity for Latino education leaders
When I attended last fall’s Latinx Education Summit in Guilford County, I was surprised not to see more people from the Charlotte area, given the large and vibrant community here. Now LatinxEd, an advocacy group based in Elon, has fellowship money available to expand its training and networking opportunities for youth, educators and other adults with cultural roots in Latin America and a passion for education.
Learn more here; applications are due April 23.
Wake school district restores pay for advanced degrees
Before 2013, North Carolina teachers were paid more if they had a master’s or other advanced degree. The General Assembly discontinued it for educators hired after that date, and teachers have been calling for its reinstatement ever since.
Last week the Wake County school board voted to use local money to put all educators with advanced degrees on the higher pay schedule. The district cited the need to compete for teachers in an environment where demand outstrips supply. It’s a safe bet that move will create some pressure for other districts to do the same.
CMS posts bell schedules for 2023-24
I remember scoffing when a former Observer colleague suggested a story on CMS bell schedules — the time when schools open and dismiss. It didn’t strike me as a significant policy issue.
But I’ve learned since then that parents care about bell schedules. Families spend a lot of time and energy trying to synchronize work and school hours, so changes are a major shakeup.
Last week CMS posted the 2023-24 schedule, with changes for six schools. One huge shift: Northwest School of the Arts, a 6-12 magnet currently starting classes at 9:15 a.m., will move to a 7:15 opening bell, joining most of the district’s high schools. Waddell, which is reopening as a magnet high school, and a new early college high school at Central Piedmont Community College’s uptown campus will also start at 7:15 a.m. and dismiss at 2:15 p.m.
Others seeing changes are Jay M. Robinson Middle (from an 8:15 start to 8 a.m.), Northridge Middle (from 8 to 9:15 a.m.), Pinewood Elementary (from 8 to 8:15 a.m.), South Pine Academy (to 9:15 to 8 a.m.) and Southwest Middle (from 8 to 9:15 a.m.).
CMS is also opening two elementary schools in east Charlotte, which have yet to be named. The one on The Plaza will hold classes from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the one on Farm Pond Lane will go from 9:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.
