With talk of a 2013 school bond vote floating, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has posted its assessment of schools that need improvements, relief from crowding or both. The planning staff gave board members a paper copy of the Capital Needs Assessment last month, and now it's online for the public.
Officials are still in the early stages of figuring out construction priorities and how to pay for them. The school board is focused in the 2012-13 operating budget, and expects to move on to long-range building plans after that.
Construction and renovation stalled after voters approved $516 million in school bonds in 2007, just before the recession hit. Twenty projects from that plan remain to be launched, but planners say it's time to start planning next steps.
P.S. for those who complained about the undecipherable "prove you're not a robot" prompt for posting comments, I think I figured out how to disable it. We'll see if robots take over the comments now.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
CMS posts its construction needs online
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51 comments:
My vote will be NO to any school bond.
CMS is still trying to retrofit a separate but equal, gerrymandered school system into a neighborhood system, while allowing "diversity" to override common sense.
If you look at current school boundaries, there are a number of schools who sit almost on top of one of their boundaries. Ranson, Quail Hollow and Northeast Middle Schools are examples of this.
Quail Hollow sits within a few blocks between its eastern boundary and that of Carmel Middle School, yet students who live much closer to Quail Hollow attend Carmel.
There are students who live closer to McClintock than Alexander Graham and Eastway.
Stop gerrymandering school boundaries, look at population shifts and growth and build schools where needed, no matter where that might be. If new schools are needed in the south and north, then build them. If other schools can be consolidated, merge tham as we did last year.
As long as we're being honest here about the need to build, we can also be honest about the potential for closures and consolidations.
NO to the bonds YES to hiring a Superintendant. YES to not letting Bolyn in CMS offices! YES to any school with more than 15 mobile trailers to having the school upfitted. Next time Missie Perdue is in town touting how many jobs she created hand her the bill for this. YES to removing the Chamber influence in CMS !
CMS is borderline incompetent on most issues. It is grossly incompetent in the prudent use of bond money and facilities planning. The best example is Highland Creek Elementary. The school opened its doors needing four mobile classrooms. The following year it had about ten. Now it has over twenty. What kind of planning is that?
Give me my thousand bucks/year back. You know, the amount by which you raised my property taxes last year. Then I might think about a yes vote... but probably not...
Anon 9:27...
Add Mountain Island Elementary to that list...
Over capacity before the doors opened. They have nowhere to go but up, adding second floors.
How about taking an uncrowded school (Mallard Creek), and adding a"magnet" program, and increasing its population above capacity by so much that mobile classrooms become a necessity again? How about poaching said school of some of its best teachers, to staff that magnet? The geniuses in CMS's leadership chain should all be replaced. Not a full ounce of common sense in the combined lot!
I took a look at the plans, East Zone....all is well I guess for Providence, the kids will continue to eat off the floor, the media center will continue to be state of the art - circa 1973. I'm saving my bond money for the private school tuition I now pay for my second kid. Oh, and her school will soon be breaking ground for an entire new building...
Only way to save CMS is to have County leaders back a work tax. All the folks that work in our County that dont live here pay 2% for first $200,000 annual income and 1.5% over that. It comes directly out of their pay checks. If you cheat and get caught using a fake address with your employer its a $20,000 fine no court costs. All that revenue would go towards education as CMS has lost over $100 million dollars the last 2 years from the state. We gotta create the revenue the state clearly is not supporting our needs. Lets go get it and I could care less about people who use our services that dont pay for them ! Move to our great County Mecklenburg or just pay us for working in our fabulous city home of the EMPTY NASCAR Hall of Fame/Shame aka the Aquarium.
What about 2 perfectly good schools that stand empty as Smith and Starmount and Montclaire is running over!
Hoagie58, I drive by Mallard Creek ES regularly. They are so crowded, they have moved "learning cottages" in there again. (I think this is the 3rd time in the life of this schoolhouse.) Additionally, they have moved a TD program there from somewhere else, not sure but thought I had read Tuckaseegee, until its final destination of Johnson-Oehler ES whenever it is built that woul dalso help Highland Creek ES as someone else has already noted its overcrowded conditions.
The problem CMS now has is the county rubic that whne applied, does not consider overcrowding to be a need to build another school. It puts more weight on renovations to older buildings than in many cases in CMS, are well underutilized. So much so, the prudent thing to do is close the older schoolhouse and reassign those kids to schoolhouses next closer to their homes.
The above paragraph is why CMS is in the space bind it is now. The county spent so much money on inner city schools as that population was shifting or growing up, that new (ex. Byers ES)/renovated (ex. Lincoln Heights ES) seats sat unused.
