School funding and a "Marshall Plan" for Western NC | Hour 1

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 peak 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. It is Tuesday, and it's the first hour of the program, and so that means we chat with Andrew Dunn from Longleaf Politics. You can read his work at longleafpol.com and occasionally over at the Charlotte Observer as a contributing columnist. Andrew, how are you, sir? Oh, I'm doing fantastic. I'll be better if the Braves can win this afternoon. Ah, yes. Are you going to be watching? Oh, yeah, for sure. But I'll make sure I'm going to have WBT playing in the background. All right. All right. Look, no one no one trusts a flatterer, Andrew. So let's talk about the Marshall plan, not the one from World War Two, but kind of sort of. This is what the governor's recovery office for Western North Carolina put out an economic recovery plan, which seems on brand. And they say that this is kind of going to be sort of like the Marshall Plan that the U.S. Did in Europe. After World War II to help Europe recover. And so what you've read this thing, because that's so on brand for you to read through. It is. Yeah. Something like this. So you read through it. OK. And what are your takeaways here? Yeah, so the Stein administration put out this report last week, just ahead of the two-year anniversary after Hurricane Helene. And I appreciate what they're trying to do here. And they brought in people from across the political spectrum to work on this. It was kind of headed up by Sharon Decker, who was Commerce Secretary. In the McCrory administration. The problem is, in a lot of ways, this might actually be more difficult than the Marshall Plan in Europe. At least in Europe, you know, France and England had been industrial powers before World War II, and so they were trying to restore essentially what they'd had before the war. What we're trying to do in western North Carolina is something that hasn't existed before, which is to turn it into an economic powerhouse. I think it's a worthy goal to... The. Problem is that it's going to take a lot. To get there. Right. So you talk about a couple of examples, Spruce Pine and the quartz deposits up there. You talk about this plan or this vision for passenger rail to run between Salisbury and Asheville, I guess, for easier access. transit for the homeless population to get to Asheville. No, I'm kidding, but not really. And then there's also Canton, but Canton may actually, and you cite what the effort's going on there after the closure of the mill, that this may actually be sort of a, I don't know, a blueprint for other local towns in the area. Yeah, I think so. I mean, Western North Carolina, there's so many different communities. I don't think any one plan from the state level is really going to move the needle on moving Western North Carolina forward. I mean, there are some interesting ideas in there. I absolutely think Spruce Pine needs to double down on its unique geographic assets. But the thing is, is that what really is going to help Western North Carolina moving forward is really an individual community by community plan. I cited Canton in my article on this because I really appreciate what. Canton is doing. You know, they have a unique asset in the former mill site and they're choosing not to. stay down on the closure of the mill and they're going to try to figure out how to turn it into something beneficial for the community. And I think that's what. It's going to take town by town across Western North Carolina is this sort of approach to economic development. You know, one of the hard parts though, and this is where the state can come into play, is that a lot of these towns just do not have the tax base do not have the infrastructure in place to really move forward. Talking about Spruce Pine. They've got a really neat plan to improve downtown Spruce Pine. The only problem is that it's a $ 40 million plan, and they only have a budget. Of $ 3 million per year for the entire town. So that's where the state can come in and kind of help, I believe. Yeah, and Canton's got, I mean, if you've never been to Canton, I mean, that mill, when I say it's in downtown, like, it is literally in downtown. The whole town is around it, and it is a massive piece of property that's right there. And it's, I mean, it was closing before Helene, so it's not like Helene did the damage to the, to the mill. Right. Right. And yeah, just the economic pressures and the ownership changes and, you know, globalization and all this other stuff. And so that mill has been a major employer for, for not just Canton, but a lot of the surrounding little townships and villages. That are all over the place. And yeah, I mean, the, the, the challenges in Western North Carolina have existed long before Helene. It does kind of seem, when I was reading your piece at Longleaf Politics, I kind of came to this conclusion that it seems to me like tourism is still going to be the easiest and the cheapest and most likely industry to lean into because Western North Carolina is blessed with the mountains, right? It's got all this beautiful scenery and it is like dollar for dollar, if It's like the most bang for the buck. With very little investment, you can get a lot of