McCray jumps into CMS board race

For most of Superintendent Peter Gorman's tenure, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher Mary McCray has been a public voice for her colleagues.  Now she wants to be part of the board that hires his replacement.

In her five years as president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators, McCray was sometimes supportive and sometimes critical of Gorman and the board.  Most recently, she raised questions about their performance-pay plan and opposed the CMS-backed legislation that would let the school board launch such a plan without teacher approval.

McCray

"I know we're going to have to have pay for performance,"  McCray said Wednesday, noting that it's part of North Carolina's Race to the Top plan for federal money.  But she said she wants CMS to slow down and get its approach in sync with what the rest of the state is doing, instead of rushing to launch new tests and push the plan when money is tight.  "If there is no money for it, I don't know how we're going to do it."

McCray said she has just stepped down from the CMAE post and retired as a teacher after 24 years with CMS and 10 with Union County.  (To address a question that pops up occasionally:  When McCray worked for CMAE full time, she remained on the CMS roster to allow her eventual return but the teachers group paid her salary.)

She says she wants to hire a superintendent with education experience, and wants to help the board do a better job of listening to the community and earning the trust of CMS' 18,000-plus employees.  "Trust and morale is at an all-time low,"  she said.

McCray, 58, is a registered Democrat making her first bid for public office.  Filing begins July 1 for the November election of three at-large board members.  For posts on the race so far, click here and here; also look for candidate web sites and other information in a rail at the right of this blog.

Charlotte's investment in Isaiah

Four years ago, I wrote about Isaiah Scott's quest to go to Morehouse College.  After piling up honors and accomplishments at West Charlotte High, he'd been accepted to the historically black, all-male private school in Atlanta.  But as one of seven children of a divorced dad, he needed money to close the gap between the scholarships he'd won and the $29,000-a-year cost.

Support poured in for the personable, hard-working teen.  Churches, businesses and individuals, including alums of West Charlotte and Morehouse, rallied with financial, personal and spiritual support.  They stuck with him through four years of college, where he continued his record of leadership and success.

Yesterday I visited the newly-minted Morehouse graduate and some of his family (more about that coming in print soon).  Scott couldn't say enough good things about the support he got from the West Charlotte faculty and the community members who helped him through college.


L-R: Esther, Isaiah, Leon (father) and John Scott.

 "It was an overwhelming downpour of support,"  he said.  "It's just a lot of love and a lot of prayer."

While he was at Morehouse, he helped recruit students for Teach For America, a program that sends young teachers into West Charlotte and other high-poverty CMS schools.  He'll soon report to work at American Express in New York City, but he had a few weeks between his May 15 graduation and his start date.

So he tapped his network of Charlotte contacts to help him get an internship with Mayor Anthony Foxx. "There's kind of a 'no sitting around the house' mentality here," he said of his high-achieving family.  Scott didn't get to join Foxx on his trip to the White House earlier this week, but he did help prepare Foxx's notes for his meeting with the president.

Seeing Scott at 22, sharp and confident in his business suit, I couldn't help thinking back to the last conversation we'd had, when he was an 18-year-old humbled by all the support.  "I don't want to come back to Charlotte and it's like, 'Aw, man, I invested in a knucklehead,' " he said then.

No danger of that.

Pete Gorman as CMS vendor?

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which will be CMS Superintendent Peter Gorman's employer come mid-August, has a contract with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools via the recently-acquired Wireless Generation.

Gorman will join former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein in developing the corporation's new education division.  That division is charged with carrying out Murdoch's vision of creating digital learning products that customize education the way consumers now "customize their clothing, their cuisine, their news, and most anything else they want to buy."

Before Gorman signed on, News Corp. bought Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn-based company specializing in technology for testing, curriculum and educational data-gathering.  Since 2008, Wireless has had a contract with CMS to provide the software and platforms used to track pre-reading skills in all CMS elementary schools.  The most recent yearlong renewal, which runs through August, was for $568,173.

Testing and data-gathering became a touchy subject during Gorman's final weeks.  It could be interesting to watch how the digital learning opportunities he and Klein craft mesh with whatever direction the CMS board and new leadership chart. 

The business model of leadership

Reading Sunday's article on CEO pay among North Carolina's biggest companies, I couldn't help thinking about the search that's looming for a new leader of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

Across the country, you hear a lot about the desirability of getting a superintendent with a background in private enterprise and/or a businesslike mindset. That's generally considered shorthand for a leader who's bold, responsible with money and not bogged down in bureaucracy and tradition.

But as the article reminded me, captains of industry expect to be well paid -- even when wages are stagnant and jobs are disappearing among the rank and file. My brain boggled looking at the list of seven- and eight-figure totals. The number that stuck with me: "Average total compensation for the CEOs was $93,992 a week."

Departing Superintendent Peter Gorman catches a lot of flak for his $267,000 salary, his $35,000 in extra retirement pay, his $250,000 "personal growth" grant from the Spangler Foundation and his potential 10 percent performance bonus. But next to this crew, Gorman looks like one of those guys holding a "Will Work For Food" sign.

CMS' $2 million time clocks

Back in early May, when the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board was pondering budget cuts and we were trying to answer reader questions, Jeff Costa, the testing coordinator at Hopewell High, asked about new fingerprint-scanning time clocks being installed in schools.

"Several of us at Hopewell are curious how much CMS spent on the new time clock system," he wrote. "It has to be an extraordinary amount of money, not to mention how it will slow down productivity."

I forwarded the question to the public information office, and they sent it to the finance department. After many follow-up prods, the answer landed in my inbox last week: The MyTime system, which will track hours and attendance for 6,500 of the district's 18,000-plus employees, cost $2,177,866. About $1.6 million came from county money and the rest from federal lunch subsidies and meal fees. Most of the expense -- about $1.7 million -- landed in the 2009-10 budget and the remaining half-million in the current year.

