Could NC deconsolidate Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools? | Hour 2

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the Pete calendar show.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So a Republican state lawmaker named David Willis is He is from Union County, and his office made contact with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board of Education members on apparently Tuesday. He said in an interview with WBT's Brett Jensen yesterday that his office reached out to the board members to give them a heads up that he was going to be launching an effort to deconsolidate CMS, to break it up. also to hold another election for the board because of all of the problems that the board has displayed, right? We just had a school board election, but we're going to do, it's a basically a recall effort. He said in the interview with Brett that he reached out, he had his staffers reach out to give them a heads up and also to get feedback. Now, a couple of the school board members like Anna London said, told the Charlotte Observer, all he said was that he was calling to give a heads up and to let me know that a bill is being drafted to break up the district, which would force a recall election. She says there was no, or she omitted it, or the Observer omitted it, so there's no reference to getting any feedback, like, hey, if you have anything, you know, here's, but Willis said, like, here's my email, and you can, you know, contact me, let me know your thoughts on this, He also said this is the time for us to weigh in as well and that this is a. Multi-year process. So this is not something that Republicans are going to ram through in the last 30, 40 days of their session as they have the majorities. He clearly said this is going to take a while to study it and to make recommendations and that sort of stuff. Now, he did say also in the interview with Brett Jensen yesterday, that he does support the state stepping in and taking over financial control of CMS immediately. We did that in Winston-Salem recently, and so there's certainly precedent there for that to happen. I think from what I'm hearing on the CMS side, this goes much deeper than the issues that we had in Winston-Salem. And so I think the urgency would be even greater to take a look at CMS and taking them over. in the short term. And I think the fact that they've posted something that indicates that they're willing to spend even more money on a CFO, I mean, I guess I would question where's the current CFO. And what is the job that they're. Doing and why are they willing to go spend hundreds or, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars more on this? It just shows to me a lack of real understanding of the seriousness of this and the fact that they're willing to go waste even more money doing the job that they've been hired and elected to do is even more concerning, Brett. And so I think we need to move as quickly as possible. We need to make sure that there aren't any conflicts of interest. Obviously, there's some close connections with the state board and with DPI as it relates to CMS. And so we just need to make sure we've got the right people in place and there are no real conflicts of interest and that we've got true transparency and clarity as to what's happening within the system. All right. So what are the conflicts of interest he's talking about? Glad you asked. The chairman of the State Board of Education is Eric Davis. Eric Davis came from CMS. Eric Davis was a Charlotte Mecklenburg school board member. I believe he became the chairman at one point. And so he's been up on the state board of ed for years pointed by, I think he was originally appointed by McCrory, but he was, he was a, he was a Republican that Democrats could work with and Cooper reappointed him, I believe. So that's the first potential conflict of interest. that I suspect Willis is referencing. The second conflict of interest. Is Mo Green. Mo Green is the superintendent for public instruction and Mo Green used to be the lawyer for the CMS board. So problem, right? Like maybe conflicts of interest. So that's going to have to be sorted out as well. He points out that the public has lost trust in the school board. which does not, he said again, he said this multiple times last night with Brett Jensen, that this board, these board members, do not seem to understand the seriousness of the situation. This is in regards now to the idea of a recall election. I think last night at the school board meeting, they announced an interim committee made up of themselves to put proper governance and oversight in place as they think about the CFO and the governance process going forward. And I think that just shows a lack of real understanding and appreciation for how bad the system is being run right now. And so I think starting over, giving the parents an ability to elect new teachers school board members to really right the ship and put the right leaders at the table when we need them most is critically important. And so I think we've got to go back and look at all of our options and how quickly we can make that happen and give that back to the voters and let them decide. Because, you know, again, it comes back to the students and the parents. And if they don't have trust in those that are leading their school system, you know, then we just need to scratch it and start all over. All right, so when I said last hour that the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board has been dysfunctional for decades, that's not hyperbole. They have literally brought in consultants going back 20-plus years. They've been bringing in consultants to help them function as a governing body, which makes sense. Right. But there's a line Mark Twain did write that is attributed to him. And we know that he said this, like, first, God made idiots for practice. Then he made school boards. And so, you know, if you are. Not a political rock star, let's say, like, let's say that your political chops are not as well honed. then you could run for a school board seat and you have built in slogans that you can just lean on throughout a campaign. I'm doing this for the children. I want all children to succeed, right? Like, you know, all of these slogans, you've heard people, you know, parrot these same lines all the time. When you get into city, county, state, federal offices and, Now you have to have some command of the subject material, right? You have to understand a bunch of