History rhymes: Deconsolidating CMS | Hour 1

While Mark Twain was attributed... for saying history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. People attribute that to Mark Twain. There's actually no apparent primary source evidence that he ever said that. But the aphorism holds here when it comes to Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools and a renewed effort to deconsolidate. That's a word I have not seen in any of the reporting about proposed legislation coming from David Willis from Union County, a Republican. He did win re-election, so he is going back to the state legislature. He'll be in the House. He'll be in a minority because he's a Republican. But I'm old enough to remember, and indeed I covered extensively at the time, the effort to deconsolidate Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools some 20, 25 years ago. And so when I saw this and I heard the interview that Representative Willis did with Brett Jensen yesterday, you can listen to the whole thing over on the WBT.com website or the WBT app. And I think he even referenced that this is not the first time people have looked at breaking up what is the state's second largest school district now, I think by population. I think there's like 140,000 students. I think Wake County is now larger, but geographically, I believe we are still the largest. We have the second most number of students, but we're all of Mecklenburg County. Our district includes all of Mecklenburg County, and this was part of the argument 25 years ago when guys like Jim Puckett, former school board member, former County commissioner, um, went along with, uh, several of his Republican colleagues and went up to Raleigh and, uh, were, and one of them was actually physically removed a state representative, John Rhodes. John Rhodes was from, I believe Cornelius or Huntersville, but he was from North Meck. And, uh, John Rhodes was, at the time, a backbencher. He was a Republican. They were in the minority, much like David Willis is going to be now, right? The Speaker of the House was Jim Black from Matthews. And they went up there to push for legislation to deconsolidate CMS. And Rhodes was, like, physically removed by the sergeant at arms from the– from the public hearing. They had to drag him out of there. I was, I was there. I covered it. I was up in Raleigh and like, he was like grabbing onto the podium and they were like pulling him off of it. They cut his microphone. Now the, the circumstances were a little bit different back then. You see, Charlotte Mecklenburg schools was consolidated decades ago. Used to be different school districts that got consolidated, but It had a history of racism, right? They were not, and this was the late attorney, Julius Chambers, right? I believe he was the attorney that argued for the Swan plaintiffs. That was the family that sued. And they showed how, I believe, James Ferguson was also part of that legal team, the late James Ferguson or Fergie, as he was referred to. I believe he was part of that as well. And, and they argued in court how like all of the white schools were getting. All of the new equipment and the new buildings and such. And the school board could not be trusted to not be racist. Right. All of the hand-me-downs and the, the damaged stuff, that was all going to the black schools. All of the desks were all falling apart. The chairs were crummy and all of that. And so they got put under a desegregation order by the court. And they were told, you have to desegregate your schools. You have to start busing. And so CMS was under a busing order for decades. And what that meant, I mean, this informed basically all policy ever since, right? Because Now you had to– you had more transportation costs, right, because you had buses that were running farther distances. You were taking kids from white areas of town to black areas of town and black areas of town and to white areas of town. You had schools that were already built. But as Charlotte started growing, the population boomed, and now you had to build schools. Where would you build the schools? Because you have to pay attention to where are the populations and what are their racial demographics. And then that became a factor where you would build schools. I believe Olympic High is a school that was built precisely where it is because of this very dynamic. And so you then start locating schools kind of halfway between white and black schools. uh, populations to, to help reduce the transportation costs and all of that. Um, well, finally, uh, I believe it was the very late nineties. The ruling came down right before I got to WBT. Cause one of the first stories that I ever went out and covered was a press conference by then school board chairman, Arthur Griffin. Now he's a County commissioner. Um, he, he's a, he's a black man and he was, uh, doing a press conference after the court had lifted the busing order. They said, you are no longer racist. And so you are no longer required to do the busing. And CMS fought this. CMS fought the lifting of the court order. And that's why I mentioned Arthur Griffin's race is because their argument was, we can't be trusted. Do not be racist. Which was weird because the chairman was black. They had multiple black members on the school board. I believe George Dunlap was there at the time. Now County Commissioner Bill Malik was there. Wilhelmina Rembert was there, I think. Maybe she came a year or two later. But there was black representation on the school board. And the chairman was black too. But they were making this argument that they can't be trusted. We have to stay under the court-ordered desegregation busing ruling. And The court was not convinced, the court was not persuaded that they were also as racist as the white folks were, what, 60 years prior. So they lifted the order. Well, now this raises a whole bunch of new questions, right? Because now you're not allowed to bust for race anymore. You're