VoteNoBonds.com

Helms said he believes her selection is “a done deal” but fears a community clamoring for change will be reluctant to embrace an inside candidate, especially if they believe the national search was a sham. Earlier in the process, Helms said, “I thought about calling Frances to say, `If you really want to help this community, you need to step aside.’ ”
…
Kaye McGarry, the only other board member to attend White’s announcement, denounced Haithcock’s selection to reporters. She said Grier and Gorman both rated significantly higher than Haithcock when the board did its early rankings behind closed doors, but the majority pushed to include her as a finalist.

Fellow Republicans Ken Gjertsen and Larry Gauvreau raised similar concerns this week but without giving names. George Dunlap, a Democrat, said the pair were misrepresenting a complex process.

Helms said Friday the school board “might have avoided that if they had just let the public see, let the press see. Now we have two competing versions.”

The missteps have hurt CMS’s chances of getting more county money and passing bonds this fall, Helms said. “I wouldn’t even put it on the ballot right now.”

Observer Article

by Brian Gott

February 23, 2006

It’s amazing how complicated and costly things get when government bureaucrats get involved.

Take, for example, the cumbersome, 35-member School Building Solutions Committee. The committee could wind up spending nearly $180,000 – about a third of it tax dollars – to tell, in large part, the community what it already knows: That Mecklenburg County needs new schools and, particularly, needs them desperately and quickly in the suburbs.

The committee, chaired by former Gov. Jim Martin, is charged with studying ways to build and pay for schools and crafting a bond package that will be able to convince at least 51 percent of the public to support it.

For its part, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday night unanimously approved a spending plan for the committee that includes $10,000 to promote public hearings for the committee, $25,000 for a community poll, $45,000 for televising weekly, four-hour committee meetings and hiring a consultant to work with the committee, and $28,000 for facilitation, among other things.

The estimated budget for the committee’s work is $177,500, but county officials say taxpayers will only pay around $75,000; the rest of the money will come from private businesses and a $25,000 grant for the community poll from Advantage Carolina that commissioners approved on Tuesday night.

The committee will start meeting March 10 and will present its recommendations to commissioners and the Board of Education by July 1. Mecklenburg County General Manager John McGillicuddy presented an overview of the so-called Martin Commission to commissioners Tuesday night.

“It is focused on the immediate needs that must be met in the next three years,” McGillicuddy said. “Whatever the next capital package is, it must be supported by the county.”

McGillicuddy also warned that the only way the public would have faith in the committee is if it is fully supported by all members of the Board of Education and commissioners.

“The design team strongly believes that the credibility of the SBS Committee, the process, the information considered, the quality of the recommendations and the coherence and level of consensus of the committee will have to be high for the recommendations to carry weight and garner support of elected leadership,” McGillicuddy said.

Of course, a lot of people said the same thing about the task force that was charged with reviewing CMS, and look how well things are going with the recommendations it made, what with half of the school board all but saying if task force members want to set school policy, they should run for public office.

In any event, “Elected officials must support the SBS Committee process from the beginning,” McGillicuddy said.

In other words, Republicans should keep their traps shut about wanting to pursue Certificates of Participation (COPs) construction funding to immediately begin to reduce school overcrowding in the suburbs.

Republicans who even question the SBS committee’s intent or the committee’s work will likely be lashed by Democrats, as was evidenced Tuesday night.

Commissioner Jim Puckett, a Republican, asked how the group would determine its definition of “consensus.”

“This group will decide how it’s going to conduct its business,” McGillicuddy answered curtly.

Puckett also said the company contracted with to facilitate the SBS Committee meetings should be a company that has not worked with the county or CMS before, because it could have biases one way or another. After a few follow up questions from Puckett, Commissioner Norman Mitchell, a Democrat, started to criticize Puckett’s attempts to make sure the committee would be all it’s supposed to be and not just another super-sized committee designed to provide cover for the status quo.

“We don’t want to leave any cracks or loopholes for you to squeeze through,” Mitchell barked at Puckett, only to be silenced in return by Commissioners Chairman Parks Helms, a Democrat.

