After skirting open meeting laws and lurking in seculsion at the airport to interview prospective candidates for the high-flying gig of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools superintendent, the Board of Education today announced three finalists to trot around town over the coming days in meetings and forums with the public and schools officials: Long-time CMS administrator Ann Clark, […]
Mecklenburg Commissioner Bill James blasted out an email this week that pretty much speaks for itself and is sure to ruffle some feathers as 1) Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools enters its budget season with a request of $27.5 million in additional funding from the county and 2) a group of residents, largely from Mecklenburg’s southern and northern […]
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials this week unveiled a budget plan for the 2012-13 school year that tops out at $1.2 billion, an overall increase of 2.3 percent, and includes an ask of an additional $27.5 million from the county, after CMS endured wholesale financial calamity in the current year budget that saw the district receive an […]
Is Commissioners Chairman Harold Cogdell the first Democrat with any sense of the whole community? Is he the first Democrat with financial acumen? I believe so. All one need do is read his letter to Board of Education Chairman Ericka Ellis-Stewart, to understand his concern for the entire community. Cogdell has the temerity to assert […]
It’s too often too easy to criticize Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, a bureaucratic behemoth rife with inefficiencies and bumbling failures that a multi-million dollar PR machine spins as unmitigated successes. So it’s a rare pleasure to be able to offer legitimate and deserved praise. This week, school district officials and the Charlotte Fire Department honored bus driver […]
Or the 75 percent, or maybe the 53 percent – same difference, just a rounding error; could happen to anyone. The uptown paper’s Ann Doss Helms unravels the numbers behind Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ flawed graduation-track data, while having to painstakingly explain – apparently repeatedly – to CMS officials the error of their ways before they finally […]
Mecklenburg Commissioner Bill James has asked the county’s internal auditor to investigate possible improprieties or illegalities concerning salary and benefit payments made to the school board’s newly elected vice chairman, Mary McCray, when she was employed as a teacher by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and also served as president of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Association of Educators (CMAE), […]
According to a report in the Charlotte Observer, the poor now make up 16.3% of the population of the Charlotte metropolitan area. This is a curious number primarily because being poor means having an income of $43,000 or less. Next step up is ‘Low Income’ which means having an income between $43,000 and $51,500. But let […]
Three new members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education were sworn into office at the regular board meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 13. They are Mary T. McCray, Ericka Ellis-Stewart, and Tim Morgan. Board members voted 8-0 to elect Ericka Ellis-Stewart as chairperson and voted 8-0 to elect Mary T. McCray as vice-chairperson. Morgan was previously […]
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 […]