different things as it relates to all of these different sectors that you are governing. For schools. Like you're not asked about budgets. If you are, it's just, we need to spend more money on teacher pay and build more schools and more money for kids. Like, These are all very easy things to do as a candidate. And that's why, in my opinion, over the years and probably everywhere, the lower caliber politicians, people who are less adept at being a political leader– they end up on school boards, right? I think that's part of the reason why I'm not saying anything about them as individuals. A lot of them are perfectly, uh, you know, nice people and, uh, maybe skilled in whatever it was they were doing before they became a board member and all that. Okay. I'm just saying that politically as a candidate, that is, it's sort of an easier lift, you know, to run for a school board seat because they, the slogans and the campaign platforms and all that stuff, they're all basically the same, right? Every candidate is saying basically the same thing. It's all for the children. Okay. So I don't know if a recall election is the best idea here. Now it would be, I think it would obviously be required. If you do break up CMS into smaller districts, then you're going to have to do new elections for all of those districts to be sure. Um, but when it comes to this idea of like the way that they are governing themselves and Willis is saying, you know, like, oh, they put themselves in charge of like, you know, of figuring out how to better govern themselves. And like, they've done this before. They've been doing this for years. They keep bringing in people and using consultants and crafting things. Like a couple of years ago, I remember watching a school board meeting and before they, would make their own comments about a particular topic, they would have to explain based on like some template language that was given to them by like some consultant who was teaching them how to have discussions without being nasty towards each other. They'd have to read this disclaimer. This is, and they have like check boxes. This is relevant to the topic, relevant to the budget or whatever. Like that's, that's what we've been getting for years here. 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. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. Create-A-Video's skilled team will professionally transfer your family's stories onto easy-to-use USB drives or DVDs, that won't deteriorate over time like the old photos and tapes are doing right now. They will create a keepsake video that you can share and copy and keep forever. I can see it now. You're gathered around the holiday table with your loved ones, watching all these memories and people of your lives. You're sharing laughs, maybe some tears, telling stories that make your family uniquely yours. Beat the holiday rush and get your memories in now. Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. Real quick, Daniel DiMartino, an economist, he says he just checked out the monthly average of initial unemployment claims. So first time unemployment claims a 57 year low last month. There's never been fewer people claiming unemployment for the first time than right now. As a share of the labor force, it's the lowest ever. Since we've been keeping records. So make things affordable. Um, All right. So back to David Willis, the representative from Union County, who is launching an effort to study the deconsolidation of Charlotte Mecklenburg schools and to do a recall election. He is urging everybody to reach out to their local elected leaders to let them know. whether they want to do this or not. It's been talked about for years about possibly breaking up the system. Is it too big to operate effectively? Whether it's busing issues or school reassignments or construction. I mean, obviously, there's been a number of issues that have been heavily debated over the years. And I think we've seen serious concerns about mismanagement in the past. But a lot of that really had to do with timeliness issues. maybe in the ability to make decisions that were most effective and kind of keep politics to the side. What we're seeing really now goes well beyond that. And we know, you know, based on the information, at least that's been provided publicly, that, you know, there are serious concerns. Like you said, I mean, you've got the DOJ, the FBI, the FBI involved as well as others. I mean, if there were ever going to be a time where, to break up CMS. Now is that time. So what does that look like? What support is there? If you do support that idea, then let us know about it. Let us hear it with your local officials, your state officials hear about it, because this isn't going to be, you know, something that I go do on my own and in a silo. This is going to take the whole community. But I think it's an opportunity for the community to come together and really have a voice in what they want the future of CMS to be. And now is the time to speak up. All right, so he made those comments with Brett Jensen yesterday on Brett's show Breaking with Brett Jensen, 6 to 7 p.m. On WBT weekdays. Not aware of any other interviews that he has done besides with Brett yesterday. I will say, like, you should definitely weigh in on this. You should definitely reach out to David Willis' office. Let them know your opinion on it. If you have any expertise in this field, Please think about volunteering it. However, my take on this, I grew. Up in New York, Long Island, and in New York, on Long Island, there. Are like 100, I think there's like 150 or so different school districts. Okay? They are as deconsolidated as you can get. And up there, when I was in high school and I was covering school board meetings in high school for the school paper, people were talking about consolidation. They were like, we pay for a superintendent. We pay for senior staff, right? We have our own budget. We could get economies of scale. We could get savings if we were to merge with other districts in our area because every town had its own school district. And then I came here and I'm hearing, no, no, no, we should deconsolidate. This is one of the reasons why I keep saying the problem is the model. The K-12 factory model operated by GovCo is the problem. And you can rearrange all of the chairs on the deck of the Titanic and And it's not going to matter because it's the model itself. That's my opinion. But again, my compromise position on this is vouchers and let parents choose. And if the local K-12 GovCo model is cranking out men of letters, women of letters, which is what the system was designed not to do, according to the people who constructed the system over a century ago, that was not their intent. They did not want to produce scholars. That wasn't the purpose. It was to train them up, get them into the factories. It was based off of the Prussian model. But I recognize some people want that. They're satisfied with that model. It worked for their kids. Fine. You can keep your schools, and if they're operating well, then you can send your kid there, basically use the voucher at the public school. But if it's not working out for them, Other kids and their families, well, then they should be able to get out of it without penalty. 