CMS Paying The Piper With Pink Slips For Teachers
The bill for years of misprioritized spending at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools came due Tuesday night, paid in part with the prepping of pink slips for nearly 400 teachers and 164 instructional support staff.
The Board of Education with a 6-3 vote approved a set of guidelines that will be used as CMS implements a reduction in force (RIF) process to help close what district officials project to be upwards of a $100 million funding shortfall.
“To be clear, the only reason we have this item on our agenda is because we are inadequately funded, as my colleague, Coach White, adequately expressed,” School Board Chairman Eric Davis said. “That’s the only reason we’re having this discussion.”
Said board member Joe White: “Money is allocated to CMS. All we can spend is what other people allocate to us … Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has not cut its budget. Our budget has been cut by those who fund us.”
That, of course, would ultimately be the taxpayers, who according to Davis and White need to reach further into their pockets to save teachers.
Board member Kaye McGarry had a different take.
“With a $1.3 billion operating budget, we do have choices,” she said. “We can find that money in others way. We’ve chosen to hit our teachers.”
In the current-year budget, for example, CMS continues to fund its platinum-plated PR machine to the tune of about $1.8 million, staffed with a dozen employees that include an executive director, a director of strategic partnerships, three media relations supervisors, an administrative assistant, and a senior administrative secretary. CMS is also still spending about $3.5 million a year for administrative outposts in learning community zones.
According to school officials, the average savings achieved by cutting a teacher position is about $50,000. In that light, the district’s PR and administrative outpost budgets equate to roughly 106 teachers.
The total Superintendent’s Division portion of the budget, meanwhile, eats up about $21.3 million, which includes an Office of Accountability budget of $9.4 million staffed with 40 positions that include a chief officer, two executive directors, four directors, five coordinators, one project director, and three senior administrative secretaries.
The district’s Human Resources division’s budget rolls in at about $8.4 million, staffed with 90 employees that include a chief officer, five executive directors, four directors, 10 coordinators, 11 recruiters, 13 managers, and 16 customer service representatives.
But CMS is firing nearly 560 educators because, according to Davis and White, the district is underfunded.
McGarry, along with board members Richard McElrath and Joyce Waddell, voted against approving the layoff process. The state-mandated evaluation form used to gauge teacher performance as a basis for termination, McGarry said, is fatally flawed.
“I think it is a disservice for this board to take this document and say this is how we’re evaluating our teachers,” McGarry said. “It says nothing about did those kids learn in that classroom. Where does it say, ‘did you get academic achievement in that classroom?’”
The evaluation form instead uses broad criteria such whether teachers demonstrate leadership qualities; establish a respectful environment for a diverse student population; know the content they teach; facilitate learning for their students, and reflect on their teaching practice.
Other board members agreed the evaluation form was inadequate, but that its use was required by the state and that CMS’s timeline to kick-start the layoff process necessitated the board moving forward without delay. Non-tenured teachers must be notified of possible layoffs by May 15.
“Right now our staff is using the limited tools they have in their tool box,” said board member Trent Merchant, who opined that the layoff process was being done in a manner that was “as humane as possible.”
“Eighty-four percent of our budget is in people and the reality is, unfortunately, that we have to cut some of those people,” Merchant said. “And some of those people are good teachers.”
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