Our Mission: Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education is an independent, community supported organization that mobilizes ideas, leadership, broad-based support and resources to bring about significant, measurable improvements in areas of policy, instruction, and management in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education
301 S. Tryon Street
Suite 1725
Charlotte, NC 28282

Telephone: 704-335-0100
Fax: 704-334-3545

2005 Community Assessment

Just as today, 2005 was a pivotal year in the life of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The search had begun for a superintendent of this urban district with approximately 120,000 students and 15,000 employees. In addition, all six of the district seats on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education were up for election in November 2005. Only the three at-large seats were not up for election.

Therefore,the organization sought the public's perceptions, priorities and values concerning our next superintedent, school board, funding of public education, and general issues about education reform. The telephone interviews were conducted by KPC Research.

The purpose of the interviews was three-fold:

• Discover what our community would like to have in a superintendent of our public schools and to know what our community will use to measure his or her success.
• Better understand how our community feels about the structure of our Board of Education and enable the community to rate the performance of our Board of Education as compared to traits of an effective school board.
• Identify how supportive our community is about issues related to education reform and funding of our schools.

KPC Research conducted 1208 telephone interviews with registered voters in Mecklenburg County between June 17 and July 12, 2005. The sample of registered voters was demographically balanced by race, sex and age, and by the six School Board voter districts. Thus, results can be generalized to the entire Mecklenburg County registered voter population. The maximum margin of error for the results from these 1208 registered voters is +/-2.8 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

Some Key Findings:

-Registered voters had no preference regarding professional background for a school superintendent as long as the individual has experience in a system similar to CMS.

-The public had specific items they wanted the superintendent to have at the top of his or her agenda: reduction of school violence, reduction of the drop-out rate, working effectively with the School Board, and getting the community and schools to share a common vision for CMS.

-The voters believed additional square footage (new buildings or additions to existing schools), and not merely adding students to existing buildings, continued to be needed to address increasing students populations.

-While the school board got good marks for focusing on student achievement, it received low marks for vision, teamwork, communication, and effective spending of tax dollars for education.

-The voters wanted to explore alternative ways to fund schools. They were not in favor of increasing taxes -- either property taxes or sales taxes -- for schools, and less than one half support bonds for new construction or renovations. On the other hand, the public favored using fees from new developments to fund schools and ensuring schools and other infrastructures are in place prior to issuing building permits.

-Voters generally favored district versus at-large seats on the School Board, but would like the district seats voted upon by all voters in the county.

-Voters were not in favor of appointed School Board seats.

-Voters were committed to providing children with an education that includes music and the arts, as well as foreign language.

-The public was supportive of making certain that ALL students in ALL schools have effective teachers.

Copyright 2005