not allowed to assign students based on their race. And the school board tried all sorts of ways around this. They would do like free and reduced lunch populations. They would use that as a proxy for the data set of race. You know, they were constantly trying to find ways to keep busing. They implemented like a weighting score. So they weighted students. And basically if It's like you were– was it Title I recipient, Title I schools, and then you were like 1.5. If you were not, you were 1. And if you were like from a wealthy area, then– or a school was in a wealthy area, then you were like a. 5 or something. And– you know, people were pointing out like, well, this is just, this is just using race again. Like you're swapping out socioeconomic data points for race. And you're still then drawing the assignment boundaries around areas and trying to move populations into the schools. Right. Because the idea was, and still is that if you have a school that is, you know, predominantly or majority minority schools, then that school is not going to do as well as a school that is majority white, right? That's the argument, which I remember Linda Lynn Kakadelis, former school board chair or a school board member and white Republican lady. And she was saying, well, what if that's all you've got? Like, what are you saying to these kids and these parents that, that the school is going to fail because of the color of their skin? What an awful thing to say to people. Like, why are you making this argument? Kind of racist? So maybe actually Griffin was correct on that. Anyway, the, um, the order gets lifted, but now the district has to build schools, particularly in the North Mac area, because there are trailers everywhere, right? These classroom trailers, they're not keeping up with the capital construction. Well, if you slow down construction, um, in areas where white people live, then you force the busing. Another lawsuit occurs. Right. And the deconsolidation. 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. 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So where we left off the, uh, back in the day, this was 25 years ago, um, 20 years ago, that timeframe, um, CMS was way behind on school construction and they were doing school bonds and stuff, but the North mech area, uh, was growing so quickly and CMS was accused of not the board was accused of not prioritizing new schools in the North because they were still trying to bus. Kids all around the County. Okay. So that engendered a lot of outrage there. And then from that grew a movement. There were town halls about this. I covered them and these places were packed and, usually in the North Meck area. And then you had some other places, County Commissioner Bill James, Republican from Matthews. He was also interested in having, you know, Matthews could run its own school district, right? And so this deconsolidation idea has been around in Charlotte for decades, okay? So this is not new. It's just a different kind of corruption, right? that's the difference here. Okay. Before it was, you know, political corruption with a little bit of racism thrown in there. Um, and now it's about the financial irregularities, the spending, right? As I've said before, CMS is under investigation by basically everybody except Candace Owens at this point. So like, this is probably the best time to take a look at breaking up the school district. So yesterday, Brett Jensen on his program, Breaking with Brett Jensen, it's on WBT here from 6 until 7 p.m. weekdays, he had Representative David Willis on. This was an exclusive interview. I've not seen in any of the other news stories from the local outlets. I've not seen anybody that's been able to get David Willis on the air for an interview. But the way the story was or is being reported is that, from the Charlotte Observer, for example, a Republican state lawmaker is drafting legislation to divide Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools into smaller districts and force new school board elections, a proposal that could dramatically reshape public education in Mecklenburg County. Now, they didn't talk to David Willis. There is no proposed legislation, okay? There's no draft. There's nothing in writing anywhere. And the Observer reports that Willis has not publicly released details of the proposal, mainly because there isn't any. which could dramatically reshape North Carolina's second largest school district and replace its elected governing board as the district faces mounting scrutiny over its finances and leadership. CMS board member Anna London told the Observer that a member of Willis' staff called her Tuesday afternoon to notify her that legislation was being drafted. Quote, 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. Well, that's not what Willis says. Okay? That's not what Willis says. If you listen to the clips that I pulled from Brett's show in this interview, he says his office reached out, they gave all of the school board members, yes, a phone call, a heads up, basically, and they did so in order to solicit feedback from them. Well, we didn't really get much feedback at this point. We offered, you know, my email address and a week and a half for them to provide some comments or some feedback on it. We felt like it was important as we move forward with this that they at least be given an opportunity to provide some, you know, their thoughts and input on it. Huh. So they reached out to the board members, giving them a week and a half, so like 10 days, I guess. To provide feedback. What are your thoughts on this idea? As we are, like, I'm going to start this process. I'm going to look into breaking it up and do a recall election for all of you board members. I understand why they would oppose that. But that's what he says they reached out to do. Anna London, she's also quoted at the Charlotte Ledger, saying the same thing. That, oh, we were just told, hey, we got a bill, we're writing a bill, and that was it. So who's telling the truth here? Maybe some intrepid reporters could solicit those email exchanges to find out what exactly. Was offered. Or were these all just phone calls and there's no audio recording of it? Not sure. Not sure. Otherwise, like, why would you then be providing the email and phone number to David Willis? Like, why would you do that if it's not a solicitation of feedback? So. Not off to a great start. 