return on tourism. It's just you're then at the mercy of the fickle tourism seasons and, you know, the ebbs and flows of that industry. Well, that's the thing. I mean, tourism, it's inevitable that tourism is going to be a major part of Western North Carolina's economy. And I don't think that that's a bad thing. But I do understand some of the hesitation to make that Western North Carolina's exclusive source of the economy. Canton Mayor Zebs Mathers, who's probably my favorite Democrat in North Carolina, I mean, he put it kind of well. He put it pretty well. And when he was working. On the Canton economic development plan. You know, he wanted to have manufacturing in Canton. He wanted to have more full-time jobs because, you know, when you're exclusively. A tourism-based economy, it's very seasonal. Like you said, very fickle. But when you have some of that full-time, that manufacturing infrastructure. Now you've got families with young kids who are playing on the sports teams, who are filling up the churches, who are manning the PTAs. And I think that really creates a more solid base for long-term growth. All right. You mentioned schools there and the kids. Let's talk about CMS, huh? Wow, what a poop show. So, yeah, I didn't speak to you. I haven't spoken with you since last Tuesday when the board fired the superintendent and the chair stepped aside. So I guess what was your reaction to all of that? Yeah, I mean, as a conservative, I want to say I told you so. And, you know, kind of this is what happens when you have. One party rule. I think our last remaining Republican on the school board lost her reelection last year. um but as a father of four cms students i don't take any particular pleasure in seeing this mess unfold uh but this tuesday i think they're meeting again to launch a search for a new superintendent and so kind of where i'm focused on right now is you know how can we get a little bit of oversight from the state to come in as we're searching for a new superintendent because. This current school board has lost all legitimacy and public trust. And I do not trust them to make the right decision moving forward whatsoever. Yeah. I mean, that's the problem is that you've got a majority voting block of five and a minority voting block of four. And the five were the ones that ousted the superintendent, not for cause, but for convenience. And then you've got one of the, the, uh, the majority block members who's embroiled in all of this contract, potential corruption and stuff. and these, you know, funneling the contracts to a political ally. Now we find out there's even more. So, yeah, it's like, how do you trust these five members if they're going to be the majority voting bloc? on hiring a new super, like, how do you trust them to make this decision? I don't, not at all. Um, but does the state actually, yeah. Go ahead. And, you know, they're going to launch into the superintendent search process while there's a specter of investigations from the state bureau of investigation and the state. Auditor's report could drop at any moment. Uh, hopefully it'll come sooner rather than later, but you know, that's going to be another massive shakeup and, and. It's you know, it almost you almost want. The entire school board to step down and hold a special election and start fresh. Well, yeah. And like if you're a candidate, would you want to come to Charlotte Mecklenburg schools during this time period when you could very well see a whole bunch of people going to jail? I mean, like, I don't know if anybody wants that on their resume. I think that's one of the reasons why our last couple of superintendents have been internal hires. You probably remember a decade ago, we were getting some of those external candidates. Heath Morrison, I think, came from Texas. Clayton Wilcox, I think, came from Florida. But I would be shocked if CMS is able to land someone. with credibility from outside the district right now. Yeah, because Crystal Hill came from Cabarrus County. And before that, it was Ernest Winston, who was a Charlotte Observer reporter, which you used to be, too. You covered the education beat as well. Maybe throw your name in the. In the hat. Maybe so. I think I have all the credentials there. You also did an interesting breakdown, I thought, on the the size of the student populations. Right. The shrinking population. Student enrollment. This has been going on for a couple of years now across the entire state. Districts, you say, are shrinking, even in places where the population is booming. And so you say that got you wondering, where are all the students going? And in a word, charter schools or charters, I guess, would be one word. So charters, that was kind of surprising. I guess most people would have thought homeschool or private schools. Yeah, I mean, especially with the increase in opportunity scholarships. You know, over the past couple years, the General Assembly has. Made some pretty big changes, good changes, I think, in making private schools more accessible to people, you know, if the families decide that that's the right fit for their child. So kind of what I was expecting was to see that a lot of the declines in public school enrollment would be moving over to private schools, but that's really not the