- What will it take?
July 30, 2016
Excerpt from a subsection headlined “The public interest” in a commentary headlined “Big issues calling: Schools may be about to close, but difficult challenges lie ahead needing focus, ...
- Helms: Community must buy into schools accord
June 9, 2016; first published in Educate! Jan. 14, 2001
Lawyer Parks Helms isn’t known for defying courts. So it may have given some folks pause when, in his State of ...
- Wrestling with the main assignment policy
May 12, 2016
The morning’s Policy Committee meeting was a slog through the details of how CMS assigns students. With a consultant on how to revise student assignment identified but not ...
- Clark: Bond issue would open new paths to reducing concentrated poverty
April 14, 2016; Agenda handout
In a couple of weeks there will clearly be much more said about this subject, but today Supt. Ann Clark announced at a CMS Board Policy ...
- Staff draft of guiding principles recommits to nearby assignments
April 13, 2016
Supt. Ann Clark presented a staff-written set of guiding principles Tuesday night.
The Observer’s Ann Doss Helms wrote about the presentation here (cached here). The early website version is here.
The ...
- Swann 45 years later: It’s not about the lawyers anymore
April 2, 2016
The lawyers gather today in Chapel Hill today to mark the 45th anniversary of Swann v Board of Education. That case, which went to the U.S. Supreme Court ...
- The new elephant in the room
Dec. 10, 2015
Meeting materials here
Listen in as Policy Committee chair Tom Tate tries to summarize a discussion of goals for student assignment that members had offered at today’s committee meeting:
The four ...
- Will all children benefit, or just some?
Nov. 12, 2015
In the video of this meeting is a striking exchange, just a little over 3 minutes long, that goes to the heart of the fears and anxieties gripping ...
- League holds session on assignment ‘guidelines and opportunities’
Nov. 7, 2015
Matt Ellenwood talked about the Obama adminstration’s guidance letter on how race, socioeconomics and other factors could be used as factors in student assignment. Tom Tate talked about ...
- Champagne, or beer?
Oct. 15, 2015
Meeting materials here
It was Thelma Byers-Bailey who offered the CMS Policy Committee a headline metaphor that probably rings true for parents at a number of schools across CMS.
Under ...
- The past, present, and a possible future for CMS
Oct. 7, 2015
Lawyers Luke Largess, James E. Ferguson II and UNCC researcher Amy Hawn Nelson addressed the past and future of student assignment in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools at Covenant Presbyterian Church. ...
- Line by line, row by row
Sept. 10, 2015
Agenda here
With seven of the nine members of the Board of Education present at one point or another, the board’s Policy Committee continued its slo-mo romp through the ...
- Talk of surveys, consultants, avoiding disruption
Aug. 13, 2015
Meeting materials
With eight Board of Education members either in the room or participating via phone, the CMS Policy Committee Thusday wrestled again with their own aggressive timeline and ...
- Wake and Meck – A tale of demographics
Aug. 8, 2015
Back in April, the members of the CMS Policy Committee began looking at student assignment. And one of their first questions was: Help us understand the differences between ...
- Magnet review: A first look
July 28, 2015
Below is the portion of the July 28 CMS school board meeting that deals with a presentation on an initial report on visits by officials of the National ...
- Tables removed – but not stumbling blocks?
July 26, 2015
The July 9 Policy Committee meeting was held without a desk separating board members and staff. But there was a great deal of distance separating them – not ...
- About struggling readers: The adults are failing
July 8, 2015
A reading score in Level 1 ”denotes limited command of knowledge and skills.” Level 2 ”denotes partial command of knowledge and skills.” None of the students on Level ...
- Temporary detour – or descent into fault lines?
June 23, 2015
Most issues going before a public meeting of the Board of Education are put on paper and arrive in board members’ hands or inboxes several days before the ...
- What programs sell? Magnet lottery results offer one clue
June 20, 2015
When parents vote with their children’s future, what programmatic offerings sell in Charlotte-Mecklenburg?
One gauge each year is the magnet lottery. The results of the first lottery this spring ...
- Vision, Goals, Principles: Draft 2
June 15, 2015
To be adopted by Dec. 8, 2015
PDF version here
Parents, educators and others are invited to submit draft rewrites of the Guiding Principles for publication on these pages.
Vision & ...
- Board offers feedback on student assignment approach
June 11, 2015
Board members meeting as the Policy Committee began on Thursday to home in a bit on how staff should proceed in crafting changes to the current assignment plan.
Many ...
