As Mecklenburg County commissioners sift through the rubble of the county manager’s recommended budget, looking for places to tap cuts that could help save teachers’ jobs, there’s one data set that ought to jump screaming off the page. As of last December, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had amassed an astounding 109 Central Administration positions that cost the […]
If at first you don’t succeed, move along and hope that extra support will help you catch up. That’s the philosophy critics contend is driving a new set of grade-promotion and graduation standards at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The new rules, which take effect next school year, strongly encourage principals to not retain a student more than […]
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is going to have to get every dime’s worth out of its multi-million-dollar PR budget to spin their way out of this one: firing teachers in front of their students. Nice touch. Next up, the school board clubs baby seals during CMS-TV’s penultimate episode of UpFront! with Superintendent Peter Gorman.
A fractious Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education on Tuesday night voted 6-3 to approve a schools budget that includes plans to slash upwards of 600 teacher and teacher assistant positions, implement a pay-to-play scheme for middle- and high school sports, increase class sizes while shrinking transportation options to popular magnet schools, and have students pay fees […]
Less than 12 hours before the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education is slated to approve a recommended budget that slashes teacher positions, guts teacher assistants positions, and further reduces funding for campus security associates, a .22-caliber handgun brought to school by a third-grader was discharged inside a classroom at University Meadows Elementary. No injuries were reported. […]
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools loves themselves a good media briefing, the typically anti-adversarial, weekly lovefests debuted a few years ago by Superintendent Peter Gorman. It’s a swift way for Gorman & Co. to pick up the remnants of the latest school board meeting to set an agenda and drive feel-good stories that, for the most, local media […]
So I’m in the kitchen washing some dishes yesterday and the TV’s on and I hear that some guy named Bacots had been hired as superintendent of Durham Public Schools. Wash another dish. Heard the name again. Bacots? Couldn’t be, I thought. So I go into the living room and there he is on the […]
A majority of school board members seemed receptive to a pay-to-play proposal pitched Tuesday night to save middle school sports, while discussion was curbed over applying a similar fee-based structure for transportation services. The notion of having students pay for bus rides to and from school was floated by board member Trent Merchant, tangential to […]
From teachers and their assistants to students and their parents, people lined up Tuesday night to blast the Board of Education and Superintendent Peter Gorman over proposed budget cuts that could lead to what many speakers called unacceptable and disastrous consequences in classrooms next year. Faced with a potential budget shortfall that could top $75 […]
Talk of snatching $6.3 million from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ budget to help fill an overall county shortfall of $36 million in current-year funding has been floating for weeks. Commissioners made it official last night, when they unanimously approved the mid-year budget reduction. And despite recent howls that the fiscal correction would have dire consequence on CMS […]
