CMS Stonewallers
Board of Education member Kaye McGarry is accusing Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials and her own board colleagues of deliberately keeping the public in the dark about mounting security threats and violence in schools that is putting students at risk.
McGarry last month had requested a report on how significant shifts in student populations have impacted nearly a dozen schools that were closed and consolidated this year as part of the budget process.
The request was made in the wake of rampant chaos at Harding High that has included multiple fights, a gun threat that triggered a day-long lockdown of the school, a cancelled homecoming, and a rash of possibly gang-related graffiti, including one threatening message left earlier this week that tagged the campus with an ominous “R.I.P. Harding.”
The requested report was set to be received and reviewed at Wednesday night’s school board meeting. Instead, board vice chairman Tom Tate moved for the item to be pulled from the agenda and held for review until Dec. 13, when newly elected school board members would be in place to receive the information.
The board’s majority agreed; McGarry didn’t.
“Oh my heavens, let’s just sweep it under the rug,” she fumed. “We don’t want the public to know.”
This is nothing new for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, or McGarry. The at-large board member, who did not seek reelection and will leave the board next month, has a long history of trying to wrest important public information from the clinging and defensive hands of Ed Shed bureaucrats, who stonewall at every turn if the information being requested sheds even the slightest of negative light on CMS.
This week was no exception. CMS staff had the requested report ready, informed interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh, but McGarry – and by direct extension, the public – wasn’t being allowed to see it.
“There seems to be something disingenuous with this,” said McGarry, who protested that it wasn’t just potentially serious problems at Harding that needed addressed, but also other schools.
“A gang leader at North Meck that’s in the parking lot every day,” McGarry said. “Kids are scared. Parents are scared. You have West Mecklenburg High…”
At which point school board chairman Eric Davis abruptly cut McGarry off, lest anything else untoward slip.
“Ms. McGarry, those are not the schools who are affected by our school closings and that’s what this agenda item covers,” Davis scolded.
“I beg your pardon,” she countered, “but I think I have the floor.”
“Ms. McGarry, your comments have to be related to the agenda,” Davis lectured.
“We have things simmering in these schools and I think the board needs to know,” McGarry persisted. “We have information now that we’re deciding not to share with the public and the board, and I think we’re doing a disservice to Mecklenburg County.”
So what else is new? CMS hiding potentially troubling information and facts from the public is standard operating procedure.
PunditHouse has been trying for nearly three months to get CMS to release the district’s annual crime and violence statistics from the previous school year, information that has already been compiled, submitted to the state for review, and is now presumably sitting locked and guarded in a drawer down at CMS HQ.
CMS officials initially claimed they couldn’t release the information until the official report had been verified by the state. When it was clarified that the official state-verified report wasn’t being requested, but simply the raw data on violent and criminal incidents committed last year on CMS campuses – legally public information that CMS compiles on an ongoing basis – the response quickly morphed from “the information can’t be released” into “the requested information is not available.”
Which seemed odd, considering the same CMS officials had previously acknowledged the information was already compiled and had been submitted to the state.
So PunditHouse turned to some school board members for assistance and clarification. Trent Merchant requested the information from CMS staff; McGarry did likewise.
Nothing. Consider that for a moment: two school board members requested totally public information about crime and violence taking place in schools, information from last year that the school district has on hand, and were basically told to go pound sand.
CMS still hasn’t released the information. PunditHouse’s ongoing requests have repeatedly been met with the same terse response from CMS’s public (allegedly) information department: “As stated before, the information requested will be released once it becomes available. At this point, it is still unavailable.”
Maybe at some point it will be; who knows? Until then, recall that crime and violence skyrocketed during the 2009-10 school year, up 75 percent from the previous year: 169 assaults on school personnel; 40 sexual assaults; 543 cases of possession of a weapon (other than a firearm); 517 reports of drug possession; 35 assaults resulting in serious injury; 12 assaults involving the use of a weapon. And all of three expulsions.
Meanwhile, it’s been reported that police records show crime at Harding, including assault, drug possession and weapons violations, has more than doubled over the past year.
In that light, is it really any mystery why CMS officials and a majority of the school board are bent to delay release of a report on the status of Harding and other schools possibly trapped in similar dire straits?
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