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

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

Charlotte Post Editorial - Oct 22, 2005
Excerpt...

The school bond package is the most challenging of these four. That is why it is important to distinguish between myths and facts surrounding this issue. The proposed $427 million will be used on school construction projects, including 10 new schools, renovations and additions to 14 schools and numerous life-cycle replacements and structural improvements throughout the system.

Several of these projects directly affect schools with large populations of African-American students. With current enrollment at 120,000 and 53,000 new students expected in the next ten years, existing facilities cannot handle that. We must prepare for growth as we struggle with the current capacity challenges.
There are two different groups of citizens who oversee how bond money is used. The Bond Oversight Committee is appointed by the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education. There are three African-Americans out of nine serving on this committee. The Citizens Capital Budget Advisory Committee is appointed by the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners. There are two African-American members out of 11 serving on that committee.

SARAH STEVENSON is chair of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum, Community Affairs chair of the Black Political Caucus and is involved with numerous other social and civic organizations.

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

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.”

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

Bond Brouhaha Begins

By BRIAN GOTT - STAFF WRITER

With strong opposition from some leaders of the black community, voter approval of the $427 million schools bonds appears to face an uphill battle.
….

By far, though, the schools bonds issue has proved the most controversial, even for politicians and community activists that typically have never met a schools bond they didn’t like.

Some black candidates for district school board seats – races that will be decided the same day as the bonds – aren’t voicing a tremendous amount of support for the bonds this time around.

“It’s evident we need new schools, but I’m also aware that we need to maintain some of the older schools,” said Donna Jenkins-Dawson, a black Democrat who is running against District 2 board member Vilma Leake.

“That bond is faulty,” Jenkins-Dawson said. “We go from one extreme to the other. We need some balance.”

Dwayne Collins, who is seeking the seat District 3 school board member George Dunlap currently holds, said he’s not sure yet if he’ll vote for the bonds.

“At this point, I’m kind of in between,” said Collins, who is black. “The question in my mind is how is this money going to affect the high poverty, low performing schools.”
….
James said those sentiments are indicative of a rift growing in the black community when it comes to getting behind the schools bonds.

“There’s a big family feud,” James said. “The only thing missing is (former Family Feud game show host) Richard Dawson.”

“The NAACP and the Black Political Caucus are opposed to the bonds because they don’t want to build schools in the suburbs and they don’t like the student assignment plan,” James said.

But that might just be James’ own interpretation from what he says he has been hearing at the grassroots level. Neither group is officially opposed to the bonds at this point. The Black Political Caucus held a community forum to discuss the matter Sunday night.

Rembert said she’s heard from some in the black community who are opposed to the bonds and she’s heard complaints that too much of the bond money is scheduled to be spent in the suburbs. However, she thinks when all communities are educated about the bonds and how past bonds have been spent, people will realize these bonds are necessary.

“I recognize that there is extraordinary growth in the suburbs and the schools are overcrowded,” Rembert said. “But we also need to renovate schools in the middle ring.”
….
Proponents of COPs, though, point out that they demand more accountability than wide-sweeping bonds. Board of Education member Kaye McGarry, a white Republican, said bond money could be shifted and changed for different projects than those for which voters approved the bonds, which has happened in the past, while COPs fund specific projects.

However, Democrats who control the board of county commissioners all said they would oppose using COPs to fund school construction if the bonds are defeated.

Puckett called that “blackmail.”

School Board member Larry Gauvreau, a white Republican, said some leaders in the black community are feigning opposition to the bonds in the hopes that more bond money would be spent on inner city schools, instead of suburban schools, to gain the black community’s support.

“I think it’s an act that certain politicians put people through every year,” Gauvreau said.

“It’s a negotiating tactic to scare people into building more schools in the inner city,” he said. “But how can anyone disagree with the fact that over a billion dollars has been put into the center city and middle ring schools since 1998? They are over-built.”

Bond supporters are turning to technology in their effort to get the bonds passed come November. Board of Education Vice Chairwoman Kit Cramer, who is white and registered as Unaffiliated, announced recently the voteyesforbonds.com website promoting the bonds will have a “myth-busters” section to counter what she claims are misconceptions some people have about the bonds.

Some of those myths are that schools in the inner city are at half of capacity, Cramer said.

James contested that notion and said one thing is not a myth: The public is not satisfied with CMS and the way it is spending the taxpayers’ money.

“If you really want to send a message to CMS that they are incompetent boobs, vote ‘no’ on the bonds,” James said.

Rhino Times Article

Archive - News | Citizen Servatius 05.05.04
BY TARA SERVATIUS

If you brought in a cartographer from Alaska who knew nothing about local politics and showed him last year’s maps of where Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools planned to build and renovate schools in the next decade, he’d be baffled.

The colorful dots representing the new schools CMS has now built, or planned to build or renovate at the time, are mostly in the center, where the bulk of the county’s population doesn’t live. A few stray dots are scattered in the suburbs, where most people in this county do.

The date of these maps, which were part of the Long-Range School Facilities Master Plan, is September 2003, just before a suburban majority took over the school board. This was far more than a building plan; it was a desperate blueprint for one last stab at integration by the same school board that fought in court to keep the system integrated. It was a plan not just to renovate schools, but to cluster the bulk of the newest seats in and around its center, which over time would force white kids to be bused in, reintegrating the system. That’s why many schools already built and renovated under this plan now sit half empty. They were overbuilt, and that was no accident.