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's a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. All right, so going back to some of the audio clips, this is State Representative David Willis. He was on with Brett Jensen yesterday. You can listen to the whole interview at the WBT.com website or on the app. So Willis also said they're not just trying to get feedback from the board members, but also from the public. And he was saying, like, we want to hear you know, those in support and those opposed, like we want to hear from the public here. You know, I've been in Charlotte, the greater Charlotte area for over 30 years. And really, I don't remember a time where there wasn't a discussion about changing boards or changing superintendents. And so there's a stability and CMS are not, you know, often in a sentence together. And so I think it's long overdue for us to have some of these conversations. And I think the board continues to show an inability to understand the the seriousness of what's happening when you've got the DOJ, the FBI, the SBI, the state auditor, you know, every possible agency under the sun out there investigating them simultaneously, the seriousness of this. And, you know, just what I've read, and I don't really have any behind-the-scenes information more than anybody else, but the accusations that have been made publicly from all the reporting that's been out there over the last several months is highly concerning. And, you know, you've got to look at it at the end of the day and say, who's standing up for the parents? Who's standing up for these students and fighting for the teachers and the staff at the schools? Yeah. Charlotte Ledger did a really good write-up on this, the questions that have not been answered. And these are pretty basic questions. And I'll get into that probably in the next hour because I want to get through this, uh, these audio clips, but yeah, the, the, the Charlotte Mecklenburg school board has been dysfunctional for 30 years that I've been around since the, you know, 2000 when I was covering school board meetings, I did that for almost a decade. Dysfunctional always has been just in different ways. Um, Next up, he says this was prompted in large part by those investigations into CMS. The conversations around breaking up CMS are not new. You know, there have been groups that have even studied this over the years. And, you know, when you talk about, you know, a geographic area as large as, you know, Cornelius and Huntersville all the way down to Steel Creek or Ballantyne or, you know, Matthews, it's a huge geographic area. And the ability to effectively manage areas a system that large and that geographically different. We've seen issues with storms, whether it's winter storms or hurricane damage or other things where parts of the school district needed to close. You've got to close the entire district, right? And so there are a number of different instances of things happening. And I think once you get that large, too, you lose sight of Yeah, I agree. I agree. Snowstorms, right? Sometimes North Meck is sitting under two, three inches of snow, and down in Steel Creek, they get nothing. Right? So what do you do? Like, oh, those schools are going to be closed. These are going to stay open. Got to run the buses for this zone, not that zone, right? There's just a lot of logistics to this just because of the geographic size of it. Also. 140,000. Students, $ 2 billion budget. And honestly, you look at the people that are on the school board or have recently been on the school board, and what are their qualifications? People get onto the school board and are in charge of these massive budgets, and their experience has been what? Political activism? That's your base of knowledge, or you're a teacher. You were a 25-year, 30-year teacher, and so therefore you can manage a capital construction budget. I'm sorry, but if you were a first-grade teacher, I don't think that qualifies you to make those kinds of decisions. You have to have some other skillset you're bringing to the table. I'm not saying ignore teachers' input. I'm not saying that. As Vince Coakley says, do not hear what I am not saying. I'm pointing out that you want people with certain levels of expertise to be on the school board. Unfortunately, in this county, right, people can't get through a primary. They can't get to an election because of the nature of our political environment. So So who do you end up with? Well, you end up with people who just say it's for the children. That's it. He said it's too early to know any of the specifics about what this would look like. He says this would be a multi-year process that would need to examine, you know, optimal sizes and optimal systems. We've got a lot of discussions, a lot of folks that need to be at the table for that, and that's not something that's going to come overnight. So anybody that's hearing this and thinking about, oh, my gosh, the school's going to get broken up, where are we going to be, or they're freaking out about that, I would just say relax. This is going to be a multi-year approach, and for us to be successful at it, we've got to make sure that we take the time and do it right and have the key people, the right people at the table. For these discussions and that I'm hoping will, you know, allow us to at least start identifying some of those, those key individuals sooner rather than later and start some discussions, you know, hopefully before the end of the year. Right. So what happens