The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education will hold an emergency virtual meeting Friday at 11:30 a.m. to consider modifying the academic calendar ahead of the planned rally for public school funding in Raleigh on May 1.
The meeting agenda doesn’t include the specific modification proposal, but a CMS spokesman notified WFAE about the meeting in response to questions about how the district is handling the rally. Other districts have modified their calendars to cancel classes and turn May 1 into a teacher workday to accommodate high numbers of leave requests from teachers hoping to participate.
That includes Triangle-area districts like Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, Durham Public Schools and Chatham County Schools, as well as Kannapolis City Schools near Charlotte.
According to numbers WFAE obtained in a public records request, as of Wednesday, there were 1,875 pending teacher absences for May 1. By comparison, there were 1,210 total teacher absences on May 1 of last year — meaning next Friday is already showing a 50% increase, not taking into account additional requests for time off or sick time that could come in the next week.
Some schools were already bracing for the impact of higher teacher absences. Ardrey Kell High School Principal Susan Nichols told staff in an email on Wednesday that she was pausing approval of any additional absence requests for May 1 due to the high volume of requests and limited availability of substitutes.
“This decision is being made out of concern for overall staffing and coverage in the building,” Nichols wrote. “I also need to ensure that we are able to provide appropriate instruction as well as adequate student supervision and safety throughout the day.”
The North Carolina Association of Educators is organizing next week’s “Kids Over Corporation” rally, which they say is meant to demand better school funding from the General Assembly, as North Carolina regularly ranks at or near the bottom of school funding and teacher pay rankings. That comes as the state still lacks a budget, is debating corporate tax cuts and in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling overturning the Leandro school funding decision.
The NCAE says thousands of educators, parents, students and other community members will participate.
Republican leaders have criticized the protest. A spokesperson for Phil Berger’s office told the News & Observer, “Changing a school calendar to capitulate to the far-left teachers union does nothing but harm the very students they claim to want to help.”
Not all school districts have supported the effort — the New Hanover County School Board voted down a proposal to turn May 1 into a teacher workday and dismissed the protest as “politically motivated.”
At an April 14 school board meeting, residents and teachers spoke during public comments, pushing on CMS to do more to advocate for better school funding amid a particularly tight budget cycle this year, driven by rising costs and uncertainty surrounding the lack of a state budget. Other school districts around the state are facing tighter-than-usual budget cycles.
“There is no way to stretch our budget to meaningfully address our problems,” said Rae LeGrone, a CMS teacher and member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators. “The source of and solution to these problems lie with Raleigh.”
Superintendent Crystal Hill has similarly called out inadequate state funding as the district has moved through the budget process. At the April 14 meeting, she said if the state were the sole source of funding, the district would only have 89% of its current teaching positions and 60% of its current instructional support positions — such as psychologists, counselors, media specialists and others.
“This is where I become very concerned, and candidly, frustrated, with the lack of funding that our state is providing,” Hill said.