To understand how we got here, you’ve got to understand the thinking of the last school board. They knew that without busing, suburban schools would get even whiter, the best teachers would follow, and the disparities would snowball in an endless Catch-22. So the way they saw it, they had three choices: Shut down dilapidated schools in the county’s center, forcing minority kids into suburban schools; build new seats in the center of the county, which would eventually force suburban kids into those schools; or dictate to teachers where they would teach and let the kids follow them, a game teachers wouldn’t be eager to play and that low-income children would never win.

The last school board was midway through option number two when the unforeseen disaster occurred. They lost control of the school board after suburbanites finally noticed that all the school construction they kept voting for didn’t include much for them. The new board has, of course, no intention of filling the extra seats planned and built in the center of the county with suburban kids. Instead, it has completely reversed direction, leaving some of the center county schools that still need work in limbo. Before they’re done, the new board will likely blow hundreds of millions more on suburban schools we should have built five years ago.

Read more…
Creative Loafing Article

$554 million would include money for school construction

CARRIE LEVINE
Staff Writer

Mecklenburg County commissioners on Wednesday approved asking voters to borrow $554 million for county projects by putting it on the November ballot.

Five Democrats voted in favor of the bond issue. Republicans Bill James and Jim Puckett voted against $427 million for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools construction projects. Democrat Valerie Woodard voted against all the bonds. Commissioner Dan Bishop, a Republican, was absent.

Puckett and James said the schools need far less money to keep up with growth, and should cut back on renovating older schools because county residents can’t afford to spend that much.

But the five Democrats — along with several speakers at a public hearing on the bonds — said the schools need the money, and the older schools need the work.

Woodard said she voted against putting the bonds on the ballot because she did not believe the bonds could win widespread support among voters who are reeling from a 10.6 percent tax hike the board passed in June.

Charlotte Observer Article

CMS review panel lacks real diversity

By Jeff A. Taylor

March 24, 2005

Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools finally has its review panel of private citizens led by former mayor Harvey Gantt. From the looks of it, none of the group’s $500,000 budget was spent looking beyond the Chamber of Commerce’s speed dial for members.
…
Insular is not too strong a word for a group that if you threw a rope around the Center City Partners and the Foundation for the Carolinas you’d corral many of our CMS reviewers. More interesting still is the fact that five of the 16 members — Krista Tillman, Mac Everett, Frank Emory, Astrid Chirinos, and Catherine Bessant — number among CMS at-large school board member and Chamber exec Kit Cramer’s featured supporters. The possible implications of that overlap will soon become clear.

But as for the basic make-up of the panel, the most glaring omission seems to be any input from the school system’s teachers. No active duty CMS teachers, not even retired ones. Why? It could not be that Gantt and co-chair Bessant wanted to avoid members with connections to the school system they will evaluate or to local government, which the panel will implicitly review.

After all, the panel includes Bernard Johnson, two-time Char-Meck school board selection to serve on the county planning commission. Johnson’s SB&J Enterprises is also listed as an official disadvantaged business enterprise at the city-owned Charlotte Douglas airport, where it operates food services including World Travelers Marketplace and KFC Express.

Nor is Johnson alone among panel members with close professional ties to local government. Take Patricia Rodgers, CEO of Rodgers Builders. Her firm is a principal in the $41 million ImaginOn uptown children’s center. In 2003, a Rodgers joint venture received what was then a $25 million contract from the county to build the combo library and theater with the grand opening slated for spring 2005. Since then $10 million in cost overruns has helped to delay ImaginOn’s opening until this fall amid questions about how the project went off-budget. Gantt’s own firm, Gantt Huberman Architects, also worked on ImaginOn.

In 2001, Rodgers Builders renovated the offices of the Foundation for the Carolinas on South Tryon. Rodgers is also part of the $25 million whitewater park planned for the Catawba River. The city of Charlotte has already slated $2 million in loans for the project and Mecklenburg County is guaranteeing up to $7 million in loans from Wachovia and Bessant’s Bank of America.
…
And panel member Frank Emory, a Charlotte attorney and former member of the state’s transportation board, led the Chamber’s light rail pep rally, the Second Annual Transit Summit in November. Emory helped steer Mecklenburg toward light rail and away from roads during his tenure on the Trans board in the late 90s.

Emory also served on Gov. Mike Easley’s tax loophole closing commission. Its April 2001 report recommended the state consider scavenging for more revenue by hitting DirecTV, fertilizer and seeds, and Social Security benefits. No, really.

Emory’s views on taxes get us back to the Kit Cramer bloc on the panel. Last year in her capacity as vice president of the Chamber’s education group, Cramer held a series of closed-door meetings featuring presentations from Bank of America experts on debt capacity and financing options. This led to speculation that revenue from a real estate transfer tax, raising perhaps as much as $70 million a year, could be used to secure school-construction bonds worth hundreds of millions. In other words, the banker solution for everything: You take out a loan; we’ll take a transaction fee.

So there you have it, your grand outsider look at CMS. Just a repeat of what the Chamber did last year, along with a dollop of Foundation for the Carolinas facilitation to paper-over any dissent?

I’m more than willing to be proven wrong, but it certainly appears this group is poised to recommend additional taxes — either in the form of real estate transfer taxes or impact fees — as the only “reasonable” solution to CMS’ needs. This could be presented to the public as the implicit “price” of continuing the current assignment plan, one that guarantees students a seat at a neighborhood school.

Perhaps a strong voice will emerge on the panel for truly innovative solutions to chronic CMS management problems, solutions like locally-run charter schools or chopping CMS into multiple, digestible “pie slice” districts, or actually empowering school principals. It should be clear, however, that championing new ideas could be a lonely fight on this clubby panel.

No, the specifics are still to come, but the general outline seems set in stone. Tax. Spend. Excuse.
http://www.carolinajournal.com/opinions/display_story.html?id=2316