Charlotte schools superintendent whistleblowing until the very end | Hour 2

So, again, I want to point out. Kudos to the local, uh, reporters, local media that are, um, that are on this Charlotte Mecklenburg school story, like a dog with a bone, baby. It's good stuff. This is a pack journalism at its finest, right? Everybody is pulling it all the different threads, not to mix my metaphors and similes, but, um, they're, they're all going after different angles of the financial irregularities and, at the Charlotte Mecklenburg School District, particularly as it pertains to the Board of Education's chair, now former chair, I should say, Stephanie Sneed, and these contracts that she was apparently entering into without the rest of the board's knowledge. That's, okay, I want to emphasize apparently, because we don't know which school board members knew and which ones did not. Some of them have said they were not aware of these contracts. Anna London, I believe, is one that has come out and said that she was not aware of any of these contracts that were being funneled to this guy, Racky McGregor, and his wife's firm. So there are board members, because remember, there is a split on the nine-member Board of Education. You've got a majority block of five. Maybe I should start calling them something. The fivers? And then you've got the minority block of four. The fourers. Okay, that doesn't work. The five and the four. The fives and the fours. Maybe that. Okay? So, because when I say, like, majority, minority, if I'm talking about the minority block and I just start calling them the minority block, people think, oh, it's a racial thing. But it's not. Okay? It's not a racial thing. The majority of the board are minorities. They're blacks. So they don't, it's not, it doesn't break that clean. You know, it's not a racial thing and they're all Democrats. Okay. So this is probably more about personalities and personal alliances and maybe a smidge of corruption thrown in, right? Backroom deals and the like for your own allies, right? It's about political maneuvering and power. It's not about race. And which is like, that's a pretty unique thing in Charlotte Mecklenburg schools. Usually, like everything is through this prism of race, but not this. This doesn't have anything to do with race. It doesn't have anything to do with political party, right? This is straight up about power, okay? And who controls, who dominates, which block is going to come out on top, okay? So the fives and the fours. And we don't know how many members of the fives knew about these contracts. At this point. Maybe none of them. Maybe all of them. Maybe some. Don't know. Hopefully we find out. But local media, and I've got two different stories, one from WSOC TV's Joe Bruno and another from the Charlotte Ledger written by Michelle Crouch and Tony Macia, which by the way, sidebar, great to see Michelle Crouch's name in a byline again. She used to be a government reporter for the Charlotte Observer. When I was on the beat covering city council, she was always there with me at the media table and she's a fine reporter. So glad to see her byline. She got married, had kids and was sort of out of the game for a while. So it looks like she's. Doing some freelance work now for the Charlotte Ledger, which is great because she's a very good reporter. So two different stories here about CMS. First, apparently, according to Joe Bruno, apparently the superintendent of CMS, Crystal Hill, was whistleblowing right up until she was fired. Like in the meeting chamber, or right before like she, she was okay. So here's the story. So in one of her last acts as superintendent, Hill sent a warning to the Mecklenburg County manager, Mike Bryant, while the CMS board was meeting in closed session, she emailed the manager letting him know, Hey, um, you guys funded some of these contracts. This is your money County. Just want to give you a heads up. Here's what she wrote. Quote, as reported in the news, I submitted a memo to my board with a timeline of events and exhibits. This was the 200 plus page memo that she, uh, that she sent to the board, which then immediately got to the media and we covered last week or the week before. Um, She says, since my return to work, I have been made aware of information that I believe may be connected to previous events. The funding source for the transactions that I have questioned are local funds allocated from the Mecklenburg County Board of County Commissioners. As our funding partner, I want to make you aware. As you know, the District Attorney, Spencer Merriweather, has opened a criminal investigation into finances in at CMS. I don't want to do anything that would hamper the investigation, but I do believe you should be aware of the funds that have been spent to date. My staff would be amenable to sharing information with you as appropriate. This email was first reported by the Charlotte Ledger. As Channel 9 has been reporting, Superintendent Hill is raising questions about payments that the former board chair, Stephanie Sneed, entered into with a law firm named Pointer Spruill, as well as money that was being passed through that law firm down to a former CMS employee, Racky McGregor, and his firm called QONECT. Q-O-N-N-E-C-T. I'm calling it QONECT. I know there's no U in there, okay? But it's just, it's fun to say. Superintendent Hill says that school