Commissioner Bill James, a Republican, got a hand slapping of sorts for suggesting that a Republican spokesman be able to attend one committee meeting to tell the group why Republicans on the Board of Commissioners and Board of Education opposed the $427 million bond package that was defeated last fall. Those same Republicans wanted, instead, to build schools using COPs, which are a bond-like funding tool that don’t require voter approval but allow for more direct control than bonds of how the money is spent.

“I am doing my best not to let this become a political issue,” Helms told James, adding commissioners such as James should “stay out of the way.”

James also wanted to make sure the $25,000 community poll that is conducted doesn’t ask leading questions. The purpose of the poll is to determine the reasons why voters rejected the $427 million school bond. Even an insinuation that the poll would be anything but legitamate seemed to frustrate Helms.

“It will serve no interest to have a poll that is biased,” Helms said. “Even if it’s ‘no,’ we need to know it.”

According to a county report, Mecklenburg Planning and Evaluation Director Leslie Johnson will oversee the poll and data will be available in late March.

Rhino Times
Charlotte, North Carolina • Volume XV No. 9

Cash Crazy Committee
by Brian Gott
write the author
February 23, 2006
It’s amazing how complicated and costly things get when government bureaucrats get involved.

Take, for example, the cumbersome, 35-member School Building Solutions Committee. The committee could wind up spending nearly $180,000 – about a third of it tax dollars – to tell, in large part, the community what it already knows: That Mecklenburg County needs new schools and, particularly, needs them desperately and quickly in the suburbs.

The committee, chaired by former Gov. Jim Martin, is charged with studying ways to build and pay for schools and crafting a bond package that will be able to convince at least 51 percent of the public to support it.

For its part, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday night unanimously approved a spending plan for the committee that includes $10,000 to promote public hearings for the committee, $25,000 for a community poll, $45,000 for televising weekly, four-hour committee meetings and hiring a consultant to work with the committee, and $28,000 for facilitation, among other things.

The estimated budget for the committee’s work is $177,500, but county officials say taxpayers will only pay around $75,000; the rest of the money will come from private businesses and a $25,000 grant for the community poll from Advantage Carolina that commissioners approved on Tuesday night.

The committee will start meeting March 10 and will present its recommendations to commissioners and the Board of Education by July 1. Mecklenburg County General Manager John McGillicuddy presented an overview of the so-called Martin Commission to commissioners Tuesday night.

“It is focused on the immediate needs that must be met in the next three years,” McGillicuddy said. “Whatever the next capital package is, it must be supported by the county.”

McGillicuddy also warned that the only way the public would have faith in the committee is if it is fully supported by all members of the Board of Education and commissioners.

“The design team strongly believes that the credibility of the SBS Committee, the process, the information considered, the quality of the recommendations and the coherence and level of consensus of the committee will have to be high for the recommendations to carry weight and garner support of elected leadership,” McGillicuddy said.

Of course, a lot of people said the same thing about the task force that was charged with reviewing CMS, and look how well things are going with the recommendations it made, what with half of the school board all but saying if task force members want to set school policy, they should run for public office.

In any event, “Elected officials must support the SBS Committee process from the beginning,” McGillicuddy said.

In other words, Republicans should keep their traps shut about wanting to pursue Certificates of Participation (COPs) construction funding to immediately begin to reduce school overcrowding in the suburbs.

Republicans who even question the SBS committee’s intent or the committee’s work will likely be lashed by Democrats, as was evidenced Tuesday night.

Commissioner Jim Puckett, a Republican, asked how the group would determine its definition of “consensus.”

“This group will decide how it’s going to conduct its business,” McGillicuddy answered curtly.

Puckett also said the company contracted with to facilitate the SBS Committee meetings should be a company that has not worked with the county or CMS before, because it could have biases one way or another. After a few follow up questions from Puckett, Commissioner Norman Mitchell, a Democrat, started to criticize Puckett’s attempts to make sure the committee would be all it’s supposed to be and not just another super-sized committee designed to provide cover for the status quo.

“We don’t want to leave any cracks or loopholes for you to squeeze through,” Mitchell barked at Puckett, only to be silenced in return by Commissioners Chairman Parks Helms, a Democrat.

