Poll:Break into districts?

[Christine]

Are there are options that make more sense than leaving? Breaking the system into a few smaller, more manageable parts has been mentioned. What do you think?

[EFM]

Yes but I believe it would be wiser to break the district into North, East, West and South Mecklenburg Schools. Financially it would make more sense.

My 2 cents.....

[katwil89]

Look, breaking CMS into wedges or regions won't work. All that we would get with those solutions is more, smaller CMS's that will have most of the same problems that we have today. We will also have endless battles about where the lines would be drawn.

We have to break into city school systems. Smaller cities can join together to make a larger school system if they like but it has to be city based. That will bring the management into our local communities and make them responsible to their local residents. If someone wants to be elected to the Huntersville school board or run one of the Huntersville schools they will have to conform to norms and values of the residents of the city of Huntersville. It will also enable the parents to much more effectively influence the education that our children receive, the safety of the schools and the priorities that are set for our children.

PLEASE, work to establish city based school systems, we deserve it and our children deparately need it.

[katwil89]

We need city based schools so that we can have closer local control over our schools. CMS covers a huge population with a very concentrated school board. It is too big to be effectively managed. I certainly don't think for a second that I can be successful in getting an issue addressed by the school board. If it got to the school board, they would still have a million other citizens that they try to please in order to get reelected. So they make bad decisions that satisfy nobody. That is how we got to where we are.

There are too many schools, principals, teachers and adminstrators to effectively manage, so our kids don't get tought, they get baby sat at best. Many are left with thugs for classmates (checkout the recent news stories about Hopewell). Parents have children that get assaulted in school and on the buses at Hopewell but the thugs that do the assaults are brought back to the school. The thugs then have the opportunity to see, touch and intimidate their victims even more. This is because no one is accountable at Hopewell (and other schools) because the huge buracraucy that is CMS stands in the way of adequate discipline and doesn't support its teachers when they try to deal with problem students. This also is how we got to where we are.

We need city based schools so that we can localize the management of our schools and make them responsible to the local residents. This will give the parents a fighting chance to influence the schools, protect their children and hold accountable the school board members, the principals, teachers and administrators.

Big cities have big problems because their big populations make it too difficult to effectively manage down to the local level. Until we get city based schools instead of CMS we will never have enough focus and control in our schools to ensure that our children get the education that they deserve and the teachers have the environment that will enable them to have the influence on our future leaders that they need to have.

I hope that everyone will work to enable cities like Huntersville to break away from CMS so that we all can more effectively manage our school systems and provide of the children the educational environment that they deserve.

[prisoner4013820]

Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools is way too large to function properly. As a student, I feel the impact of this problem every day, especially at the beginning of the school year. Since there are so many schools over such a large area, CMS needs a gargantuan amount of buses. Until all the kinks are worked out (which takes too long), buses are getting home after 5pm when school gets out at 3:45. This happened to my brother who's school happens to be less than 5 miles from our house. As a high school student, I don't ride the bus in the morning. If I did, I would have to catch it at about 5:45am since I do not attend my home school in order to participate in the IB program at East Meck. Due the overwhelming amount of students and buses, bell schedules and students lives are molded around the availability of sustandard transportation. I believe that smaller towns like Matthews need separate school districts in order to solve this and other problems created by "Super-Mecklenburg School Monopoly".

[Trapper]

I'm not sure how other states operate, but Virginia's cities operates their own independent school systems. Why won't that work here??

[whyCMS]

All I'm gonna say is I think you are jealous that you are a small town folk and city people feel more civilized. CMS isn't too big your just to small... I truly believe it.

Sincerely,
A Charlotte Citizen

[boomer]

I'm not sure how other states operate, but Virginia's cities operates their own independent school systems. Why won't that work here??

I grew up in Virginia, and know several folks who are teaching there now...Their school systems are county- or city-based. The only area that has enough students to come close to CMS would be in Northern VA.

Richmond is a city about the size (in geographical size) as the surrounding counties, but there isn't a county that holds both Richmond and other towns/cities. Richmond has annexed pieces of the surrounding counties, but that's a separate issue. I don't know if all cities operate the same way in Virginia, but suspect they do. I've often thought our (meck) structure of county/city overlap was wasteful--you are running dual governments and charging dual taxes.

An important fact to remember about VA is that they have lottery money flowing into their school budgets (including some from NC :-) and can afford to build schools if and when needed (OK--I don't mean to start a lottery battle here, but I had to mention it). But more importantly, they PLAN. They built schools in areas that were being developed, anticipating growth in some areas and attempting to keep pace. Sure, they sometimes had some crowding, but never anything like what we've seen here. This only applies to the more densly populated areas, however, as rural areas have their own set of problems and I'm not as familiar (and it is not applicable to our woes).

[christiantruth]

Ok whyCMS, I'll tell you why BOOMER was well as all the other parents AND students aren't jealous, their right! I am from here in Charlotte, I don't like living here but I'm not old enough to change that right now. Call me old fashioned but CMS is wayyyyyyyy too big and God makes everyone equal so you don't have the right to call someone too small. And since you're such a city person, how do you know how civilized non-city people are? Have you ever been one. I think CMS has bitten off more then it can chew and has been chewing for years. I am only in 9th Grade, but just in the 10 years (couting Kindergarder) I've been in CMS, it has changed. I can't imagine how much it has changed over the years. so let me just tell you, that you are wrong, and that CMS is way too big and that all the parents trying to fix that are exactly right.

Sincerly,
A REAL charlotte citizen

Truly beleive that!

[imbt]

All I'm gonna say is I think you are jealous that you are a small town folk and city people feel more civilized. CMS isn't too big your just to small... I truly believe it.

Sincerely,
A Charlotte Citizen

No, we aren't jealous that we are "small town folk", actually we are quite proud of that. O.K., other's are thinking it, I'll say it. We would love it if we were allowed to just have our "small town folk children" attend our area schools and not have to have thugs and convicted felons bused in everyday to try to make us more "civilized". The "city people" and their civilization is making it very difficult to teach and learn here. Maybe going back to the "county" schools and "city" schools and holding CMS accountable for equal treatment (NMHS having to eat lunch outside vs. a $500,000 football field). We older people know that the "city schools" always have received more, but at least way back in the stone age, we didn't have to fear for our lives that "civilized city people" were going to knock out teeth out trying to go to school!