Education Summit - Archive 4/22/05
Summit Turns Into CMS Cheerleading Camp
By BRIAN GOTT - STAFF WRITER
What happens if you throw an Education Summit and nobody comes? That was almost the case last Friday, when nearly half of the board of commissioners, along with several school board members, never made it to a joint meeting between the two boards to discuss issues of school funding and board relations.
Turns out the folks who missed the event didn’t miss much. The so-called summit never reached its peak and quickly devolved into little more than an extra opportunity for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrators to showcase their lobbying efforts for more and more funding, without addressing any substantive detail.
Excerpt…
School Board Vice Chairperson Kit Cramer said, “Because it’s a good example of an older school that’s also way overcrowded and in need of some help. We chose this location specifically so that people can see it.â€
What people should be seeing is another prime example of CMS logic gone awry, Gauvreau said in an interview this week. Long Creek is but one example of a suburban school suffering the consequences of CMS failing time and again to build schools where they were needed the most, Gauvreau said
“It’s sad that all these politicians who have purposely misprioritized spending money and building schools in the suburbs now want to hold press conferences like this summit under the guise of education to improve their image,†Gauvreau said.
Excerpt…
Rembert also asked Chamberlain to assuage any concerns that schools in the past had only been built in the inner city and not in the suburbs.
Chamberlain responded that school construction and additions have been “fairly uniform†in the suburbs versus the inner city. Amazingly, he was able to say it with a straight face while sitting in Long Creek Elementary School, which was built in the early 1900s and is among only a handful of elementary schools serving overcrowded north Mecklenburg.
That pretty much summed up the tone and tenor of the Education Summit: style over substance in search of more cash.
http://charlotte.rhinotimes.com/sto…d=674#continued
More info on the Education Summit