Commissioner Bill James, a Republican, got a hand slapping of sorts for suggesting that a Republican spokesman be able to attend one committee meeting to tell the group why Republicans on the Board of Commissioners and Board of Education opposed the $427 million bond package that was defeated last fall. Those same Republicans wanted, instead, to build schools using COPs, which are a bond-like funding tool that don’t require voter approval but allow for more direct control than bonds of how the money is spent.

“I am doing my best not to let this become a political issue,” Helms told James, adding commissioners such as James should “stay out of the way.”

James also wanted to make sure the $25,000 community poll that is conducted doesn’t ask leading questions. The purpose of the poll is to determine the reasons why voters rejected the $427 million school bond. Even an insinuation that the poll would be anything but legitamate seemed to frustrate Helms.

“It will serve no interest to have a poll that is biased,” Helms said. “Even if it’s ‘no,’ we need to know it.”

According to a county report, Mecklenburg Planning and Evaluation Director Leslie Johnson will oversee the poll and data will be available in late March.

Rhino Times Volume XV No. 9

By BRIAN GOTT - STAFF WRITER

In the wake of voters rejecting the $427 million school bonds package, there has been a general call from politicians for consensus building and cooperation. The general theme: Let’s all get along and move forward in a positive direction.
The reality hasn’t been so positive, and if local politicos are trying to lead by example, we’re all in for a rough ride. Consider the consensus building comments of Commissioner Norman Mitchell, delivered at last week’s Board of Commissioners meeting when the board voted down a proposal to fund $254 million in school construction to relieve overcrowding in the suburbs using Certificates of Participation (COPs).
Mitchell, a Democrat, went on a tirade, blaming the school bonds’ defeat on everything from the media to a vast right-wing conspiracy hatched by Republican commissioners and school board members.
“To the citizens of Mecklenburg County who supported my colleagues, my Republican colleagues, in that if you go out and vote against these bonds that COPs will placed, we will use COPs instead – you were either hoodwinked, lied to, bamboozled, any other thing,” Mitchell said. “But you were misled; you were misled.”
Mitchell went on to blast residents who campaigned against the school bonds, along with the media, after imploring “some of us who continue to try to work to hold this community together, we’re trying to make this a livable place.”
“And it is just so hurtful,” Mitchell said, “that all this rhetoric that is moving throughout Mecklenburg County, by some citizens, some of our elected officials, even some talk show hosts, particularly WBT. I guess we’ll call some of them Rush Limbaugh wannabes. They reek a foul odor of separatism, classism and racism.”
So much for consensus building, but Mitchell wasn’t alone. Take this exchange between school board members Kaye McGarry, a Republican who backed the COPs school construction plan, and George Dunlap, a Democrat bond supporter.
“Kaye, you just don’t get it,” Dunlap wrote in an email to McGarry last week. “You supported candidates to run against each of us in hopes that you would get the change that you wanted in hopes of becoming board chair. You knocked on 400 doors I,m (sic) told, to ask people not to support the bonds.
“You gave financially to some candidates and worked all day at the polls for a losing candidate. You gambled and you lost,” Dunlap continued. “You don’t have any social capital. You don’t have the power to negotiate anything.”
Dunlap also told McGarry in the email to just stop talking to him.
“Don’t waste you (sic) time with me unless you say something that makes sense and it’s been a long time since you’ve done that, so I won’t hold my breath,” Dunlap wrote.
“Thank you for sharing your opinions with me,” McGarry replied, somewhat sarcastically, in a return email. “I appreciate. On November 9th, 2005, I congratulated you on your victory in District 3. I plan to again work with the people God gave me on this board, and try to bring this board together.”

Rhino Times Article

Ex-governor Martin to seek schools solution
Will lead unity-building panel
CARRIE LEVINE
clevine@charlotteobserver.com

Former N.C. Gov. Jim Martin has agreed to chair a citizens committee that would design a school-construction package for voters to consider in November.

If Mecklenburg commissioners approve, Martin, a Republican who once chaired the county board, will head a 35-member group and appoint nine seats. The group could begin meeting by March.
…
School board members immediately split over the need for the committee.

Republican Ken Gjertsen, newly elected to represent the south suburban District 6, said CMS needs to revamp student assignment to send students to their closest schools before his constituents will back bonds.

Republicans Larry Gauvreau and Kaye McGarry, who have both introduced alternative plans for building new schools, said CMS needs to act quickly on those plans.