- UNC expert briefs board on ‘disruptive demographics’
May 26, 2015
Demographer Jim Johnson from UNC Chapel Hill met with the Board of Education and walked them through a presentation he called “Disruptive Demographics and North Carolina’s Education Challenges.”
The ...
- Board reviews assignment plan, identifies some issues
May 26, 2015
“We would not get a fully accurate response if we asked parents why they choose to go to charter schools, let’s put it on the table here, because ...
- Rewriting Guiding Principles: Draft 1
May 20, 2015
To be adopted by Dec. 8, 2015
PDF version here
Parents, educators and others are invited to submit draft rewrites of the Guiding Principles for publication on these pages.
The Board ...
- Are these the guiding principles we need?
May 14, 2015
A second meeting of the CMS Policy Committee this morning finished the first review of the district’s guiding principles for student assignment.
Most of the discussion from board members ...
- ‘A Dream Again Deferred?’
May 5, 2015
Steve Crump, above left, led author Frye Gaillard and researcher Amy Hawn Nelson through an evening program devoted to the legacy of Swann v. Mecklenburg. That case challenged ...
- A process to re-examine student assignment begins
April 29, 2015
Four members CMS Board of Education Wednesday set in motion the 16-month review that will look at whether to change the way North Carolina’s second-largest school district assigns ...
- Few ideas offered on student assignment
Dec. 27, 2009
The note below appeared on the front of the website for two months ending today. The note was a followup to a suggestion made on this site after ...
- Integration in K-12 Education Policy: A Conversation
Dec. 23, 2009
Reaffirming the Role of School Integration in K-12 Education Policy: A Conversation Among Policymakers, Advocates and Educators
Post-Conference Statement: An Urgent Need for Federal Support
The November 13 Conference of ...
- Harding parents protest being drawn into the Myers Park-East Meck issue
Oct. 23, 2009
The 2009 text cache of this Observer report has been brought into the page here because the original appears to be unavailable.
TEXT CACHE in event that original location ...
- 3 more options presented to ease Eastover crowding
Oct. 8, 2009
The final round of community meetings on student assignment concluded Thursday night with CMS administrators putting three new options on the table affecting student assignment at Eastover Elementary ...
- Myers Park-East Meck assignment issues draw 600 into cafeteria
Oct. 6, 2009
The morning’s paper had announced that Myers Park High School would probably dodge the bullet of student assignment this year. But still they came.
About 600 people, about a ...
- How board handled issue is key topic at East hearing
Oct. 1, 2009
The three dozen speakers at Thursday night’s community meeting on the Myers Park High-East Meck High portion of the current student assignment debate had a few imaginative ideas.
They ...
- Seeking community ideas on Eastover overcrowding
Sept. 29, 2009
Two school board members, a dozen or so CMS staff and a couple hundred parents gathered Tuesday night at Myers Park High School to explore options to relieve ...
- School board rules out moving Cotswold area to East Meck
Sept. 22, 2009
School board District 4 member Tom Tate, left, confers with at-large member Joe White after Tuesday’s board meeting. Myers Park Elementary parents were dressed in ...
- Grants for studying how to write assignment plans encouraging diversity
July 28, 2009
U.S. Department of Education to Award Grants
for Student Assignment Policies Facilitating Diversity
Deadline: August 21, 2009
A notice published in the Federal Register on July 22 invites local educational agencies ...
- Results of CMS’ first magnet school lottery
Feb. 28, 2009
The sheets below are downloadable here in a single PDF file.
- 2 NC districts compared
Feb. 10, 2009
A front-page spread in the New& Observer Sunday was headlined “Whose schools work better?” The pair of stories focus on how Wake and Mecklenburg have taken different roads ...
- Assignment proposal 1999 – bad then, worse now
Feb. 9, 2009
The economic downturn has county and school budgets under stress. Supt. Peter Gorman is talking about merging failing schools, about eliminating hundreds of teachers, raising class size, probably ...
- Educating all children – by design
Feb. 5, 2009
From left above, Mickey Aberman, Deacon Jones, Jim Henderlite and Araminta Johnston listen as the voice of the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg, shown at left, comes over the ...
- ‘The true American dream…’
Jan. 16, 2009
The quote is from “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” written by Gary Orfield and published Jan. 14, 2009 by The Civil Rights ...
- After Seattle: Conference re-examines integration policy
Jan. 16, 2009
Links to this material have gone bad. The list of presenters at the April 2 conference:
Retrieved Jan. 16, 2009 from http://www.law.unc.edu/centers/civilrights/conferences.aspx
Center for Civil Rights Conferences
Registration Opens February 16, ...
