School Board Powder Keg
Hundreds of angry parents turned out for Tuesday night’s school board meeting, which devolved into a chaotic protest of the district’s plans to close nearly a dozen schools and ended with the arrest of the local NAACP president and a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher.
The main source of frustration for many parents and community leaders from the city’s Westside who showed up en masse: plans to close three high-poverty, low-performing middle schools with large majorities of black students – Wilson, Bishop Spaugh and J.T. Williams – while converting eight elementary schools into Pre-K through eighth grade facilities: Ashley Park, Berryhill, Bruns Avenue, Walter G. Byers, Druid Hills, Reid Park, Thomasboro and Westerly Hills.
Also drawing fire Tuesday night: a proposal to close University Park Creative Arts elementary magnet and consolidate it with First Ward Creative Arts, which would become a year-round school. Irwin Avenue elementary is also planned for closure, with its students scattered to other schools, while Villa Heights magnet would be consolidated with Lincoln Heights magnet.
The proposed changes are part and parcel of CMS’ latest plans for school closings, consolidations, boundary changes, and other assorted upheaval, which district leaders say will save $3.3 million next year and $6.2 million in its second year.
Tuesday night, it bought them little but tumult. The evening started mild enough, with parents and community leaders participating in talk-and-listen sessions in rooms scattered throughout the Government Center. The talk-and-listen, however, changed to shout-and-protest when the scene move into the school board’s main meeting chamber, where hundreds of parents waved signs supporting their schools and roundly lambasted school board members.
“We should not be sitting here trying to negotiate our children’s future,” a parent scolded the board. “What future will they have if you take out the whole west side? You don’t want us to come to your home and tell you where your children have to go to school.”
A student from University Park put it more succinctly: “The people on the board are treating us like rag dolls.”
Tensions that bubbled for nearly two hours during the public forum boiled over into overt bedlam when school board members tried to draw it to a close and start their regularly scheduled meeting.
Kojo Nantambu, president of the local NAACP, led a raucous chant of, “We want more time!” as the crowd grew increasingly chaotic. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers and CMS security ultimately had to clear the scene. Nantambu was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct. Hans Plotseneder, a CMS teacher and former school board candidate, was charged with trespassing when he refused to leave.
The high tension and heated dissent mirrored similar emotions that spilled over last week during a community forum at Hopewell High School, where scores of parents turned out to protest school-closing plans that would impact north Mecklenburg. While no arrests were made at that public forum, the anger and frustration with CMS’ plans was equally evident.
CMS has scheduled a series of community forums where people can weigh in on the proposals, which are slated to come to a vote before the school board in early November.
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