Republican commissioner Jim Puckett, who opposed November’s bond package, said Martin is a good choice to chair the process. Allowing mayors of the suburban towns to make appointments, he said, will help balance the committee. “I think the fact of the matter is, the biggest distrust and disconnect lies in the suburban areas.”

Democrats Molly Griffin and Tom Tate voiced support for the proces

Charlotte Observer Article...

The Charlotte Observer
Posted Saturday, November 5

Bonds not best way to build schools

Defeat the bonds to ensure schools are constructed where most needed

At last, the Observer has turned to the issue at the heart of this year’s $427 million school bond vote: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ record of misprioritized construction spending.

Despite the bizarre headline (”Bonds aim to put seats where they’d be filled, ” Oct. 9), Ann Doss Helms’ story explains how CMS and some politicians have deliberately built or expanded schools where they would be half-filled, even while others were bursting at the seams. Now that a suburban overcrowding crisis has resulted, CMS proposes still to devote 40 percent of the new money — $173 million — to uses other than new schools and classroom additions where schools are overwhelmed.

Welcome to the truth we have been writing about since June. We are glad you decided to cover it. Still, Ms. Helms’ article and the tandem masthead editorial fail to capture the extent of the wasted spending, the duplicity that has concealed it or the viability of the solution we have proposed.

Useful as the comparison is between two new elementary schools — fully utilized Torrence Creek and half-full Billingsville — the article does not make clear that eight of the most under-filled elementary schools (median utilization 48 percent) were replaced or expanded in the past six years at a cost of over $90 million: Ashley Park, Billingsville, Druid Hills, First Ward, Lincoln Heights, Pinewood, Thomasboro and Westerly Hills. In these brand new facilities, the median amount of permanent space per student (225.83 square feet) is two-and-a-half to four times more than in the 27 most crowded elementaries.

Fiddling with capacities

Middle schools are a similar story. Six recently or to-be expanded, replaced or newly built campuses are among the least utilized (Cochrane, Eastway, Marie G. Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., Sedgefield and Spaugh). Even among high schools, which are almost uniformly over capacity, two of the newest — Waddell and Berry — are less than full, with more than three times as much permanent space per student as North Mecklenburg (built 1950), for example, where there are 59 classroom trailers. By contrast, the other new high school, Hopewell, opened well over capacity.CMS construction overseer Guy Chamberlain and school board member Kit Cramer accused us of perpetuating a “myth” about empty seats and claimed only slight and temporary underutilization of any school. Ms. Helms’ article acknowledges that empty seats are no myth; even after building capacities have been “adjusted” by CMS bureaucrats, rebuilt urban-core schools remain underutilized. Still, the very notion of “adjusting” building capacities received no critical attention in the article or the companion editorial.

Indeed, out of one side of your editorial mouth, you lauded CMS’s stubborn insistence on rebuilding 29 percent-full Marie G. Davis Middle School for $18.5 million as keeping a commitment made in the 2000 bond referendum. You voiced no objection, however, to hundreds of seats promised to voters in multiple bond campaigns being simply wiped out of existence by a bureaucratic “adjustment.”

Lincoln Heights Elementary, for example, was slated in the 2000 bond as having a “capacity of 800 students.” (See “Project Scope,” www.voteyesforbonds.com/SummaryBondFundYears.pdf.) CMS now attributes to it a capacity of 480. Among the schools mentioned in this essay alone, CMS has wiped out 4,082 seats promised in various bond referenda through unvoted capacity adjustments. At the standard seat cost of $22,500 (a benchmark used by the Citizens Capital Budget Advisory Committee), this represents approximately $92 million of taxpayer investment gone poof.

In truth, fiddling with building capacities is simply the latest CMS gambit to avoid accountability for disastrous misspending. It is duplicitous. It is no basis for voters to sign another half-billion dollar check, not until the mystifying approach to priority setting is reformed.

Certificates of participation

We have proposed that voters defeat the school bonds and that county commissioners fund new school construction and seat additions through certificates of participation (COPs). It is a viable approach in terms of mechanics and cost. You report that Commissioners Chairman Parks Helms says we can’t deliver on it and that defeating the bonds will stall construction. We would suggest that Chairman Helms is bluffing.