board members were not all aware of McGregor's involvement with the affordable housing project at Garinger high school. This was the, uh, the project where they were going to build affordable homes for teachers. Right. And they announced this a couple of years ago and they've been, you know, securing the money like The city of Charlotte kicked in a million dollars, and now they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we haven't signed off on this yet, so now we're not going to until this all gets sorted out. Because McGregor, Racky McGregor, apparently got himself involved in this project after he had been released, his contract not renewed, by Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. He had gotten onto the superintendent's cabinet, as a, what do they call it, an executive in residence, which I covered CMS for almost a decade, and I'd never heard of this term. I don't know when this position was created, how many positions there are, but it sure sounds like this position was created in order to create a backdoor into the CMS administration by the board. That's what it sounds like. Like they wanted some of their own people, their own allies in there to help direct the superintendent to do certain things. That's what it looks like. I don't know if that's true, but it sure looks like that. Why are you creating an executive in residence? What does that even mean? So when the superintendent did not renew the contract, then he was trying to find other ways to get money from CMS. And apparently had negotiated or had found a way to do this through this law firm, which apparently was contracted by the board chair, Stephanie Sneed. outside the purview of the board and superintendent. That's a problem. She's not allowed to do that. Why is she negotiating a contract with an outside law firm and then that law firm is acting as a pass-through to Racky McGregor? That's the way it looks. That's all the information I've gotten from all of the reporting so far, but that looks really bad and kind of illegal. That's what it looks like to me. There is an investigation. Everybody is innocent until proven guilty, but that's the way it looks like to me. That's what it looks like to me. There was an email on January 2nd this year. It was obtained by Channel 9, and it shows Racky McGregor and the law firm were actually working together. together before the new year. The law firm and McGregor were pitching the CMS board on a $ 48, 500 contract to, quote, Analyze CMS operations and systems to identify opportunities for efficiencies, implement a board-approved strategic improvement plan with the current CMS budget, and cultivate public-private partnerships for CMS's future in the school choice landscape. What does all that mean? I mean, I have some ideas. We'll break it down. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. 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Okay, let me go over to the text line. Mitch says. My wife is an exceptional teacher. She constantly meets or exceeds growth standards. After 40 years, she just got a raise that brings her to 62,000. That's a joke. Her raise will net her 170, I guess, additional per month. A first-year teacher will make 15,000 less than her. Our state doesn't want good teachers or long-term teachers. Our state wants cheap teachers. Again, this is entirely up to the education folks. If you cannot figure out a way to pay teachers based on anything other than length of service, then this is the model. And there are a lot of teachers that have been there for a long time that missed their step pay raises because the Democrats basically tried to bankrupt the state in the early 2000s, right? They they did furloughs, they did pay raise freezes and stuff like that. And teachers who had, they had, you know, scheduled step pay increases that were frozen. They never got those back. So that's part of the, the, the legacy of Democrat control. Number one. Well, I guess that would be number two because number one was, again, I say, I want to pay the good teachers more money. but I refuse to pay the bad ones the same amount as the good ones. And when the. Republicans tried to implement performance-based pay, they were opposed by teachers and the education establishment and Democrats and media, but I repeat myself. And so it fell apart. So Republicans shifted gears and they were like, okay, we're going to focus on increasing starter teacher pay. And then people complain, what about us veteran teachers? They did some veteran teacher pay. A couple years later, people complained about starter teacher pay. This is why I say, like, the answer is always just more, more, more, more. I'm not going to turn this into a teacher pay argument because every teacher is different. Everyone's household finances are different as well. The job pays what it pays. Right. People know what they're getting into when they get into it. I am in like again, like and I recognize I'm not the softest shoulder to cry on on this stuff because like I work in an industry that is very volatile. People get fired all the time and, you know, make a ton of money. And so like I like that. But I knew that going in. But I wanted to do it. That's why I say like people who are called to be an educator, it is a calling. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that go into it not as a calling, but because they don't really know what else to do. And because they grew up in a K-12 model, they are comfortable there. And so they just transition to stay there, you know. Beth's favorite Russ says, I remember hearing years ago that the number and expense of private schools in an area is a direct reflection of how poorly the public system is functioning. Look how many private schools there are in Mecklenburg. I also remember an unrelated story about a politician sending their kids to an elite private school in D.C. or New York City, and the tuition was almost 20 percent less than what we pay here. Yeah, I mean, and that is also part of the goal of the vouchers as well. It is, you know, over time, you then start seeing more private schools enter the marketplace to compete for those dollars. All right, what do we call the... I got a lot of suggestions on this. What do we brand the school board majority block, the five members that vote in lockstep with each other? And what do we call the minority block of four? I've gotten five and dimers, somebody suggested, for the majority, the fives or the fivers. The four could be the quad. We could go gang of five. Um... Grumpy Major said gang of five and group of four because isn't it usually the gang members who get investigated? I mean, that's fair. Amy suggests the felony five. Well, okay. If there are convictions for something, then I could see that. Jefferson suggests the quints and the quads. Marshville Mike says, how about new school superintendent, Racky McGregor? That's right. Would that really, seriously, would that surprise anybody? Would that surprise anybody? That if this, if these, if the fivers were to actually hire Racky McGregor as the school board super or the school superintendent, would that really shock anybody? Jennifer says everyone on the board. should resign in shame. People need to go to prison. Well, I don't know if everybody on the board needs to resign. Some of them have been fighting this. Some of them were, were cut out of the loop and they have, I mean, the four members that are voting against the five member majority, they don't seem to have any of this poop on them. So, um, Seth says, so what you're saying, okay, just for the record, anytime somebody begins a sentence with, so what you're saying is, I know they're about to misrepresent what I said. So I haven't even read, I have not even read what you wrote here, Seth. I'm just giving you the heads up that when I see that phrase, then it's like, okay, somebody heard something I did not say. All right, here we go. Let's see what he says. So what you're saying is, Superintendent Hill is about to get a bunch more money from Charlotte and the dummies on the board. I did not say that. I have no idea, actually, if she has any kind of grounds for a suit. she did get her, her severance package. So who has the ability to fire the entire school board? Because that's what needs to happen. And they aren't doing their job. Once again, like I have a hard time lumping in the quad with the fivers, right? Because the quad has been voting against the fivers on all of this stuff. So And members of the Quad do not seem to have had any knowledge of what the Fivers were doing. That's what it looks like right now. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. All right, let me go back to the story from Joe Bruno at WSOC-TV regarding a $ 48, 000 contract that the Pointer Spruill Law Firm was pitching to the CMS Board of Education. This $ 48, 500 would be used to, quote, analyze CMS operations and systems to identify opportunities for efficiencies. Okay? Not really sure what that means, but that's sort of your corporate jargon, right? You always got to throw something like that in. We want to identify opportunities for efficiencies efficiencies. Because everything has to be spun in a positive way. You can't say challenges or obstacles or anything like that. It's always opportunities, right? Okay, fine. Second component. Implement a board-approved strategic improvement plan within the current CMS budget. OK, well, what is that about? Remember, this is the beginning of the year. This email went out and this contract proposal was discussed. Well, remember what Superintendent Hill wrote in that memo. That she had gotten into basically a whiz in match with the board chair, Stephanie Sneed. over the allocation of $ 4. 5 million for teacher pay raises, that the superintendent wanted to be in the budget, but the chair said no. And this then came to a head when the budget was to be voted on in open session. And the fivers, the majority block on the board, refused to adopt the budget. as recommended by the superintendent. And at the time, nobody knew any of this stuff was going on in the background. No one heard about these contracts and the like. And so it all struck us as very odd and unusual, came out of the blue, like you've been going through all these budget work sessions. And by the time you come to the vote, you should have the budget done. Why are you voting this thing down? And when the superintendent asked, like, well, what is it you want to see changed? Remember, she got gaveled down by the board chair and said, we'll discuss it later. And now it turns out that. What it looks like, at least according to all of the memos and such, was that this was over that four and a half million dollars. that the board chair wanted to direct that funding