Education

Updated to reflect Monday night's CMS board meeting.

Last week schools across North Carolina and South Carolina hummed with energy of students learning.

This morning every public school in North Carolina is closed as state and local officials hash out a strategy for keeping kids safe and educated during what could be a prolonged closure for coronavirus protection. The first steps were taken in a series of weekend meetings and phone conferences.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued an executive order Saturday closing all K-12 public schools in the state for at least two weeks and prohibiting gatherings of 100 or more people amid coronavirus concerns.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is moving up its spring break, but first, students and teachers are being told to report to school Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The school board made that decision during an emergency meeting Friday night, as they discussed how to respond to the coronavirus.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board voted Friday to move up spring break in hopes of buying time to prepare for possible longer closings.

Union County, Gaston County and Iredell-Statesville Schools have joined CMS in canceling or restricting field trips to slow the spread of coronavirus, as the World Health Organization declared the virus and disease it causes a pandemic.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has canceled all field trips and all staff travel outside of the county  as concerns about the coronavirus spread. 

Mecklenburg County is expanding pre-K to get 4-year-olds ready for kindergarten – but what about getting younger children ready for pre-K? A national program that’s moving into Charlotte does just that. 

Gun possession in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools spiked to 22 cases in 13 schools last school year, according to a report presented to the state Board of Education this week. And that’s not even counting a fatal shooting at Butler High in October 2018.

The North Carolina Board of Education approved five new charter schools Thursday — and two of them will be in Mecklenburg County.

Now’s the time of year when thousands of families are being turned away in charter school admission lotteries. So you might think new charter schools could sail to success. But one charter school veteran learned that’s not necessarily so.  

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board voted Tuesday to scale back the size of three new high schools that are part of a 2017 bond package. And CMS staff says there will still be a surplus of more than 4,000 high school seats when those new schools open.

This week Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools says it will provide details on cost overruns and changes to school bond projects – and will start laying the groundwork for a 2023 bond.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said fifth-graders got the questions about sexual orientation and gender identity, but a CMS official says fifth-graders only took the school climate survey without those questions.

Some Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools parents and teachers say they're concerned about a mandatory survey being given in class that asks students in grades 6-12 to list their sexual orientation and gender identity.

A growing number of North Carolina’s charter schools are setting aside seats for disadvantaged students in their fiercely competitive admission lotteries. It’s part of a $37 million push to make those schools more diverse.

If you think of public preschool as free child care for the poor, you’re behind the times … at least in Mecklenburg County.

The county has opened registration for next year’s Meck Pre-K classes, and some families making six-figure incomes are eligible for the free program.

What started about a year ago as a push for safer schools has turned into a war of words between Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Centegix, a company that sold the district a panic-alarm system. Caught in the middle are Mecklenburg taxpayers, students and CMS employees.

For the past two years, tension between the town of Matthews and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has threatened to upend the way new schools are built in Mecklenburg County. Those tensions were laid to rest this week with back-to-back votes in Matthews and Charlotte.