case. either here in Mecklenburg County or statewide. The percentage of students, what I did was I looked at what the market share looks like. So you take all of the students in North Carolina, all the students in Mecklenburg County, what percentage are going to different types of schools? I think that's a pretty good way to look at what's increasing and what's decreasing rather than just raw numbers. And the percentage of students going to private schools has stayed remarkably consistent over the. Last 20 years. been 6%. I think it went up to 8% here in Mecklenburg County, and it's about the same statewide. But the tremendous amount of growth has. Been in charter schools. I mean, we're talking about 500% growth in percentage of students going to charter schools. And I think it's a. You know, again, as a conservative, I want to say, you know, what a. Great win for school choice. And I think it is. I think, you know, if we have more families that are finding better fits for their students, that is a win. But again, as a parent of students in public schools, I think it's a troubling sign if your public school districts are consistently losing the competition. Well, I think it goes to the fact that charter schools operate with greater flexibility, right? they can be more responsive and nimble. And as you point out in your piece, and I always, whenever I talk about charters, they are, in fact, public schools as well. But I think part of the issue, or not an issue, but part of the idea of school choice is not that there are no longer any public schools. It's that the more choice you have, right, the more options you will have, and that will make the public schools compete. And so the good ones will be able to do so. So if they are good schools, if these charter schools are good schools, then parents will want to go there And so that's not something to be feared. I think that's always been the argument from the conservative side, the school choice side, that never seems to be understood by defenders of the status quo model. It's like there's no appreciation for the idea that like, no, no, no, we just want competition because then that will improve the schools. That's the idea. That is the idea, and I think it's still a possible future. I mean, there is no future in North Carolina without public school districts, traditional public school districts. You know, we talk about declines in enrollment across the state, but still 75% of North Carolina students are going to a traditional public school. The thing is, I want, when families choose to I think it's important that they're doing so because they found an option that, you know, they have a good curriculum or a great program that stands out that they think their. Student would really. Respond to, not because they're fleeing a failing traditional public school. Gotcha. Andrew Dunn, you can read his work over at Longleaf Politics. Longleafpol.com is the website. You can also catch him every now and again over at the Charlotte Observer and pick up his book, The Change Agent. Pat McCrory's Rise, Reckoning, and Legacy. Andrew, thanks for your time, buddy. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. All right, take care. 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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This is from Gary who says, The old Canton paper mill would be a great chance to repurpose part of the old mill for a... data center. But that's true. Actually, the power and water is already there. It would be a big boon to a local, uh, for local taxes to have something like that there. I know Facebook boosted Rutherford County's tax base after the textiles leaving. That is correct. These data centers kick off millions of dollars in property taxes. So, uh, to me, kind of seems like a no-brainer. It's a massive mill, massive footprint. And like Gary says, it's already got the water and the power that was already plugged into the grid. And the industrial use meant a massive power drain from the grid. So it just seems like it would probably be a pretty close trade-off there. while kicking off millions and millions of dollars in tax revenue. The problem is it's a data center. We're not building any of those anymore. Thanks, China. 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, so let me go over some of the data that Andrew Dunn put in his piece at Longleaf Politics because we kind of covered some of it, but I think the data is really interesting. He broke this down by, as he said, market share. So if you take all of the students in North Carolina, what percentage of the market is being served by public schools, like your traditional K-12 GovCo schools? What percentage is being served by public charter schools? homeschools, private schools, okay? So if you look at the entire state, 75% of all the students across the state, 1.37 million of them are in your traditional K-12 public schools, 75%. However, that is a decline. That is a decline from 88% 20 years ago. So in 2006, you had 88% of all the students attending your traditional K-12 schools. 