Six of nine seats on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education were up for grabs Tuesday. And the voters have spoken, choosing four new members.
Here’s what to make of this week’s election results.
Were there any surprises?
Yes and no. We always knew we’d have at least two new faces because two incumbents weren’t running. Longtime board member Thelma Byers-Bailey decided to call it quits and Shamaiye Haynes won her District 2 seat in west Charlotte. And then in south Charlotte, first-term incumbent Summer Nunn opted not to seek reelection. Anna London won that seat.
But two incumbents also lost. In north Mecklenburg’s District 1, Melissa Easley lost to newcomer Charlitta Hatch. And in District 5, which covers parts of south Charlotte and Matthews. Board Member Lisa Cline lost to newcomer Cynthia Stone, which was a bit of an upset.
Board Chair Stephanie Sneed was the only incumbent in a competitive race to keep her seat. Vice Chair Dee Rankin ran unopposed in District 3 and will keep his seat.
Have we ever seen this much turnover in one election cycle before?
Actually, yes. Three years ago, five new faces joined the board — including three who ousted incumbents. But before that, only two incumbents had lost in 20 years.
Factor in that only one out of three incumbents sought reelection in the 2023 race for the board’s at-large seats, and there’s been a lot of change on the CMS board in the last few years.
This year’s results are interesting, however, because CMS has recently boasted some significant academic gains and has had stable district leadership with a superintendent for the first time in a while.
Melissa Easley upset in District 1 — what happened?
There were definitely warning signs here for Easley — Hatch was really well funded. She raised more than $50,000, which was the most of any candidate by a long shot, and far more than what you typically see in a school board race. Easley, by comparison, only raised around $3,000.
Hatch also nabbed three major endorsements — the Mecklenburg County Democrats, the Black Political Caucus and the local teachers union. School board races are nominally nonpartisan, but in a year where so much of the city voted Democrat, the party endorsement helped Hatch. As Hatch noted in an interview after the election results, all the candidates who won had those three endorsements.
“The Democratic endorsement signaled — particularly where it ended up last night — that the state of public education is at risk, and our friends on the Republican side are supporting the dismantling of public education,” Hatch said.
Easley was also a Democrat, but despite being the incumbent, didn’t get the party’s nomination. She at times ruffled feathers — perhaps most notably over the summer, when she made a controversial post about Charlie Kirk’s murder that got national attention. That might have come into play, too.
What about the District 5 race, where Lisa Cline lost?
Even the nonpartisan school board race wasn’t spared from the blue wave that hit the city of Charlotte this week.
The candidates don’t have an R or a D next to their name on the ballot, but if you were at the polls, you probably saw the volunteers handing out the “blue ballots” and “red ballots” listing each party’s endorsed candidates.
Cline was the board’s only Republican, and she told me she really believes this “blue wave” played a role. She is a moderate who supports public education. She said she's disappointed the board won’t have a diversity of opinions anymore.
“I will share that I’m concerned that that won’t be the case,” Cline said in an interview this week. “That we will become stagnant in one point of view. And I will encourage the school board to make sure that ‘inclusivity’ also includes different opinions of thoughts.”
Cynthia Stone, who got the Democratic endorsement, also acknowledged she could have benefited from the Democratic swing.
“I do think people are ready for a change on a lot of levels,” Stone told WFAE. “I was able to do that in this district with, from the presidential results last year, we could see that some that went for Republicans in my district all supported Democrats, supported me.”
But Stone also credited her outreach efforts and her connections to the District 5 community.
What do we know about the four new faces, and what do these results mean for the board?
Charlitta Hatch is the city of Charlotte’s chief data and analytics officer. She’s talked about using her tech background to help with things like AI implementation and data analysis.
Shamaiye Haynes in District 2 is a longtime education activist who wants to increase family and community involvement in schools through what’s known as the “Community Schools Model.”
Stone is a retired teacher who wants more mental health resources and strategies to close achievement gaps.
And London is the president and CEO of Charlotte Works, the region’s workforce development board. She ran heavily on using her experience and connections to the business community to prepare students for life after graduation.
With this year’s election results, Nunn, Cline and Easley are all no longer on the board. That’s interesting because all three of those candidates voted against a controversial contract with SYDKIMYL, an educational consulting firm, earlier this year. Those board members questioned the firm’s efficacy, and Easley, specifically, questioned its ties to Raki McGregor — then a close advisor to superintendent Crystal Hill and husband to SYDKIMYL’s founder Kimberly McGregor.
Raki McGregor’s later support for Hatch and London stirred some controversy, with some suggesting it was political payback for Easley and Nunn voting against his wife’s contract (Nunn would go on to decline to seek reelection). McGregor has denied that the vote had anything to do with his support and CMS has defended SYDKIMYL, highlighting academic gains at the schools where the firm worked.
Ultimately, this controversy doesn’t seem to have swayed voters, even in the District 6 race, where candidate Toni Emehel campaigned heavily on London’s ties to McGregor (McGregor is the board chair for Charlotte Works). Emehel got the least number of votes out of the three candidates.
“I am grateful that I stayed above the noise and the distractions and the false narratives, but I welcome for anyone in District 6 who maybe didn’t get the chance to meet me on the campaign trail, didn’t get a chance to ask the hard questions — please, please, please come to me,” London told WFAE in an interview after the election. “I would love to have conversations, I would love to answer their questions — even the tough questions. That’s what this is all about. I am a public servant.”
Cline, Nunn and Easley also notably voted in the minority against last year’s budget, pushing the district to seek a higher teacher salary supplement from Mecklenburg County.
