Does this unpaid invoice reveal more financial issues at CMS?

A version of this story first appeared in WFAE Education Reporter James Farrell's weekly newsletter. Sign up here to get newsletters from WFAE straight to your inbox.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board meets today for the first time since Sept. 22, when it fired Superintendent Crystal Hill. The meeting will be noteworthy for a few reasons:

• It’ll be the first time we hear a report from Acting Superintendent Melissa Balknight since she announced her intention to stay on through the superintendent search process.
• It’ll be the first time the public will have a chance to offer comments since Hill’s firing. Petitions that call for board members’ resignations have gathered more than 1,500 signatures.
• The board is set to continue a conversation about the 18-page report on its two-month investigation of Hill. Board members started this conversation Sept. 22 but agreed to table it after some said they wanted more time.

I want to focus on a smaller item on the agenda: an item to approve an invoice for $13,375 to Runnvation LLC. It highlights yet another irregularity in a district grappling with questions over its finances.

Runnvation, LLC is a consulting firm that’s conducted the board’s leadership retreats in the past year. Public records show CMS has at least two active contracts with the company. One, $141,453 for leadership coaching, expires in December. The other, $48,340 for board retreats, expires in 2027.

The agenda item is unusual: The district’s chief finance officer, not the board, typically approves invoices for payment. But state law allows school boards to approve invoices that the chief finance officer has rejected. The item was initially on the consent agenda, a list of minor measures typically approved in one collective vote with no discussion. It was moved to the list of action items, which opens the door for board discussion and a separate vote.*

WBTV reported last month about $67,000 worth of unpaid invoices that Board Chair Dee Rankin said got lost in the shuffle of a transition to a new financial system. Emails from a public records request confirm that the $13,375 Runnvation invoice was one of them. They also reveal more details on why it and others weren’t paid.

Board Chief Finance Officer Kelly Kluttz notes in a Sept. 10 email to Hill that, after she raised concerns about the Poyner Spruill housing contract and the $30,000-per-month consulting fee (as Hill outlined in her memo), “several additional invoices have been submitted for Board Governance, Support and Operations.” Those invoices had no associated purchase order, which is typically required.

The invoices:

• NCCBSBM, $125
• NextRequest LLC, $15,953.52
• Poyner Spruill LLC, $30,000
• Alex Cason, $1,200
• Council of the Great City Schools, $1,995
• Runnvation LLC, $13,375
• Wireknot Productions, $2,775
• Wireknot Productions, $1,650

“In these cases, the services appear to have already been obtained and invoices have been submitted to finance without a purchase order,” Kluttz wrote. “That creates a compliance and internal-control issue, including concerns regarding applicable statutory purchasing requirements.”

She added that when a conflict or question arises on district administration finances, someone has to be given the authority to resolve it. But no such process exists for board expenses. Kluttz wrote that she wasn’t sure how to proceed. “We … need a clear process for resolving these exceptions,” she wrote. Without that, “I am not comfortable releasing the payments.”

Former board clerk Stacie Moseley responded to the email. Moseley explained that the board follows the same process as the finance team — but before services are rendered. That didn’t happen here, for three reasons:

• First, the board this year created a new budgeting system that separated the General Counsel budget and created a new Board Governance Support office. Moseley and other board staff experienced “significant delays in obtaining system access” and limited their “ability to process purchases and payments through the normal workflow.”
• Second, some of the expenditures occurred “during the transition between fiscal years, creating additional administrative challenges.” 
• Third, some vendors sent invoices to the email accounts of former legal employees — which meant the invoices were received late.

Remember, the board restructured its operations early this year, which, as I reported last week, has left vacant positions and raised questions from other board members. It’s not clear how directly those changes tie to this situation. I asked Rankin to confirm if the Runnvation invoice on the agenda was meant to address this situation and why the other invoices weren’t included. He hasn’t responded.

In any event, Moseley wrote that the outstanding invoices — with the exception of Poyner Spruill’s — “will require an exception process” that involves an official designated to approve future exceptions.

Rankin responded by agreeing with Moseley’s assessment. He added that the board chair would fill that role until the district filled the Board Governance Support Officer position — which Moseley had vacated.

“Once the position is filled, we will revisit our practice and adjust accordingly,” he wrote. Rankin sent the email before 8 a.m. on Sept. 23. He had been named board chair the previous evening.

The gaps in what we know about the school board investigation

A few more thoughts on the school board’s investigation into Hill: It’s important to parse the differences between the 18-page report and what we already knew.

The report offered few new details and didn’t outline the specific allegations against Hill. But here’s how it described them: “At a high level, the investigation examined concerns involving workplace culture, certain personnel decisions, the handling of vacant positions, and district contracting.”

The findings section of the report reiterates what Hill herself had already made clear in her interviews with me and Charlotte Talks last month: “The review did not find evidence of improper conduct by the Superintendent.”

Specifically, the board’s report notes it did not find conflicts of interest or improper activity related to contracting. But it found areas for improvement around “certain personnel decisions and how vacant positions and staffing resources are managed” and workplace culture. But that did not involve any of the superintendent’s supervision of departments that reported to her.

That stands out because Hill has said she was investigated for three things: conflicts of interest with contracting, a hostile work environment and misuse of federal funds. The board’s report does not explicitly mention that last one, though it’s possible the note about vacant positions and staffing resources could involve personnel paid for with federal funds. Hill told us the investigation did not substantiate any of that.

I was thinking about this after reading a report by Dedrick Russell of WBTV on a letter outlining the allegations that the school board sent to Hill. The letter reportedly cited a culture of fear and conflicts of interest, but it also alleged that two whistleblowers made claims about mismanaged funds in the Exceptional Children’s programs.

That included a $20 million unexplained deficit in the 2025-26 school year and a $2.4 million deficit in the pre-kindergarten program in the 2024-25 school year. That could certainly be considered a misuse of federal funds, as they pay for most of the programs.

Placed on leave

One last, small update: I filed a public records request in September for information that Hill, after her reinstatement in August, sent the board to authorize their release of her personnel information. Hill talked about it in her interview with me, noting she’d outlined specific personnel information that could be released “at any time.”

I thought that because she explicitly authorized its release, the district would make it public. But CMS seems to have disagreed. Last week, they denied the request.

*On Tuesday morning, the Runnvation LLC item was moved back to the consent agenda.