Guiding Principles. What a joke.
CMS report (e.g. blame the County):
As a result of the employment of the new rubric, these projects did not align with CMBE’s priorities. [Translation: CMBE wanted to do more but the County rejected the added dollars or did different projects than the CMS School Board]
As a result of the work of the Board last November and later strategic decisions by CMS leadership, at least two other capital projects in the 2007 bonds will be avoided.... This still results in 20 projects with no firm delivery dates or funding sources known.
[CMBE translation: The County won't give us enough money and won't allow us to pick our out large and expensive bond list]
@10:36 I hope that response was tounge & cheek.
Actually, take Mountain Island Elem off the list. It was one of the state's largest elementary schools at one time. But CMS changed boundries and began social engineering and changed the principal. More than half of the school fled to charter schools (Lincoln Charter, Lake Norman Charter, Children's Community and Mountain Island Charter). The students are gone... and so are most of the trailers.
Anon 2:56...
They still have 4 or 5 trailers there because I saw them two days ago.
How could it be one of the largest schools in the state? It's smaller than Paw Creek a mile and a half away.
Investing in education is most important to compete in this era.
Said that, it's also possible to make parents responsible for school bus, food, supplies etc.
Class capacities can be elevated significantly - Even if there are 30 students instead of 22 in a class, a motivated family child will grasp. I studied in a class of 70 students through out my life and achieved my engineering degree.
Making the education (all the way to college) relatively free / inexpensive is community's responsibility towards nation's growth.
Cutting the cost of education is also community's skill.
I would like to see some help for David Cox ES. Since it looks like they are going to have to keep some many mobile classroons there, I wish they could get some grading done and get the walking track back. The mobile classrooms sit right in the area it used to be.
4:11, while i agree with you in principle, the reality of today is too many students are at school because their parents forced them oputof the house. The parents just want a baby sitting service and the free meals so they can spend their welfare check and food stamps on other things.
What you say would benefit society tremendously if you could get some mindsets and cultures turned around.
Anon 11:59
Mallard Creek has "Learning cottages" (what a crock- they're freaking trailers!!!) specifically BECAUSE of the TD program. This program added 150+ kids to the school, forcing the addition of the trailers. They also took several of the school's teachers to staff the TD program- let me say that I'm pretty hacked off that MY 5th grade child has to share a classroom with 8 4th graders, so TD can be accommodated.
10:30 Am--"All is well in east zone."
I wonder if that could have anything to do with two or three very vocal activists from that area with close ties to Tom Tate. They have been known to say that it is a crime to spend public money on suburban students.
Does CMS have a ranking of schools that are more or less harmful to asthmatics? How can concerned parents find out about a school's health record? Lead paint, insects, asbestos, dust, ventilation levels, nurse visits?
Tax funds spent for renovations at Smith are the epitome of CMS waste. The HVAC is totally non-functioning. Insects and vermin roam the area as well as the neighbor kids running on the roof and vandalizing the facility. Yet renovations are moving along for office space. The sucking sound continues.
Close schools, rent the buildings, and then build more.
Millions wasted on office space that the educrats will move out of in a couple of years. No money to fix them up while they were schools, millions to fix them for educrats. Midwood is the real waste. Beautiful bond updated school leased for next to nothing like one year after renovation. To CMS the taxpayer can pay for the renovation and debt service while educrats get free IPODS all around. Based on the exodus they are using the IPODS to find better jobs.
iPads, bud. They have iPads. Much more expensive toys.
6:47 Try asking about the CMS customer service representatives. They visit schools once a month or so. Used to be called property manager but have a different title now. As far as we know they do not manage anything but more collect information on schools to take uptown. Highly paid for customer service reps @ $80K plus each. Schools call Customer Service directly to get repairs and report problems. They may have info about your school or try the school nurse.
CMS has customer service representatives? A bit of luxury in the sky is falling world. Do school districts have customer service representatives? Are these more Muri public information staff we have not heard of before? Muri math strikes again! Spin, Spin, Spin. I-Robot.
5 new high schools?? We have overcrowding in the South high schools b/c they are stuffing 40 in a class due to the RIF policy of previous years---not because of space issues...
Well... Garinger should have 2 more spots after yesterday. Oh, wait--CMS will let them boys go RIGHT back to school.
If CMS cannot clean what it has now, how can it afford to build new schools. CMS should draw attendance boundaries that fill existing schools and stop giving away the ones they have. If the closed schools are good enough to have Charters or other community purposes CMS should have the capacity to make them work as schools. Seems very odd that CMS would attempt to lock a new Superintendent into a development plan and not allow the new Super to direct it. Kind of a CMS snub. Charlotte Mecklenburg should have better representation than this. Our community does not act this way.