at the end of the year? The Republicans lose control of the house, right? Democrats then take the majority. So if you can push through some sort of enabling legislation to create a study commission or something like that, You can lay the foundation for the work to start, and then the Democrats would have to either defund that. They would have to come out and overturn that legislation of some kind. They would have to make some sort of, I hate to say it, but proactive. They'd have to go on the record to kill that study process. And if all this is at this stage is information gathering, identifying stakeholders, who do we bring in, setting up a commission of some kind, a study committee, whatever it may be, then Democrats are coming in and saying, no, we're not going to allow this to occur. Well, now you're on record as saying basically everything is fine at CMS as it is under investigation by the FBI, the SBI, the Department of Public Instruction, and the state auditor's office. So I would submit, politically speaking— That's not a great position to take. It's not a great idea to look like you are running cover for a district that is under all of these probes. And we still don't know what kind of financial irregularities occurred to the extent that they occurred. We don't know. So I. Would think that the political incentive there is to allow the process to start, to allow the fact-finding and the infrastructure to get laid so it can at least be studied. And as he pointed out, this is not the first time that CMS people have looked at whether or not to deconsolidate CMS. And if you're just unwilling to even entertain the idea, well, now I'm going to start thinking that you're just trying to protect the status quo system. despite the fact that we know of all of these problems and it's not getting better, right? CMS is not getting better from a governance standpoint. It's getting worse. All right, let's head over to the text line and see what you people are saying. Jason says, well, it's loading, loading, loading. Okay, well, maybe I'm not going to read any text. Oh, no, here it is. Okay. Jason says, I was one of those kids bused from Sardis Road North to Fourth Ward Uptown. That ruined my school life forever. John says, maybe the CMS board is now more racist-y than ever. Yeah, I don't know. Beth's Favorite Russ asks, do you know-know that Candace Owens is not investigating CMS? That's it. Uh, that's true. I, I don't know. No, I mean, I don't know that she's not investigating, but. I don't know. No, that she's not investigating. Um, the, Oh my gosh. Hellion. I got, I've said this before. You got to put these comments into a single thing here because like I, you're, you're spamming the text line and it's difficult to, to sift through the, the older texts. Um, What is this? 828 number. Explain how somebody can manage a billion-dollar budget with little experience, make them become fiduciaries. How can we elect prior felon thugs? That's the stupid part. Yeah, our school board chairman is a convicted felon, and nobody seemed to know that before he won election to the board and then got elevated to the chairmanship amid the scandal. Um, Kevin says, I know there are several factors, but you get what you pay for with the Charlotte Mecklenburg school board. When you only pay 23,000 to 30,000 to each board member annually yet expect them to function like an elite corporation board. It's just not logical to pay that little and expect quality talent to even want to be on the board. Um, Yeah, this is the argument that a lot of electeds have made over the years with regard to the part-time legislature and the city council, school board, county commissioners. You know, they're like, oh, this is a full-time job. You're not going to get all the people that could be good at doing this. They're not doing it because they're working and all of that. And so, like, well, the city council is now paying, like, what, 50 to 60 grand a year for those positions. Are we getting better school board or city council members because of that? Right. They truly are our representatives, right? The idea is that you get people who have, you know, they've done work in the private sector or in the public sector too, but whatever. But after they have done all of that for years, they then retire and then they could be a local elected official. Like that was, that's the concept behind that, right? It's if you want to have people whose career is being a politician and Like that's not a great alternative because then what kind of people are you going to get on the school board? Right. Because now if I get in, if I get a job as a school board member, now I'm going to be on the board making what 60, 70, 80,000 a year or so. And now that's my job. Like, I don't, I don't see that as better because now you're going to be doing things to try to make sure you don't lose your job. Right. Which could be a recipe for corruption. We've seen that elsewhere. Um, John says, how much you want to bet Racky McGregor and his wife want to be on this study commission? Can you imagine how much money they could get from three different CMS systems? That's a good point too. Yeah. Break it up so I can get contracts with all of them. Um, Why is everybody picking on CMS? The voters have resoundingly chosen the leadership time after time. A few questions about financial improprieties are blown out of proportion. The funds involved are just a small percentage of the overall budget. I mean, what's a little bit of embezzlement among friends, right? Among political allies. Not the best argument, but Not the best argument, but yes, these are choices. And this is part of the problem is like, you're going to do a study commission and the people who are going to be on it, they're all, you know, think about the people that are going to be on it. These quote stakeholders, they're probably going to want to keep this thing going. 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.