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CMS Rebuilding Public Trust One Closed Meeting At A Time

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In the breathless hype and hyperbole leading up to his arrival as new Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools superintendent, Heath “Pete Repeat” Morrison promised to regain public trust through honest and open communication. So naturally, one of his first so-called community meetings was held behind closed doors with ranking members of the local NAACP and the Black Political Caucus, sequestered from the media and any semblance of transparency or accountability.

In one fell swoop, Morrison managed to turn his vaunted listening-and-learning tour de force into a tour de farce. This from the uptown paper, which snapped up second-hand accounts of what went down behind the doors closed by Morrison & Co., including school board chair Ericka Ellis-Stewart, board member Joyce Waddell, local NAACP president Kojo Nantambu, and activists from advocacy groups MeckEd and Mecklenburg ACTS:

The meeting provided Morrison an early chance to start mending community rifts. The NAACP led protests against his predecessor, Peter Gorman, after decisions to close several majority-black schools and to use the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as a snow makeup day. Nantambu has been a frequent speaker at board meetings, sometimes calling CMS leadership racist.

“We still have strong feelings about the closings of inner-city schools,” community activist Anna Hood said after the meeting. She said Morrison will have to provide specifics, such as whether the closings really saved CMS money, to win trust.

Morrison said he agrees. He said he was there to listen and start a conversation, not to make promises about specific actions, such as reopening schools. But he said it makes sense to report on what was promised and what has been delivered before deciding the next steps.

Ellis-Stewart has also said she expects a report on schools that saw major changes because of closings and mergers. Those include eight pre-K-8 schools created by the closing of three large middle schools, and a new version of Harding High created after Waddell High closed.

If Morrison really thinks that meeting behind closed doors with aggressively liberal and perpetually aggrieved activists like Nantambu is the way “to start mending community rifts,” the new superintendent is in for a long, painfully hard learning curve that will leave him stuck in the role of permanent apologist, always one step behind whatever special interest group is demanding social justice as compensation for what its members perceive as racist affronts.

There’s no doubt CMS made wild cost-saving claims for closing schools – somewhere around $10 million in the first two years, if memory serves, and about $6 million every subsequent year. And the public absolutely should know if those projected savings are being delivered; but not to satisfy the demands of the NAACP and the Black Political Caucus, rather simply because taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for the district’s capital plan.

The NAACP’s teeth-gnashing and protesting notwithstanding, the fact is a majority of the shuttered schools were grossly under-utilized while struggling to educate students that were there, with fewer than half performing at or above grade level in several schools and only slightly better results at the rest. CMS’ aim, in addition to cost-savings, was that the newly merged facilities would help lower overall poverty levels at some of the most troubled schools with a goal of improving academic results.

Yet Nantambu and his crew of protestors charge racism as the reason for school closures. Is this the wholly irrational and misguided meme they were feeding Morrison, priming the pump for future demands to be met and grievances resolved to their satisfaction?

One can only guess, because the meeting was huddled behind closed doors. Which is a uniquely strange way to begin rebuilding public trust for a new superintendent who claims that as one of his main goals.

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