Ask CMS about the pile of cash they have from renting the 10 schools out they closed last year. OH the leases dont pay much and its actually a net operating loss when you factor in all those schools had to remove the trailers ? ($4.6mm last count) OH nice move Eric Davis, Timmy (chamber) Morgan or (moron), Rhonda Lennon (find a outfit that fits) , Joyce Waddell and Richard ! Nice economic move you IDIOTS ! Next election this will not go unnoticed.
Hickory Grove does not working heat in several buildings. The kids have to wear their coats in the classroom. How can anyone learn in such an environment? But, the administrators walk around with their new IPads............ Where are the priorities?
Why does CMS have SO many partial magnets? Would consolidating partial magnets into full magnets make sense? It seems like it would but I don't know.
What's the name of the elementary school in northern Meck. that partnered with IBM (or some company) years ago? I remember the partnership being hailed in the Observer as an innovation that was going to change the face of public education? How'd that work out?
I think every school board member should be required to visit every school in CMS while in session and teach 35 kids per class for a day at one of our "better" high schools (as a warm up).
How did Dr. Gorman's kid manage to avoid being reassigned? Are they really going to South Meck. next year as Dr. Gorman publicly stated when he was hired? It really doesn't matter but he did say he was sending his daughter to South Meck. when the time came. He also said he would stick around 10 years. Of course, sticking around didn't necessarily mean staying on the job.
5:27, I think you are refering to what was going to be Governors Village school campuses. It was supposed to include what is now Nathaniel Alexander ES, John Morehead ES, Jame Martin MS and Vance HS.
They were supposed to be what was called a "workplace" magnet and the parents had to sign up for some amount of volunteer hours each year. It started out pretty good and then CMS peabrains decided it was not PC enough and did away with it.
4:36 You should contact the CMS customer service representative for your school. Odds are they will give you the standard CMS line that heat costs money and CMS can't afford it for select schools. Your kids need to get used to wearing coats, like the kids did for years at South Mecklenburg High School. The heat was turned on when Chamberlain's son came through. I guess CMS saved enough on the energy bill to buy Chamberlain that new hybrid SUV he drives around town.
Why doesn't CMS replace carpet in schools? I have been told at two schools that the carpets are 15 and 18 years old and might get cleaned once a year. Some of the carpets are really disgusting for children to sit and crawl on. CMS is installing new carpets for the finance office and other administrative offices moving to the closed schools? A prime example of selfishness on the part of CMS leadership not held accountable.
Smith Language Academy a closed school is not sitting empty. It is being remodled with your tax dollars for CMS Office space. Yes while our other schools need resources these bozo's are upfitting their own offices. They could never lease Smith out as intended. They should sell that large piece of land and lease office space. Knuckleheads !You ant more bins for schools your freaking crazy !
7:24
It would be interesting to see a list of projects CMS has hailed as the next best thing since sliced bread before abandoning.
Anon 11:41...
Waddell High School.
Wiley,
The "closure model" at Waddell was hailed a success.
With all the time and money spent moving educrats around CMS could have removed the asbestos and been back in the Education Center for millions of dollars less. Wasn't the asbestos removed from the Ivory Tower years ago? What a waste of time and taxpayer funding.
CMS built Waddell over the objections of many taxpayers because it was in the wrong place and built soley to placate some constituents.
Here's the cycle of stupidity:
Smith sat there for many years deteriorating and overcrowded.
Waddell is built as previously stated in the wrong place and underutilized, is then closed within 10 years of opening.
Smith Language Academy moves into the Waddell building.
Smith is now being remodeled for district use.
...and the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round....
The CMS planning approach won an award from a magazine who sells ads advertisements to companies who sell stuff to schools! CMS planning should not be questioned. Numbers do not lie. People simply do not understand why CMS is in the best possible condition. Wiley and others should stop questioning the bread and circus crowd at CMS. There is
no inspector general or ombudsman in the CMS budget. We pay and they play.
10:13
Dude. Chamberlain is a decorated navy veteran who served our country. His son is currently training to be an officer with the U.S Navel Academy. I don't give a rats behind if Chamberlain is driving a suped-up Prius or the Batmobile.
A very long discussion.They are so crowded, they have moved "learning cottages" in there again. (I think this is the 3rd time in the life of this schoolhouse.) Additionally, they have moved a TD program there from somewhere else
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