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Last week felt like the end of Crystal Hill's honeymoon as superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
This time last year she was the new hire, admired by community leaders and preparing to open schools in America's 16th largest district.
Last Tuesday she faced an exhausting four-hour school board meeting that ended with the board unanimously shooting down her proposal to hastily relocate a struggling program for teens who are new to the United States. Board members said her plan made sense but her timing, less than two weeks before classes began, was unacceptable.
Worse: During that meeting board members' phones pinged with a news alert from WCNC, which was reporting that CMS had missed out on two years of grant money intended to serve students who lack stable housing because of "a paperwork error." Two board members told me that was the first they'd heard of it. I'm expecting to hear some tough questions at Thursday's school board finance committee meeting.
To be clear: I'm not saying Hill created these problems. And I'm definitely not saying it's time for the board to set that revolving door to the superintendency spinning again. Several members made a point of praising Hill for calling their attention to a potential problem with the newcomers' academy at Waddell High and letting them make the tough decision. And the grant problem may have originated before Hill and her leadership team took office.
But she does have to own the perplexing last-minute timing of the Waddell proposal and the poor communication on the grant mistake, which the district says it's known about for more than a year. Refusing to specify the amount of money involved while describing it as "0.0038% of our total budget" is just silly.
These aren't fatal errors. They're the stuff that happens when you run a huge school district.
Hill desperately wants to avoid distractions and focus on academics. But other things matter to people, and the leadership team is about to dive into one of the biggest challenges any district can face: reviewing student assignment. Getting that right lays the groundwork to enhance achievement, but our community doesn't agree on what getting it right looks like. And there's just no dodging the emotion and controversy that come with talking about boundaries and magnets and demographics.
Remember the SPUD formula?
Years ago CMS leaders used to talk about the SPUD formula for student assignment: Stability, proximity, utilization and diversity. I haven’t heard that acronym in years, but it’s a catchy way to remember the important — and often competing — priorities involved.
Utilization may be the least sexy part of that formula. It means trying to make sure the buildings and programs align with where students are. The district tries to avoid having empty classrooms in some buildings while others are ringed with trailers.
That’s harder than you might think. The small slice of assignment changes that are on tap for 2025-26 brought several reminders:
- In 2017, westside advocates pushed to get Bruns Avenue Elementary included in that year’s bond package. The board agreed, and this year a $49 million new building will open. It’s expected to have about 350 students in a building designed for up to 780. Hill has proposed expanding its attendance boundaries to pick up students from University Park and First Ward in 2025.
- CMS has spent or committed about $178 million to expand and upgrade the district’s three arts magnets — Northwest, First Ward and University Park — which will open in new configurations in 2025. All are expected to be well under capacity. Demand for arts programs has dropped off in recent years, and CMS now hopes the upgraded facilities will attract families back.
- CMS spent $13.6 million to add 20 classrooms to Davidson Elementary in 2019 and turn it into a K-8 school. That’s when district leaders were big on the combined elementary-middle school model. Last year the board voted to return the school to K-5 in 2025. Hill says she’s not a fan of K-8 schools that can’t offer all the electives and extracurricular activities that larger middle schools do. In 2025, the expanded Davidson Elementary will be at about 75% of its capacity. Bailey Middle, which is taking the 6-8 students from Davidson, will have 550 more students than it was designed to hold.
A lot of factors play in
The discussion of the proposed 2025 changes also reminded me that there's so much more in play with assignment decisions than just juggling the numbers.
For instance, there's history. Thelma Byers-Bailey, the board's longest-serving member, reminded the board that in 2010, facing the impact of The Great Recession, CMS made "what to me felt like a catastrophic decision" to close E.W. Waddell High School and convert it to a K-8 language immersion magnet.
"They just went through taking what felt like all of the schools that served my community and just shut them down because they didn't have enough students and it cost too much money," she said. Byers-Bailey was elected to represent west and southwest Charlotte in 2013.