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. Let me go back over to the text line here. Oh, so, okay. Apologies to the hellion who was not spamming me today. The series of texts were left over from several days ago, but it all is in one line for my screen. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All these texts in a row. It's like I cannot tell which ones are coming in now about the topic. So here's what the hellion wrote. Anyone that's ever worked and lived in the Charlotte area has to have noticed the ridiculous traffic flow relief when school is out. It needs to be busted down to four or six smaller districts that make far more geographical sense. Yeah. And I think that's one of the ideas. I don't know how many they would break it down to. Willis isn't, he hasn't, he's not pitching any particular idea on this. So yeah, I don't know, but you are correct. Like our entire area around where I live, when school is in session, when there's class today or tomorrow, whatever, it's like, it's completely jammed up for hours, starting at about three o'clock and three, yeah, three o'clock, 315, going all the way until like 530, six o'clock at night. Then you don't have to just stop, Hellion. I'm just asking you to text because now you just sent another three texts in a row, four texts in a row, and then five texts. Okay, see, this is what I mean. Like, I'm just asking you to put all the text to like you, you did with that one text, put all your thoughts into one text, not, not like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's, that's what I'm asking for. Um, all. Right. Charlene says you're talking about people unqualified for their positions. Um, look at what just happened in the last election. All those Democrats that got into place, they're unqualified to serve in our Congress and in the house. Um, of representatives as well as Senate, but yet they're in there. We got to start putting qualifications on candidates who run for elections. How do we begin that process so we don't always have dummies who get into office? Well, I've said many times, they truly are our representatives. They are a reflection of the general population. And we may not want to acknowledge that or admit that, but I believe that is the truth. You have some good people that are in there qualified for the positions, and you have people that have no idea what they're doing. Right? Jeff says, Perhaps the new legislation in Raleigh can couple legislation to deregulate CMS with a $ 300 million community enhancement spending package. That strategy worked on the I-77 project, after all, and that seems to be the going rate to bribe Mecklenburg County Democrats to fix something that's systemically broken. That's kind of true. Oscar says, funny how these underpaid politicians end up rich. Uh, Mac says, seems to me, they should be looking for someone with a passion to fill these positions, a passion for their city. Or do you think those kinds of people don't exist anymore? Yeah, I don't know. Um, I think people do. I think people look, if you are going to, to throw your name in the hat and then your hat into the ring to run for an elective office, no matter what level you definitely have a passion for doing it, right? You, you want to, I believe the vast majority of people that do this, are doing it because they want to try to make a difference, right? I think it's not the passion that's the problem. It's the level of understanding. It's the expertise. It's, you know, people are out of their depth. They're outside their lane, whatever you want to say. Eric says, I grew up in Charlotte in the 70s, went to Albemarle Road Elementary. And junior high, in between, I went to Dreaded Hill, I mean Druid Hills Middle School. So bad we could not even go to the playground because someone was murdered in the park at the entrance. The first PTA meeting my parents went to at Druid Hills, they, along with many others, all had their tires flattened. 704 number says, maybe we should just let the consultants run the board. It's like hiring somebody for a job and then they pay other people to tell them how to do the job we hired them for. Make it make sense. Yeah. How about we just, how about we have AI? Maybe have AI run the school board. I mean, we can put little, we'll put little pictures of a human face, you know, AI generated, of course. And we'll just like have them sit around a virtual dais, you know, 704 number says the problem is the Charlotte Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus. They put their puppets into office. The city of Charlotte would do well to dismantle their machine. I've talked at great length about the BPC. Their connections are deep with regard to the CMS corruption scandal story here. And I suspect that we're going to find Some stuff coming up, some connections, you know, between the people involved. We know that they were involved in the BPC and they're on the board. So when you've got the FBI and the SBI and DPI and the auditor's office, I'm pretty confident that we're going to see some of those fingerprints emerge. Hey, Callaner. I really enjoy your show. It's a true learning class Monday through Friday. Well, thank you. I appreciate that anonymous 704 number and you spelled my name correctly. So thanks for that. Joe says it's odd. They're talking about breaking up CMS while here in Catawba County, they're merging three districts. Gaston County merged in the seventies. Yeah. That's why I say the problem is the model. It's not the size. Okay. Okay. And people think that, oh, if we consolidate, that'll improve things, or we deconsolidate, that'll improve things. It's still the same model, you know? Joe says, with CMS split, the superintendent and staff will triple