Students at West Mecklenburg High School staged a walkout last month, protesting what they say are persistent sanitation and maintenance issues at one of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ older facilities.
Social media video from Feb. 18 shows dozens of students standing and talking outside West Mecklenburg High School, having just walked out of class in protest. Junior Raina Hubbard was one of them. She described the walkout as the result of building frustration from students about the conditions of their school — conditions that have become "an everyday thing.”
“It’s normal, students or anybody would just get tired of it," Hubbard said.
A letter circulating online, addressed to West Mecklenburg Principal Casimir Bundrick, lists the concerns: seldom-cleaned bathrooms with stalls that don’t lock and no mirrors, a lack of support for non-English speakers, and a poor selection of extracurricular activities. The students have other requests as well — like access to microwaves so students can heat up the lunches they bring from home.
But the cleanliness of the school remains one of the biggest concerns, said Shernelle Gil, a 10th grader at West Mecklenburg who is involved in student government. She said the school doesn’t have enough custodians to keep up with the needs.
“There’s moldy floors, there’s tiles that are broken and there’s like, water damage," Gil said. "Like many times in the school year, like toilets get flooded, hallways get flooded, and it’s just not a sanitary environment.”
Gil didn’t participate in the walkout, but she said the conditions at her school have long concerned her. The school environment isn’t conducive to learning, she said. Gil was surprised to see students organizing an effort to fix the problems — she’s never seen any sort of response like that before.
“I think that, especially with the kids being again economically disadvantaged and minorities, we’re kind of used to this," Gil said. "Especially from like our middle school, elementary schools — It’s not that different, I’d say. So we’ve all just grown accustomed to the lifestyle, and I’m glad someone started the conversation that this actually is not normal for many kids our age.”
West Mecklenburg High School is an older building, dating to 1951. Black and Hispanic students make up close to 90% of the school’s population, according to last month’s membership data. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly all students are eligible to receive free and reduced lunch.
West Meck last received an update in 2021, when it opened a new gymnasium as part of the district’s 2017 bond.
In a statement to families after the walkout, Bundrick thanked students for keeping it peaceful and brief. He said the school respects “the rights of our students to advocate for causes that are important to them.” CMS didn’t respond to a request to learn more about district plans to address student concerns.
Hubbard, the 11th grader who participated in the walkout, acknowledged that students have a role to play in improving the school by working to keep it clean. But she said she hopes CMS administration will work with students to fix some of the longstanding maintenance problems.
“The ultimate outcome I’d see is all of us — students, teachers, administrators, people from outside our school that helped us — all of us, [making] a change to the school," she said. "All of us can contribute too, let's say, to the cleanliness of the school, or I'll say the academic programs of the school."
Ada Esther Gil Jimenez — Shernelle Gil’s mom — told me she was happy to see students taking a stand for fairness.
While Shernelle has found success at the school, her mom worries about other students who don’t have the same support systems to help.
“What about those kids that don’t know any better?" she said. "They think that this is it because there are not extra resources for them to understand, ‘Hey, I can actually follow a different pattern. I need to do things differently if I want to be able to get out of this generational thing that, you know, has stopped my family from growing.’”
Gil Jimenez said West Mecklenburg has some great teachers and that the problems don't entirely fall on the leadership at the school. It’s a broader problem, she argued, and the West Charlotte area is often shortchanged.
She and Shernelle have both seen the differences between West Mecklenburg High School and other schools across Charlotte.
Shernelle attended Northwest School of the Arts, a magnet school, during her middle school years before changes in transportation options forced her to go to West Meck.
Maybe, she argues, if students can start a conversation, real change could follow.
