Ed Shed Moving Day
There’s been ambiguous talk popping up in media reports concerning possible moves by CMS to do something with its learning community outposts, those pricey offices scattered around the district that debuted as CMS’ answer to decentralization.
By most counts the district offices have been a flop, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and doing little to achieve the expressed goal of fostering closer ties to the community and transforming CMS into less of a monolithic monster of bureaucracy.
A complete guess on my part, but look for schools chief Peter Gorman to turn the negative into a perceived positive, with a call to consolidate some of the district offices as a cost-savings in this year’s budget. The timing is definitely ripe to pull off that type of face-saving PR stunt, with CMS scheduled next month to move most of its top brass currently encamped in the Ed Shed to offices on the fifth floor of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center.
Members of Gorman’s executive staff, their administrative assistants and executive coordinators, along with employees in CMS legal, communications, finance and board services departments – a total of nearly 50 folk – are making the move to the Government Center on April 26.
The possibility of sliding district office employees into the vacated confines of the Ed Shed is intriguing; the possibility of outright eliminating the extra layer of bureaucracy the outposts created in the first place even more so. How Gorman handles it would be a good indicator of how serious he is about trimming fat from the budget before threatening massive teacher layoffs, killing middle school athletics, and punishing students.
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