their salaries, or will the compensation be reduced because of the decreased size and responsibility? I doubt it. I think overall, let's say you split it into three districts. The salaries for the superintendents, I think, do come down, but you're now going to be paying three of them. So right now, if you're paying the superintendent, let's say 400K a year, you split it into three, well, for math, let me say, you split it into four districts. Do you think that you're going to pay 100K per super? Or are you paying a little bit more? Also, they then all have to have their own administrative staff around them. Now, I don't know. I'd like to see a comparison. How many staffers does it take to manage a school district of a certain size? Like student body, teachers, whatever. Is there an administrator to teacher to student ratio? Kind of feel like that information should be part of the discussion. No? Because CMS seems to have a lot of administrative bloat. But then again, so does all of education. Regarding the New York school districts, it's even worse than you said. We have 231 school districts on Long Island with multiple school districts per town. Down to each hamlet. With many per town, multiple towns per county, there are 231 school administrators, which is staff-heavy structure, costs millions. That's from my dad. Thank you, Dad. Yeah, I knew it was a lot. Yeah, it's crazy. And everybody's up there like, let's consolidate. And they think that's the answer, and we have consolidated schools here, and it's not the answer. Beth's favorite Russ says passion and ability are not always linked. All you have to do is watch one episode of American Idol tryouts to see some of the most passionate are the least qualified. It's true. It's funny because it's true. So the Charlotte Observer reporting the General Assembly's adjournment resolution restricts which matters lawmakers can consider during the remaining session. One exception allows legislation concerning election laws, and that. Includes districts for elected officials. Lawmakers could also attempt to advance the proposal, which, again, there is no drafted proposal. Like David Willis said, like this is going to be a multi-year effort kind of a thing. to advance the proposal by replacing the language of an existing bill with provisions to restructure CMS. This is called, well, they call it gut and amend. I call it gut and stuff because it sounds better, right? The gut and stuff where you have a bill that made crossover, the deadline from house to Senate, Senate to house, whatever you got a bill is hanging out in a committee, whatever you got it, you stick a bunch of other stuff in there. And then you can push it through that way, gut and stuff. Another possibility is the legislation applies only to Mecklenburg County. This would be a local bill, but that would still need to pass both chambers. Here's the problem. North Carolina law establishes the procedures for merging school districts. So if you want to consolidate, there's a process for that. There is not a process to go the other direction. So lawmakers, according to Education NC, in a 2019 report, lawmakers would need to establish how CMS could be separated into smaller districts. A legislative committee studied the possibility of dividing large districts back in 2017 and but did not recommend a specific process for doing so. Its final report also found existing research did not establish a clear relationship between school district size and student academic performance. Which is what I've been saying. The problem is the model. It's not the size. If you're looking at student performance... which we really, like, that's not really part of this equation. Who cares about whether Johnny can read? That's irrelevant. And honestly, when it comes to CMS, in the wake of the corruption scandal that has been unfolding for the last few months, it's not about student performance. This is about theft, right? This is about financial irregularities. It's about, you know, paying out contracts to political allies and such. This isn't about whether the size of the district is better for student performance or not. It's about corruption. So I don't know if the size of the district matters in that regard. CMS was consolidated back in 1960, in. Case anybody was interested. Now, the Charlotte Ledger had a great piece from Tony Messia, the executive editor, and he said, the headline is, the most important CMS questions remain unanswered. We still don't know enough to answer a basic question. After all this time, we still don't know, was this simply a case of sloppy contracting and lax oversight? Or, he says something more troubling, which I would fill in the blank there, which is corruption. Right? Because that's what it sure looks like. Nobody we have talked to, he says, seems to know exactly how serious the problems are. Many important details are missing, and the key players who could help fill in the blanks have not been talking. Right? Stephanie Sneed, the school board member who stepped down as chair because of her involvement in this stuff, but she's still on the board. She's not talking. She's not explaining anything. Racky McGregor, her political ally who got the contracts, he hasn't been saying anything. How about the law firm, Pointer Spruill, right? Nobody up there has explained themselves. Nobody in that law firm has said anything. Why did they hire Racky McGregor? How did he get the inside track for this subcontract? How did that happen? Nobody knows. The law firm has not said why it hired McGregor or what he did. Why did you bring this guy on? What was he doing? Pointer Spruill has not provided information on the work that he did or was supposed to do. Were there other businesses or financial arrangements between Sneed and McGregor? Don't know. It's also unclear how or why the Pointer Spruill invoices that were sent to the district did not follow the usual procedures. They routed them through the general counsel's office. How did that happen? Why did that happen? Right? People who know the answers to these questions have not been telling us the answers to the questions. So we are now left to fill in the blanks that, Well, if you're not willing to tell us the legitimate reasons why you did this stuff this way, now I have to fill in the blank that there must be some inappropriate reason why you did things this way. 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 thepeatcalinershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.