towards what appears to be her political allies, these consulting groups and such, whereas the superintendent wanted that money to go to teacher pay. But this trade-off, this argument, was never had in open session. Why? I think it's pretty obvious. Because first off, it raises the specter of cronyism, corruption, that you're funneling taxpayer dollars to these political allies. But also, you have to then make the argument that you are against teacher pay raises. And we all know that school board members are not going to make that argument. They're not going to argue against teacher pay raises. That would put a target on their back. So she doesn't want to have this argument in public. She just wants to direct the money. And maybe if the superintendent and the other board members are not aware of the contracts that she's trying to do with these or has been doing with the law firm, you don't want to draw any attention to this. You just want basically a slush fund created. You want a pot of money set aside that you can then direct. And what this tells me, this line right here, a board approved strategic improvement plan within the current CMS budget. That's what that is speaking to in my estimation. I don't know this, but that like, that's what this looks like. And then the next line says cultivate public private partnerships. So it sounds like she was trying to create via the contract, like just like to, to create this, this funding mechanism. the money for consultants, the money for nonprofits like Racky McGregor's. Joe Bruno's report at WSOC-TV goes on to say it's unclear if the board entered into this agreement and if board members knew of Racky McGregor's pitch. Some of them have said they did not. The proposal became public record because the attorney, get this, the attorney for Pointer Spruill, a woman by the name of Katie Cornetto, she emailed Racky McGregor's CMS email account. Apparently by mistake. Whoops. Had she not done that, we would not know this. He was not working for the district at that point. His executive in residence contract had already lapsed. It expired and was not renewed. So he was already out. His email though, was still apparently accessible by the district. And so when Katie Cornetto from the law firm sent this to his email, now it's in the inbox. It's in the account. And now CMS can access that. The superintendent can have her people, her IT people, access that email because that is CMS property. The message became a public document when she sent it. And get this records show. She attempted to recall the message after she sent it. That doesn't look good. That does not look good. A lot of smoke around this here. Fire, fire. Yeah. That's what it looks like. Um, Let me see here. This is, I had a message here from John someplace. I wanted to guess this is, here it is. It's related. John says, I have found that law firms usually don't like their name being drugged through news stories, especially when government corruption and possible money laundering charges are involved. I would not be shocked to see this law firm quickly and quietly get rid of any connection to CMS. Yeah, generally not a good look for a law firm. Um, there's another piece I mentioned earlier at the Charlotte ledger headlined business pitch reveals deeper ties between Sneed and consultant. Racky McGregor is that consultant. Sneed is the former school board chair, still a school board member. She just stepped down his chair, but she's still on the board. And apparently they are relationship, um, a little bit closer. A little bit closer than simply an ally and a friend. Documents obtained by the Charlotte Ledger show that he was also something else. A business partner. Interesting. In April, Stephanie Sneed and Racky McGregor presented a proposal to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office. Yes, our old pal, Gary, not my fault, McFadden. Now, before you start thinking anything untoward about not my fault, McFadden, I will just point out, they did not do this proposal. They did not accept this deal. So kudos to them. A rare moment of praise from me to the sheriff's office, okay, for not doing this deal with Sneed and McGregor. Good for them. I mean, they didn't do it because they said they didn't have any money. And I don't know if they would have done it if they had the money, but they didn't do it. Still, Snead and. McGregor are apparently business partners. They tried to win a consulting contract. This, according to an email sent last Thursday to County Manager Michael Bryant from the Sheriff's Office, Director of Business Operations. There was a slide deck from a presentation that listed Snead, Racky McGregor, Racky McGregor's wife and former police chief, Johnny Jennings as part of the team. Yikes. Wow. Huh? Hmm. Interesting. They were pitching, sorry. They were pitching a one year, $ 400, 000 proposal for Organizational transformation. Well, now I can see why not my fault McFadden didn't want anything to do with this. He doesn't need any organizational transformation. He's running a great operation over there. He doesn't need to transform nothing. Now it makes sense why they would turn it down. Plus also they didn't have $ 400, 000. From the text line, Seth says, the four school board members didn't say a word about where the money was going. It took superintendent Hill to blow the whistle. They are just as bad. I, we