Two elected boards that shape public education in Mecklenburg County came together Monday in an effort to overcome past feuds and work together for children.
A four-hour joint meeting of Mecklenburg County Commissioners and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board covered such themes as making schools safer, getting more children into public prekindergarten, preparing a massive school bond plan for voter approval and making sure public money brings results for students.
The county is CMS’ second-biggest source of funding, after the state. Annual budget talks are traditionally contentious, with the school board asking for more than the county can provide without raising taxes or cutting other services. In 2021, the two boards went to formal mediation when commissioners voted to withhold $56 million from CMS, trying to compel the school board to produce a more detailed plan for academic progress.
“Trust has been one of the obvious problems between these two boards. There’s not a trust factor,” said Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell. She said the two bodies can move past that “if we can let go of some of the old grievances.”
The nine-member CMS board has five new members after November’s election, and the nine-member board of commissioners has one.
Signs of improvement
There were signs of a thaw. For the last couple of years, County Commission Chair George Dunlap had said the school board and former Superintendent Earnest Winston lacked a clear plan for helping more students succeed. After hearing a presentation on the board’s plan, which has been in progress for more than a year, Dunlap had a different concern Monday.
“With all the progress that the board has made, we’re now beginning to see the result,” Dunlap said. “I’m concerned with whether or not a new superintendent will come in and have the ability to change directions.”
The board fired Winston in April, and a search for his successor is getting underway. School board member Melissa Easley says she and her newly elected colleagues have no interest in scrapping the current approach.
“We are so on board with this,” she told commissioners. “And so when we start looking at a superintendent, if someone doesn’t want to follow that, then that’s not the right person for CMS.”
Not ambitious enough?
The plan sets a few key academic goals, covering measures such as scores on third-grade reading and Math I. The school board expects the superintendent and staff to report frequently on progress and adjust strategies as needed.
County Commissioner Pat Cotham said she’s concerned the goals are too low. For instance, one is to have 25% of high school students who take Math I earning college-and-career-ready scores by 2024.
“And I’m just concerned about the other 75%. What do we tell those parents?” she asked.
Several board members said they had to set realistic targets. Only 4.5% hit the Math I mark in 2021.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t exceed the goal, either,” said new school board member Dee Rankin. “Let’s remember that. That’s just a starting point.”
Safety and violence prevention
CMS officials told commissioners about efforts the district has made to prevent violence and keep guns out of schools, including the installation of walk-through body scanners in all middle, high and K-8 schools and the rollout of an anonymous threat reporting program for students. After a record-breaking 23 guns were confiscated at schools during the first semester of last year, only two have been detected so far this school year, CMS Police Chief Lisa Mangum said.
Tracie Campbell from the county’s Office of Violence Prevention talked about the county’s “The Way Forward” program, a public health approach to violence reduction that was unveiled in October. The goal is to reduce homicides and gun-related assaults by 10%.
She said two efforts to work with CMS are underway. A “Handle With Care” initiative would involve police confidentially identifying students who have been exposed to community violence and passing the word to schools if their parents consent.
“If that student seems to be overly distracted, having behavioral issues, as opposed to sending them to a principal’s office or somewhere for discipline, we will know that that student may need to have a referral for mental health or behavioral health services,” Campbell said.
The county also plans to create a youth advisory council on violence prevention, with representatives from all CMS middle and high schools. No timetable has been set for either project.
Prekindergarten access
Mecklenburg County families have access to three separate programs offering public pre-K: One run by the state, one by the county and one by CMS. Admission requirements are slightly different for each, based on family income and/or the child’s needs.
Combined, the programs can provide free pre-K for 6,500 4-year-olds, more than half the number of children who enter kindergarten in CMS each year. Experts say high-quality pre-K is an important step toward putting children on track for school success. But lately, CMS has struggled to fill its seats, with 900 spaces still open in mid-October.
Tim Gibbons, the county’s manager of early childhood initiatives, says he’s working with CMS to share data “to talk about how do we allocate our resources to make sure we have the widest reach within the community and put as much effort into getting into those high-needs areas to get those families where they’re at.”
Gibbons says CMS and the county are also lobbying state legislators to increase reimbursement for childcare centers that provide pre-K through the state program and to raise the family income cap for eligibility. Currently, it’s 75% of the state median income, or just over $53,000 for a family of three.
He said the biggest goal is to consolidate applications, creating “one point of access, one application for families for public pre-K in Mecklenburg County.”
That won’t be ready in 2023, he said, because there are so many regulations about sharing personal information. But the goal is to have it in place by 2024.
School bonds: Big ask coming
CMS is reviewing a list of 125 construction projects with a total cost of $5.2 billion at today’s rates. Early next year, the school board will decide what slice of that should be on a November bond referendum and take their plan to commissioners, who have authority over what goes on the ballot.
Commissioners raised some questions about specific projects. Dunlap warned them not to fixate on details of the CMS plan because that’s not the county’s responsibility.
“The ask … is going to be significant and it’s going to have a tremendous impact on this community for an extremely long period of time,” he said. “And we have to take into consideration the amount of growth we’ve seen and the amount of growth yet to come. Our responsibility is mainly adding our stamp of approval that we agree that we should fund X amount of dollars for this community.”
Budget battles ahead?
The two boards talked about what causes the perennial tension at budget time.
Dunlap said it’s frustrating when the county manager tells the superintendent how much additional tax revenue the county expects and CMS asks for all of it. The county has to save some of that for other county functions, he said, but commissioners are then criticized for failing to fully fund education.
Commissioner Mark Jerrell agreed. “We just have these conversations that just say, ‘Hey, fully fund, fully fund, fully fund.’ I think it just puts us in this contentious situation.”
Dashew said the board has “a duty to identify the need, even if the funding isn’t there to fully address the need.” And she said lobbying for more money isn’t always controlled by the school board; teachers and others may take that initiative.
“There’s a lot of independent thinkers in this community,” Dashew said.
Arthur Griffin, a former school board chair who’s the only new county commissioner, said he wants to see the school board explain clearly how increases in spending will improve results. For instance, he noted that CMS enrollment has been flat or decreased for several years while the county’s population has continued to grow.
“I mean, I would give $200 million if we were able to bring back our market share and there was academic excellence,” he said.
Dunlap said he considered Monday’s meeting a success and he hopes to have at least one more joint meeting before the 2023 budget talks begin.
