HOW MECKLENBURG CHANGED AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Charlotte’s transformation from a sleepy town where the downtown sidewalks rolled up at sunset to a commercial powerhouse occurred over the last 20 years of the twentieth century.  NCNB began its expansion from a state bank to regional when it rescued a failed Texas bank, and the NBA awarded Charlotte a team.  At the end of those 20 years, the NFL expanded to Charlotte, and NCNB/NationsBank merged with Bank of America, founding America’s second-largest bank.  

LOW PERFORMING SCHOOLS 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had not used its twenty-five years from 1974 to 1999 under federal court guidance to eliminate de jure segregation.  As families flocked to Mecklenburg County to take advantage of new opportunities, too many succumbed to the whisper campaign that its schools were dangerous, graduation rates low, student assignments  iffy, and schools with almost 100% Black students and 100% White students.   A CMS Equity Report showed that the 2003-04 school enrollment gain of 4,000 students was primarily comprised of economically disadvantaged students. If not for an exodus of 4,000 students whose families could afford to abandon CMS for better, safer schools, the gain would have been 8,000.  

In the 2013-14 school year, NC began issuing public schools ABCDF letter grades.  That year, sixteen CMS schools were low-performing.  For the next year, NC made the standards tougher.  Thirty-seven CMS schools and nine charters were on the list.  The whisper campaign was confirmed!  By 2022-23, it was more evident than ever that the district was losing the battle against low-performing schools.  For that school year, sixteen schools were removed from the list, however twenty-five were added.

STUDENT ASSIGNMENT

In 1999, a federal judge ruled the district must stop using race as a factor in student assignment plans.  The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education reacted cautiously. In 2002, it divided the school district into four “choice zones.”  The Board believed that if it assigned home schools with a choice of other schools in each of the zones, along with a promise not to change a school’s attendance boundary unless a new school was built nearby, CMS families would accept Choice.  

Until 2016, the Board was consistent in following the assignment plan but didn’t understand that, as the district grew from 140 schools to 180 by 2023, each new school presented an opportunity for families to choose to leave CMS.  And move they did.   Seven of nine towns just outside the Mecklenburg line saw triple-digit population gains from 2000 to 2023.  Tiny rural villages, such as Marvin, NC, that had never had a high school or stoplights, found they not only needed a high school, but also elementary and middle school feeders.  By 2010, thanks to an influx of transfers from Mecklenburg County, the new high school had won its first state championship with a graduation rate of greater than 95%.  CMS’ 2010 graduation rate was 69.9! 

So, what happened in 2016?  A small committee of the Board of Education began studying student assignments.  The goal was to fix the 2002 plan that after fourteen years had done little to improve equity, diversity, and access to quality schools across the district.  The media, which had seldom attended committee meetings, found fuel for big stories about changing boundaries.  Soon, the committee became a committee of the full board. Then the Committee/Board stopped making progress.  To resolve this, two staff members were given the lead chairs.  Consultant Michael Ales introduced “Controlled Choice.”

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