A simple solution for CMS board?

I'm wary of simple solutions to complex education problems,  but one of the ideas facilitator Nancy Broner offered the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board last week was a forehead-slapper.

At their retreat, board members unanimously agreed they often fail to consider the downside of actions they vote on.  Broner's suggestion:  When you introduce an item, always list the challenges,  as well as the expected benefits.  Someone  --  I don't recall whether it was Broner,  Superintendent Heath Morrison or another CMS staffer  --  later fleshed that out by saying proposals should also spell out expected results, short-term and long-range.

I've covered a lot of board meetings in the last 10 years,  and the superintendent's proposals have almost always been presented as slam-dunk good ideas  --  or at least the clear-cut best response to a tough situation.  That sort of makes sense.  The board expects CMS staff to do the legwork and come back with the strongest possible recommendation.

But it makes you wonder if the last couple of years might have been different with deeper and more public acknowledgement of challenges that divided the community.

When then-Superintendent Peter Gorman and the board talked about such things as teacher performance pay and school closings,  I recall hearing them urge the public to look at facts, not emotions  --  as if the facts would lead any reasonable person to the same conclusions CMS leaders had reached. What if they had talked more about the costs,  in money and classroom time,  of rolling out dozens of new tests,  or of the potential pitfalls of closing high-poverty middle schools and rushing students into preK-8 settings?

On Tuesday,  Morrison plans to give the board a report on the academic and financial results of some of the most challenging school mergers.  He said his first task was to track down what had been promised and projected when those plans were laid.  I'm guessing he had a tough time.  Did anyone spell out that the newly merged schools might see big academic and discipline challenges the first year,  or detail the expenses of transforming elementary schools into buildings that could accommodate 4-year-olds and hulking adolescents?  If so,  it wasn't shared with the public.

Since Morrison was hired in April,  he's been talking about doing a better job of helping the public understand the decisions CMS makes.  Based on the board's self-evaluation last week,  members believe they need to do a better job of understanding their own decisions.

So we'll see.  Old habits can be hard to break.  But Morrison is eager to make his mark.  And the fact that the board acknowledges shortcomings would seem to be an important step toward improvement.