Republican commissioners certainly would propose COPs-funded new school construction immediately after the school bonds are defeated. We believe the Democrat majority would support it, particularly after having vowed to support new school construction in the last campaign. If Democrats will not vote to build new schools and seats to relieve overcrowding, voters can rectify that problem next November. In either event, no delay in construction would occur. The backlog of previously approved bonds will consume annual county bond sales at least until January 2007. By then, COPs can easily be approved by the present board of commissioners — or the next one.

Ironic as it may be, the way for voters to get schools built where they are most needed is to defeat the November school bonds. We’ll show you a better way.

Kaye McGarry, board of education, at-large Jim Puckett, board of county commissioners, District 1 Larry Gauvreau, board of education, District 1 Jaye Alexander, board of education candidate, District 3 Dan Bishop, board of county commissioners, District 5 Ellen Loflin, board of education candidate, District 5 Bill James, board of county commissioners, District 6

Kaye Bernard McGarry, M.Ed.

Survival in College Seminars

Though the candidates for town board gave similar responses to most questions, voters were presented with a stark contrast between school board candidates Larry Gauvreau and Rhonda Lennon.

One of the main differences between the incumbent Gauvreau and challenger Lennon is their views on the $427 million CMS bond referendum.

Gauvreau told the audience the bond is “as misprioritized this time as it was in 2002.” He said the bond won’t relieve crowding in North Mecklenburg schools fast enough because it won’t ensure that enough schools are built in one of the county’s fastest-growing regions.

Lennon said she “reluctantly” supports the bond, although it is “an awful lot of money.” Lennon said she believes the bond will adequately support growth in North Mecklenburg and reduce dependability on mobile units.

Article

The candidates also disagreed about the proposed, $427 million school bond. Gauvreau is squarely against it.

Lennon, who served on a citizen’s board that made recommendations about the bonds, said she doesn’t like all of it, but believes they’re a big improvement over the 2002 bonds and should be passed. “District 1 will be getting $1 out of every $3 that’s spent,” says Lennon. “That’s a pretty good deal.”

Replied Gauvreau, “One out of three is nowhere near enough. … They’re putting a chicken in every pot again and holding you (north Meck voters) hostage.”

“Well,” retorted Lennon,“at least this time is one chicken out of every three. We are moving in the right direction.”

Huntersville Herald Article

Capacity Contortions Yield Contradictions

By BRIAN GOTT - STAFF WRITER

Is Board of Education Vice Chairperson Kit Cramer a conniving con artist who twists and distorts facts to support a mammoth $427 million schools bonds package? Or is Cramer a shining knight out to expose myths and distortions that opponents of the schools bonds are passing off as facts to blur the truths about the pressing needs that face Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools?

Voters will get a chance to make that decision for themselves between now and November’s bond referendum, but the battle to win the hearts and minds of those voters has already been launched, and Cramer is on the firing line’s frontline.

Bond opponents think Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and taxpayers, would be better served if money was used to build new schools where they are most needed to alleviate severe overcrowding, typically in the suburbs. They contend the proposed schools bonds contain millions of dollars to pay for renovations to schools that are woefully under-capacity and under-utilized. Bond proponents, like Cramer, say those renovations are critical and that the schools, typically in the inner city or mid-ring, aren’t as empty as critics contend.
…
For example, if a Marie G. Davis classroom was scheduled to have 20 students and the classroom only had 16, it was still listed at 80-percent capacity, even if it actually could have held 30 students. Bond opponents contend that Cramer and others use similar mathematical rationalizations to debunk the “myth” that several schools, which bond opponents contend are under-capacity and under-utilized, are, in reality, near or above capacity.

For example, Cramer and other so-called myth busters contend that Druid Hills Elementary has an 89-percent occupancy. On the other hand, bond opponents claim the school has a capacity of 800 students, but only an enrollment of 428, according to CMS’ 20-day, student enrollment numbers from the 2004-2005 school year. Those numbers would give the same school only a 54-percent occupancy.

Likewise, Cramer and others contend that Pinewood Elementary has a 115-percent occupancy, while Bishop, Puckett and others point to enrollment numbers that show the school has only 417 students versus a 800-student capacity – or only a 49-percent occupancy.