In 2021 the language magnet moved into a new building, and CMS has struggled ever since to find the right use for Waddell. It spent $3.7 million to prepare the building for use as a magnet high school, but so far hasn't found magnet options that can attract students. Byers-Bailey said that history is why she wouldn't vote to pull the PACE Academy out of Waddell, even though "it doesn't make fiscal sense" to spend $2.8 million on an isolated program that's expected to open with fewer than 100 students.
"I had difficulty then and I have difficulty now making a decision based on how much it costs," she said, "when the students' lives are more important than the dollars we're going to spend."
And in the board's discussion of moving the secondary Montessori magnet program to Marie G. Davis in south Charlotte, board member Lenora Shipp mentioned the district's history of moving short-lived and unsuccessful programs in and out of that school, which is adjacent to a public housing development. "I just hope we're going to be able to do what is needed, for resources and staffing, so programs work," she said.
Hill and most of her top lieutenants are new to CMS. They'll need to navigate those kinds of landmines in the student assignment field, many of them created by broken promises and failed experiments in impoverished, largely Black neighborhoods.
Transportation matters, too. The district's commitment to a robust menu of school options has always demanded a huge fleet of buses. Last year, faced with a shortage of drivers, CMS stopped providing neighborhood bus stops for high school magnets. Those students had to get to and from "express stops" located at schools. Enrollment dropped at virtually all of those schools.
Board member Summer Nunn said transportation has to be "a major piece" of the upcoming assignment review. "Given the constraints within this county now, it's also impacting programs," she said.
So buckle up. A relatively new team of board members and administrators is about to jump into a tremendous challenge with high stakes for the entire community.
From the Department of Irony …
A few hours before Tuesday's school board meeting I did an "exit interview" with North Carolina Superintendent Catherine Truitt (more from that coming this week). She'll be around until the end of the year but I won't, so we scheduled our discussion early.
I asked her what it would take to break the pattern of racial disparities in academic performance that plays out in North Carolina and across the country. Truitt cited two things that are within the control of public schools: effective reading instruction and great principals.
"You have profiled one of our best and brightest leaders that I've come across in the last four years, and that's the Southwest Regional Principal of the Year, Dwight Thompson," she said.
Indeed, I spent quite a lot of time with Thompson for a series on the Renaissance West education village that ran last August. I wrote about his role in building a strong faculty and putting Renaissance West STEAM Academy, a high-poverty west Charlotte school, on a trajectory for success.
Truitt praised Thompson's work improving test scores, reducing suspensions and improving the school climate. "When you do those things, you provide the fuel that communities of color or high-poverty communities need to leverage an education to climb out of poverty," she said.
I pressed her: I've profiled quite a few superstar principals over the last 22 years. They often do amazing work wherever they land. But no superintendent I've seen has been able to replicate their results on the scale that's needed.
She agreed it's challenging. She noted that North Carolina public schools provide pay incentives for principals to take on challenging schools. But that can simply entice the best performers to switch schools, she said, "when really we need that stability."
Less than 12 hours later, Hill announced that she was transferring Principal Orlando Robinson from West Charlotte High to become principal of Renaissance West STEAM Academy. It wasn't spelled out, but I used my crack investigative skills to conclude that Thompson isn't coming back this year.
CMS confirmed that he's leaving the district in mid-September. Thompson told me he's not quite ready to talk about what's next, but I hope to learn more soon. I wish him luck. And I hope my successor on the beat doesn't have to report on a trend I've seen too often, where a school turnaround stalls when an exceptional leader departs.
Learn more about the state superintendent’s race
I've said it before, but the race for Truitt's successor has big stakes for North Carolina's public schools. If you're paying attention, it's impossible not to have a strong opinion about whether Republican Michele Morrow or Democrat Maurice "Mo" Green is more suited for the job. And if you're not paying attention, it's time to start.
We haven't yet succeeded in getting Morrow to make good on her promise to appear on Charlotte Talks, but she and Green both did interviews with WRAL's capitol bureau chief Laura Leslie. The station did a story, and also posted the full interviews with Green and Morrow.
And EdNC Editor Mebane Rash has posted a great roundup of information about the race, including opportunities to watch them face off in a couple of forums next month.
