A missed deadline in 2022 means Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is missing out on $450,000 in federal grant money over three years, officials said this week.
The money is part of the McKinney-Vento program to assist students who are homeless or lack stable housing. Superintendent Crystal Hill and school board finance committee Chair Lisa Cline say the money would have gone toward administrative costs and did not reduce services to students.
“They have done a good job of making sure that services have continued, and in fact they have increased the services for the kids,” Cline said after Thursday’s meeting of the Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee. Hill’s staff provided answers to several questions Cline had posed about the grant error.
When WCNC broke the story about the error last week, CMS provided a one-paragraph statement that was short on details, including the amount of money involved, and did not respond to follow-up questions. At a Tuesday back-to-school news conference, Hill did respond to a question about the grant.
She said CMS applied for the McKinney-Vento “subgrant” in February of 2023, but it was due in fall of 2022.
“So when you talk about who’s to blame, ultimately we’re all responsible, right? But as a result, we had no awareness that the grant had not been submitted until about this time last year,” Hill said, adding that the error was discovered when Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight took the job.
Hill said the district had previously received about $75,000 a year through that program, but the new amount was $150,000 a year. The responses to Cline’s questions clarified that the span involved was three years, bringing the total to $450,000.
The finance committee report said the money had covered administrative salaries, professional development and bus fares to get students to school. Part of the McKinney-Vento program is ensuring that students can keep a stable school assignment even if they have to move, which can mean providing individual transportation to a school that’s far from the current residence. The report says the district used “carryover funds” from lapsed salaries to cover those costs.
“It was not a huge blow or a huge piece of, you know, it wasn’t a huge deal,” Hill said at the news briefing. The district’s total operating budget is about $2 billion a year.
Cline said that she’s glad Hill’s staff answered the questions “and have a plan to prevent this from happening again.”