The dueling numbers go on and on: Where Cramer and others think a school like Thomasboro Elementary has a 92-percent occupancy; Puckett, Bishop and company point to enrollment numbers that show the school with only a 53-percent enrollment, or 420 students in a school built for 800.

Cramer contends Walter G. Byers has a 91-percent occupancy; her critics point to enrollment numbers that show only a 54-percent occupancy – or 430 students in a school built for 800.
….
Similarly, Marie G. Davis has 466 students with an average of 240.5 squarefeet per student, while Quail Hollow Middle’s 1,237 students have an average of less than half that at only 100.5 square feet each.

E.E. Waddell High has 1,190 students with a square foot average of 197.3 per student, while North Mecklenburg High, which has 2,799 students, has an average of only 86.2 square feet per student.

Thomasboro Elementary, which Cramer and company contend has a 92-percent occupancy, dedicates 245.6 square feet per pupil, compared to Huntersville Elementary in the crowded suburbs, where bond opponents say money should be used to build new schools to relieve overcrowding. Huntersville has only 90.3 square feet per pupil.

“As for Ms. Cramer’s myth-busting, we hope she will explain how Lincoln Heights Elementary, for example, is at 100-percent of capacity with 471 students in a spanking new building built for 800,” the Republicans’ statement read. “We suspect she would have to reveal that her utilization statistics for replaced urban core schools are built on changed ‘capacity.’”

They say that type of fuzzy math is just another example of why the public mistrusts CMS.

“Is it any wonder that there is a crisis of confidence in the stewardship of our tax dollars and public schools?” their schools bond statement read.
….
It’s not only a handful of Republicans on the school board and the board of commissioners, though, who are opposing the schools bonds, and Cramer’s arguments do not seem to be swaying some Democrat challengers running for the board of education

“We have Walter G. Byers in our district and I know it’s under-capacity,” said Sheila Ann Johnson, who is running against District 2 board member Vilma Leake in November.

According to Cramer’s occupancy claim, Byers is 91-percent occupied, even though it could hold up to 800 students and currently houses 430. According to the bond opposition, the elementary school has 210 square-feet per student – far higher than many other schools.

Those numbers leave candidates like Johnson puzzled.

“I am concerned about the numbers they (the pro-bonds committee) are using. Are they true numbers?” Johnson asked. “I am not supporting this bond package. CMS is very top heavy. We do have a lot of empty seats, and CMS has not demonstrated fiscal responsibility.”

Alexander said the bonds are excessive.

“We have all these under-utilized schools, good Lord,” Alexander said. “I don’t think the citizens of Mecklenburg County need to be fleeced any more under the guise of ‘This is for the children.’”

Rhino Times Article

While having served on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commission for three years, I have gotten a better scope or understanding as to how government or tax revenues are spent, and the consequences of the spending.

While my colleague, Commissioner Rembert, and the Chamber of Charlotte will argue that the bonds are about building schools only, I contend that bonds are about how children are educated… Since the reorganization of the student assignment about four year ago, this community has been in an uproar surrounding education, especially where children are educated.

Because of how this community is divided, schools are affected. This process has caused new “state of the art” schools in the center city to become underutilized, while suburban schools are overcrowded. While Commissioner Rembert and the Chamber of Charlotte would state there aren’t any underutilized schools in CMS, I would beg to differ. There are at least 20 schools that fit in this category. While Commissioner Rembert and the Chamber would argue that center city children need smaller class space in an effort to adequately learn, I contend that CMS has put a cap on the intercity, state of the art schools, to allow what is before us today, and that is, overcrowded schools in the northern areas. As we all know, there has been a faction of people who are excited to segregate the CMS system. I am not. I think that if all children, were for the most part, together, not only will our children have the exposure of diversity, but each school will have the resources that this community require of CMS to educate all children.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP voted not to support the bonds, People United for Education are not supporting the bonds, the head of the teachers association is not supporting the bonds, members of the Black Political Caucus are not supporting the bonds, simply because, all children are not receiving an adequate, basic and sound education in CMS We in this community feel that if we are to support raising our taxes for the purpose of paying the bond debt, then, we should see the benefit of doing so, knowing that our children are receiving upscale resources in every school and every child would receive a sound and basic education.

Valerie C. Woodard