20 years ago, 88%. You had 2% in public charter schools, 4% in homeschool, and 6% in private schools. So when you then look at where those students went over the last 20 years, I mean, obviously, like, these are different students because it's 20 years they graduated, all of that. But you have this decline, in not just real numbers, but in the percentage, the market share. So it went from 88% to 75% in the K-12. Charter schools went from 2% market share up to 9%. This was a 480% 20-year growth. So almost 500% growth in students going to charter schools as a percentage of the market. Homeschool went from 4% to 8%. That's a 138% increase. Private schools went from 6% to eight. That's a 55% increase. So you can see where like, yes, all of these different, um, All of these different options have been growing at the expense of the K-12 model. But the number one growth sector is the public charter schools. Now, that's the state. If you look at the numbers for Charlotte-Mecklenburg, 20 years ago, 85% of the kids were in CMS, going to the K-12 traditional schools, and only 3% in charters. 8% private, 4% homeschool. Fast forward 20 years, and the population at the traditional model went from 85% down to 71%. Charter schools went from 3% to 14%. Again, a 479% increase. Massive increase in charter school students as a portion of the market. Because if you look at the actual head counts, there were just under 5,000 kids in charter schools 20 years ago, and now there's like 28,000. Okay, so it's a quintupling, if you will, of the population. But the vast majority of students still go to the traditional K-12 model schools. There's 141,000 still going to CMS regular schools, right? Non-charter schools. Private schools went from 8% to 9%. Of the market share. Home school went from 4% to 6% of the market share. See, so the massive growth. At the expense of the CMS K-12 traditional school model, it's going to the charter schools. Now, what's interesting here also, he points out, is that the State Board of Education has set a goal of getting public schools, including charters, to 89% market share by 2030. And Andrew says in his piece, I don't see how we get there if districts keep giving parents reasons to look elsewhere. Yes. See, this is the problem. You are constantly demanding that we support public education, that we give it more money. How much more money? Just more, more, more, more. That's always the answer. Give me a dollar figure. What's the per pupil expenditure we should be spending? Just more. Okay, well, what's the optimal teacher pay? More. It's always just more. Yeah, slight problem. People are not as inclined to give you more money when they see you wasting money and acting in a completely juvenile and dysfunctional way as the leaders of the district. It does not inspire confidence to invest, you know? I would not be giving money to an organization voluntarily. I would not be giving money to an organization that was behaving like CMS. But I don't have a choice, right? That's why libertarians say things like taxation is theft, right? Because I don't have a choice. I can't withhold my money because of the awful behavior of the Charlotte Mecklenburg school board. I can't, I can't do anything about it. All I can do is say, vote them out or you should step aside. And until the results of the state Bureau of investigations probe and the auditor's report are That's all I can do. I can't withhold my property taxes, you know? Andrew had another piece that he wrote, this one over at the Charlotte Observer. We kind of talked a little bit about it with him. The biggest obstacle, he says, to securing more money for public education is a lack of trust in how it will be used. He talks about several districts, including CMS, but in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, for example, they had a $ 46 million deficit That prompted scrutiny, which uncovered basic accounting failures. And they found about $ 15 million in expenses that were kept off the books. In Wake County, they have HVAC problems again. This is causing students to not be able to attend class again. Which is weird, because the district... is. Reporting a maintenance backlog of tens of millions of dollars, even though it got $ 434 million in COVID-related spending that the state claimed would go to HVAC improvements. Remember that? For ventilation improvements. We can't possibly send our teachers union back to school to educate the kids because of the ventilation problems. We need better HVAC systems. So we got hundreds of millions of dollars that were supposed to be used for this very thing, and you didn't do it? They spent $ 330 million of it on salaries and benefits. See, why would I fund you more? Why would I give you more money? This is the same thing. This is the same argument I make when it comes to teacher pay in general. I want to pay the good teachers. I want to pay them six figures because, like, They can change kids' lives. The great teachers will change a person's life. The bad teachers do not deserve the same amount of money. And I'm not going to be held hostage. I'm not going to be guilted or shamed to say, you have to pay even the bad ones the same amount you're paying the good ones because we can't possibly figure out how to determine if a teacher is a good teacher or a bad one. This from the people whose profession is to literally determine your growth and your proficiency and your mastery of a particular skill set, right? Your job is literally to