The CMS memo explains the benefits this way:

MyTime will allow CMS to:

• Control labor costs with a consistent application of work and pay rules

• Minimize compliance risks by enforcing and tracking complex compliance requirements, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
• Improve workforce productivity by reducing manual administrative tasks
• Eliminate the possibility of keying errors that cause mistakes in employee paychecks

 The system also uses Kronos software: In researching best business practices, CMS found the Kronos Workforce Timekeeper system to be in place by many organizations in the Charlotte area, including the City of Charlotte, Coca Cola Bottling, Family Dollar Stores, Carolinas Medical Center and Lance, Inc. Incorporating this best practice is one more step toward improving business operations and effectiveness.

Costa read the full memo but wasn't swayed.

"You should talk to some people who actually use it. There is no way this improves productivity," he replied. "$2.1 Million when you are laying off hundreds of teachers.. are you kidding me?"

CMS-TV airs open-mike moment

A bizarre open-mike moment at the school board dais led late-night cable viewers to believe they'd gotten the scoop on the board's choice for interim superintendent.

Not quite. CMS-TV aired Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Police Chief Bud Cesena sitting in a school board seat speculating that the board would tap Chief Operating Officer Hugh Hattabaugh. Cesena, who didn't know the mikes were on and ceiling cameras were running, says the conversation with two other staffers took place half an hour before the 6 p.m. meeting. But it aired after the board spent almost three hours in closed session talking about hiring an interim.

To make the whole thing odder: CMS got rid of CMS-TV this year to save money, leaving only enough in the budget for freelance broadcasting of board meetings. Special meetings like Wednesday's generally aren't broadcast. And this meeting was conducted almost entirely behind closed doors, out of reach of the cameras and mikes. So most of what aired was footage of the meeting chamber with a handful of staff, reporters and visitors milling around.

"For some reason they turned the thing on, and for some reason they ran the loop," Cesena said today.

I haven't been able to get an explanation yet. Cesena says he's "pretty embarrassed" that a candid conversation ended up on TV. "It's a lesson for all of us," he said.

Dr. Plots and Bumgarner join CMS race

Hans Plotseneder and Larry Bumgarner announced today they'll continue their quests for a seat on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board.

Neither has had much luck so far. Plotseneder, a West Mecklenburg High School teacher, came in seventh of seven candidates in the 2007 at-large race and seventh of nine in the 2009 District 3 contest. Bumgarner, an internet activist, finished seventh of 11 in the 2003 at-large contest and third of three in the 2005 District 6 race.

But both promise to prompt some lively discussion of issues -- and Plotseneder insists he expects to muster the money and organization to be a serious contender. He posted his intent to run on his web site in January.

Plotseneder

"This time is the real thing. Last time I was naive," said Plotseneder, who says he raised less than $1,000 for his last countywide race. The buzz is that it could take at least $50,000 to claim one of the three seats in November's election. In 2009, he says he knew he was a long shot as a white guy running in a majority-black district, but the run was "for practice and to keep my name out there."

Plotseneder, who campaigns under the nickname Dr. Plots, didn't shy from issues during his announcement today. He said he opposes the 52 year-end exams CMS officials launched this spring for rating teachers, as well as the CMS-backed House bill that would allow the district to launch performance pay without teacher approval. "Teachers are not against being paid for extra performance," he said, but the complex test-based formula known as "value added" is the wrong approach.

A registered Democrat, Plotseneder said he's most in line with current members Joyce Waddell, Richard McElrath, Tom Tate -- and Kaye McGarry, a Republican who's often at ideological odds with the three Democrats but ends up voting with them on some issues. That coalition generally falls one or two votes short of success.

Plotseneder, 67, will have to resign his teaching job if elected. He airs his views during the public comment period of most school board meetings, and was charged with trespassing when he refused to leave a contentious school-closing meeting last fall. Those charges were later dropped.

Bumgarner

Bumgarner, who lives in the south suburbs, generally registers his views online, via sites he creates or comments on the Observer's site. He announced his candidacy on one of his sites -- in typically quirky style, illustrating it with a 1970s high school photo of himself.

He acknowledges three failed attempts at public office -- he also entered the 2004 Republican primary for a county commission seat -- and says this time will be different: "This time seeing how all those running are focused on limited agendas and special interest groups he will be doing it that way as it seems that is the way people are elected in Charlotte Mecklenburg." His planks: Breaking up CMS, providing vouchers that can be used for private schools and eliminating salaries for school board members.

Filing for the nonpartisan race is July 1-15. Two of the three incumbents, Trent Merchant and Joe White, say they won't run, and Kaye McGarry hasn't announced her intentions. Elyse Dashew and De Shauna McLamb are the other announced candidates; read the last roundup here.

So far, no one has rolled out the kind of powerhouse campaign that carried board Chair Eric Davis to victory in District 5 two years ago. The coming months will test who can grab the attention of voters across a sprawling county, in an off-year election that traditionally leaves four of five registered voters sitting at home.

Bumgarner and Plotseneder may not take the lead on campaign force, but they do bring a sense of humor along with their strong views. Plotseneder, a native of Austria, knows his accent is reminiscent of a certain scandal-ridden actor/governor; he once dubbed himself "The Gap Terminator" in reference to his plans to eliminate race-based achievement gaps. And in 2008 comments the board about bullying of homosexual students, he proclaimed: "Who knows? Maybe I'm gay myself. I haven't tried it."


Bumgarner gave me a full-out belly laugh when I googled myself and landed on this creatively illustrated post on one of his blogs.