don't know that. I said, the superintendent has said that not all of the board members knew what was going on with this contract. She wasn't aware of what was going on with this contract, with the contract stuff. And it seems like while she was on her two month suspension with pay, And then she came back in and wrote the memo up. What it seems like, and I don't know this, but just looking from the outside in the timeline, what it seems like occurred was while she was on suspension, she was likely still talking to a lot of these people in her leadership team who then made her aware of what was going on as they became aware of it. And that's why when she came back on, you know, they trot her out in front of the media for the opening of school press conferences. She's like, I can't talk about anything. And then she writes this 200 page memo with all the contracts and stuff like that does not seem like something she put together on the fly, you know, in a couple of days, it sounds like she had been amassing this thing, you know, charting out the timeline, doing all of this while she was on suspension. I mean, we know she had a lot of free time on her hands. So that's what it looks like to me is that they were, they were compiling all of this stuff in order to drop it on the school board, on the fivers. And what we have heard from the quad, the four members that have been voting against the, the, the fivers is that they didn't know about these contracts. Like, I'm not here to defend all of the school board. Lord knows I have dragged the school board on a great many things, okay? And if there's evidence that some of them were aware of these contracts and the like, then absolutely they need to go. And they should face the repercussions too. But I've not seen evidence. I haven't even seen evidence that all of the Fivers have known. I suspect that they did, but they may not have. They may just have been following in lockstep with their fearless leader, Snead. That may be the case too, that they were just told, yeah, we're going to do this thing and whatever, we're going to have this contract and board approval, whatever. And when you have the majority, then you can In the case of Stephanie Sneed, it appears like she's doing all of this stuff and then throwing it onto the agenda because as the chair, you get to do that. You get to put stuff on the agenda or keep stuff off, but you could put stuff on the agenda. And if you know you have the majority that's going to vote with you no matter what, then you can line all of this stuff up ahead of time and then just get a rubber stamp with your majority. So that may be what she was doing. Um, and essentially, I guess, sort of backdating the contracts, like you, you know, you, you negotiate these deals, you do these contracts and you set it all up and you sign off on all of this stuff. And then you just bring it to the board for a rubber stamp approval, but you've already done all of the, all of the negotiations and the construction of the contracts. You already did all of that. And you did it outside of the superintendent and outside of the knowledge of the other four board members. that are going to try to block you, right? That's, I mean, that's the way it looks right now. Again, this is all subject to change based on what the SBI finds out, confirms or, you know, refutes. This is all based on what the auditor's office finds or doesn't find. I don't know. I'm just telling you what it looks like in my read of it. Now, part of the problem is, is that you can't fire the entire school board. And I don't even know who would do that. These are all elected positions. Now, there are some petitions that have been drafted for these people to resign. But that's going to be their call. There was a story in the Charlotte Observer here. Hundreds of people have signed on to a pair of petitions calling for Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board members to resign following their move. to fire Superintendent Crystal Hill. There's one at Change, or both of them are at Change.org. This was launched the morning after they fired Superintendent Hill. That's got, according to the Observer story from this morning, it's got like just 250 signatures as of Monday afternoon. Sneed did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The second petition calls for Sneed's resignation as well. and the resignation of the rest of the Fivers, the whole board majority, calling on all five of them to resign. Shamae Haynes, Charlita Hatch, Dee Rankin, and Liz Monterey Duvall. That's got 591 signatures as of yesterday afternoon. That second petition was started by Ann Margaret Gidley, who is a volunteer with the district, also served on Superintendent Hill's Parent Family Advisory Council. And she said, no CMS board members are up for reelection this year. And some of the fivers won't be on the ballot again until 2029. Gidley actually won the Superstar Parent Award from CMS. And she also questions all of the money that's being spent to, you know, fire Hill to do the investigation and now to hire an outside firm to find another superintendent. Right. You're just the investigation and the severance package alone is somewhere in the neighborhood of three quarters of a million dollars. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the Pete Kaliner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.