teach and assess whether or not the person has learned. And you're telling me you can't do the same thing for yourselves. No, you can do the same thing for yourselves. You refuse to do so. You don't want it allows the bad teachers to hide among the good ones. And then they say, look at all these great teachers. They want more money and they deserve more money. And you can agree with the good teachers deserving more money. But I'm not going to pay the bad ones the same amount of money. Not going to do it. And because I can't dictate where that money goes and how it's used, and you guys refuse to come up with some sort of a performance-based metric system, then this is where I am. Note everything. From the text line, Debbie says, for years, I have recommended breaking the Charmec school district into multiple districts. This was the whole deconsolidation effort. I remember it well, led by guys like John Rhodes and Jim Puckett, Larry Gavreau. To break the district into multiple districts for more ability to control, and I also recommended an outside audit. We're talking back in 2005 when I called into Keith Larson's show. So sad. It's just a big cluster bleep of corruption. Yeah. Although, I will say this again. The problem is the model, okay? it's not necessarily the size of the district. So, and I say, this is one again, again, I'll just briefly, I grew up on long Island and every town has their own school board. Okay. So you then have like in Suffolk County where I grew up, I think there was like something in the neighborhood of 150 school districts. And that means 150 superintendents. 150 support staff, administrative staff, right? So you have this administrative cost that is just all across the entire county through every single district, right? So it's not the issue, and the problems up there are the same as they are here, although they have stronger unions up there. But the problem is the model. It's not the size of the model. There are efficiencies that CMS theoretically gains by being a larger district. However, you do lose, yes, some of that direct accountability. You do lose some of that because you have a much larger governing jurisdiction. Again, I'm not opposed to deconsolidation. I just don't think it will actually solve the problems that are inherent in the factory model that we have adopted and have been using in America for a century and a half now. The problem is the model. Let me see here. This is from Scott who says the reason the schools don't want competition is the Democrats don't like capitalism. Capitalism works best with competition. Yes, that is part of it. It is a monopoly. And then there becomes the money laundering aspect of it, right? Where it's like, vote for me as a Democrat, vote for me. And I will give you all of the money. from somebody else, from the taxpayer till I will give you the teachers, the administrators, right? I'll give you the money. I'll pay you more money. And then you can give me donations to keep me in power so I can give you more money because it's not our money. And I know people hate to hear this, but if you work in the public sector, you are a tax consumer. Okay? And I'm not saying that as a pejorative. I'm not trying to denigrate anybody. I'm just pointing out that you consume more tax dollars than you pay because your salary is drawn from the public till. The private sector is what produces the tax dollars. Right. So I, in the private sector, I am a tax producer. I pay more in than I draw out. And I hear, you know, people in the public sector, they called in and they've argued with me, but it's like, I'm not saying you don't pay any taxes. You're basically refunding some of that money back to the public till when you pay taxes. But unless you're working for a net loss, right. Then you're, then you are a tax consumer. Um, Let me see here. Oh, this was from– oh, this was on the data center issue. DA says, I think Canton, North Carolina, there are many small towns and communities around the Carolinas that are in ideal locations for data centers, cloud centers, and are in dire need of new industry jobs and tax revenue. For those towns' mayors, if they're smart, they would be contacting these companies and welcoming them to come in. they just need to be informed and have effective and strong individuals doing the contract negotiations. The benefits far outweigh the negatives, which can mostly be addressed with smart contract negotiations. I hope all those listening will do their research and they will see what a massive boon these DC cloud developments are, uh, will be the, will be the communities that embrace them in a smart way. Uh, yeah, I agree. Um, and then Dave says, says, regarding CMS, you said, why would you give money to people you don't trust? They're just going to squander it. And that's been my thinking for years. Every time a bond vote comes around, I voted no. That goes for government, schools, or any other organization that wants my money. Show me you're a good fiduciary of the money you receive, and I'll give you mine. Yeah, this is the problem that they're going to have. They're asking for more and more money, but you haven't proved that you're good stewards of the money that we've already given you. 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.