Gorman and School Board Flying High

Eyebrows were raised last December when the C.D. Spangler Foundation gave Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman a quarter-million-dollar gift, with the money to be used for Gorman’s “personal growth and development,” or as he saw fit to help the district.

Maybe Gorman should use some of the loot to pay for flying lessons. The skill would have come in handy during the most recently completed school year, when from September 2008 to June 2009, Gorman crisscrossed the country nearly a dozen times on his way to and from various conferences and seminars, while fretting a budget that triggered hundreds of teacher layoffs and cuts to classrooms back home.

Last January and February alone Gorman racked up enough frequent flyer miles to make an eagle envious, with a two-day trip to attend the Broad Superintendents Retreat in Scottsdale, Arizona; a one-day jaunt to Chicago for a Gates Foundation conference; and a four-day stay in San Francisco for a gathering of the American Association of School Administrators.

Taxpayers can take some solace that private money paid the freight for most of Gorman’s adventures last year. The Gates Foundation and the Broad Institute, for example, picked up the tabs for Gorman to attend their functions, while CMS shelled out nearly $1,000 for Gorman’s San Fran sojourn.

Gorman’s two-day trip in September 2008 to Austin, Texas, for a Dell Foundation conference cost CMS all of $85, while a three-day trip to Houston the following month for the Council of Great City Schools Conference set CMS back $650.

Harvard paid for Gorman to meld minds with that esteemed institution of higher learning’s Doctoral Program Advisory Board during a two-day trip last April. Gorman was back in Boston the following month, when the university paid for his two-day trip to attend the Harvard Superintendents’ Internship Program.

“It blinks reality when we have a superintendent flying around the country, at the same time he’s talking about laying off teachers,” said former school board member Larry Gauvreau, who during his time on the board frequently clashed with Gorman over spending priorities. “It doesn’t matter who is paying for the trip. Instead of attending conferences to learn new ways to expand CMS bureaucracy, Dr. Gorman should be working to contain costs and improve student achievement.”

The powers-that-be within the U.S. Department of Education picked up the tab for Gorman to pay them a one-day visit last March, and he found himself back in DC two months later when the Center for American Progress paid for him to attend its two-day conference in the nation’s capital.

Gorman’s high-flying ways haven’t missed a beat for the current school year. Last September saw the superintendent in Washington, D.C., to attend the Broad Prize for Urban

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