After Meck withholds $56M from CMS, school board members warn of potential layoffs

County leaders’ decision to withhold millions of dollars from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will hinder the way the district operates and likely lead to layoffs of assistant principals, media specialists and math facilitators, among others, Carol Sawyer and other school board members said.

Mecklenburg County’s budget will eliminate the ability to provide pay raises for some teachers and delay the hiring and paying of assistant teachers and school-based staff.

“It’s laughable; it’s insulting to think withholding this money won’t have an impact on the kids,” Ray McKinnon, a Black minister and member of the district’s Community Equity Committee, told the Observer. McKinnon has two children in the CMS system — an eighth-grader at the Northwest School of the Arts and a junior at West Charlotte High School.

“It’s the county’s version of the ‘Big Lie.’ If you tell it often enough, boldly enough and loudly enough, you’ll start getting people to believe you, and you start believing it yourself. It’s not going to help kids, it’s going to hurt the kids it always hurts.”

Mecklenburg County commissioners withheld $56 million from the school system in the $2 billion budget they approved this week. Commissioners said they would release the money only after CMS provides an acceptable plan to improve the lowest performing schools.

“The board has been clear as for what they want to see: baseline student achievement,” commissioners Chairman George Dunlap said. “Publish where we are now, where we are going and the road map to get us there in detail, to include data points. Yearly progress reports to let us know how we are progressing.

“We will learn if (the board) will accept anything less.”

Many on the nine-person, all-Democratic Board of County Commissioners contend withholding the money won’t hurt students. Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio, who proposed the $56 million hold, agrees. She declined comment on Friday.

But some parents, school board members and teachers see things differently.

“Every employee of CMS is directly related to our student experiences,” Amanda Thompson-Rice, the president-elect for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Association of Educators, a CMS educator and parent, said. “Not funding will affect that. For instance, we have district support teams that support various schools and worksites by collaborating and building capacity with principals and educators. Eliminating the $56 million hurts that process. Mecklenburg County will never be able to attract, sustain, and maintain the best educators treating them like this.”

The $56 million represents about 11% of the county’s nearly $531 million appropriation to CMS.

“Shame on the county manager and the commissioners for making us think we have the worst school system in the state, when we don’t,” McKinnon said. “CMS isn’t doing as poorly as the (county) manager makes everyone think. Are we perfect? No. We need leaders who stop pointing fingers and work together.

“It defies logic. Here we are fighting with the General Assembly to get us what we need, and our own elected officials are playing with our children’s futures. They are right to call for these gaps to be closed, but they are wrong in how they’re going about doing it.”

For the first time, CMS initiated the dispute resolution process this week that calls for the two boards to meet within seven days.

The school board and county commissioners will meet in a joint special meeting at 2:30 p.m. Monday in the Valerie C. Woodard Center. The public may listen and view the meeting on the CMS Facebook outlets, the CMS YouTube Channel or on the Government Channel or online at https://watch.mecknc.gov or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/meckcounty.

“It is unfortunate that we have arrived at this point,” school board Chair Elyse Dashew wrote in a letter to Dunlap dated Wednesday. “But the county’s decision to withhold $56 million as ‘conditional funding’ means that we will be receiving funding of $475 million, not the $531 million you say we are getting.

“That $475 million also falls well short of our budget request this year of $551 million in operational funds and $35.6 million in capital funds.”

If the boards can’t reach an agreement when they meet Monday, a mediation process will follow. If the boards cannot reach an agreement in mediation, county commissioners are required by state law to provide “sufficient” funding.

The school board’s argument is that $475 million is not sufficient. About 60% of CMS’s operating budget comes from the state, about 30% from the county and about 10% from federal money.

“It’s frustrating,” said Veronica Bofah, a junior at Harding University High School. Bofah also is a member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Youth Council. “The whole reason why there are achievement gaps is because the Black and brown groups are being underfunded. Taking away funding creates bigger achievement gaps. It doesn’t solve the issue — at all.”

Impact on classroom operations

Nearly half of the amount placed in contingency — $27.4 million — affects school-based staff exclusively, including principals, assistant principals, learning specialists and administrative staff in schools.

Local funding pays a portion of salaries for principals, school board members said. But for many assistant principals, entire salaries are locally funded, meaning if the county won’t release the $56 million it will lead to layoffs, Sawyer said.

”There is no way to absorb that kind of cut without reducing personnel,” Sawyer said. “That will directly impact our students’ education. We’re talking literacy coaches, assistant principals. ... We are already way understaffed for our size in human resources.”

County funding is used to supplement what the district receives in state and other funding sources. Many of the expenses paid with county funds cannot be paid with state funding, according to the school board.

Also, without the $56 million, CMS won’t have the money necessary to give county-funded teachers the same pay raise the state provides. Some teachers are county-funded, others are state-funded. It is the district’s practice to provide the same salary increase for all employees as the state mandates for state-paid employees. So if the state gives teachers a 3% raise, only those state-funded teachers would get raises.

The district could not provide the Observer with the breakdown of the percentage of state-funded vs county-funded teachers in the district.

“I know from my years as a principal that county funding is key to providing students with the academic experience they need and deserve,” school board member Lenora Shipp said. “State dollars alone will not do it. County dollars allow CMS to provide critically needed, additional staff to high-needs schools. We cannot defund our way to equity.”

On Thursday, while at a COVID-19 vaccine clinic in Charlotte, Gov. Roy Cooper weighed in on the fallout between the boards.

“I expect local government officials to to work together, I believe that they will at the end of the day,” Cooper said. “. . . I hope that they can work something out. What I want to work on is trying to get the General Assembly to be able to appropriate more funds for them to distribute because we’ve got to pay our teachers. We’ve got to invest in more counselors, more school nurses, more teacher assistants. We know the things that work, and we have to invest.”

Enrollment and gaps

The long-running squabble between county commissioners and the school board centers on finding a solution to the racial disparities and gaps in college readiness at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Commissioners want school leaders to produce a strategic plan “rooted in tangible goals and metrics” with data, Dunlap said.

The district has shared the 2024 strategic plan with the board of commissioners twice in the last six months — during a joint meeting between the boards in December and a public meeting in May. Board of Education members said the plan began implementation in 2018, and it addresses student outcomes.

School board members said the strategic plan continues to be fine-tuned and revised in light of the pandemic’s impact.

“There has never been an instance of less money improving student performance, here in North Carolina or anywhere else,” school board member Jennifer De La Jara said. “What the county is doing will be harmful, especially to students who are already at risk and need more support, not less.”