Guilford County Schools extends Mo Green's contract

Mo Green

I've seen some rumblings in the blog comments here about Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools wanting to bring back Maurice "Mo" Green to be the new superintendent.

In case you forgot, he was the CMS general counsel and later deputy superintendent before being named to the top job in Guilford County Schools.

Not sure if this news would have any bearing on Green coming to Charlotte after Superintendent Ann Clark leaves in 2016, but here it is: Guilford County Schools has extended Green's contract through 2018.

The district also said that for the sixth year in a row, Green has turned down the raise owed to him in his contract. His salary is $250,000.

Here's what the school board chairman up there, Alan Duncan, has to say about him:

“Mo richly deserves any of the raises that have been offered to him, but yet refuses to take them in solidarity with the employees and what the employees have had to go through. That is a rare individual.
I hope people in the General Assembly are listening, because our schools are being handicapped by not having our employees get the type compensation which they are genuinely entitled with the very high levels which they perform, and our superintendent sets an example that it’s a team effort and a team needs to be rewarded, not just our brand new starting teachers.” 

Early CMS enrollment numbers leaves questions unanswered

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools released an early count this past week of how many students are enrolled in the district, and it seems to have raised more questions than it answers.

The district reported that it had 145,112 enrolled on its 20th day, which was last Monday. That's an unofficial figure until the state Department of Public Instruction compiles numbers from every North Carolina county and publishes them all. Generally, that's sometime in October.

CMS declined to give me a demographic breakdown of the student body. The N.C. charter school office said it couldn't provide any early enrollment numbers. That leaves a few key questions open for the next month.

1) Did charter school enrollment really come in below expectations? That certainly was the implication from CMS officials at the school board meeting Tuesday. Anecdotally, we've found that several of the 11 Charlotte-area did in fact come in below their projections. 

This will mark the second year that a significant number of new charters have opened up after the state legislature lifted the long-standing cap. The 20th day figures there will show whether they're catching on or struggling.

2) Will CMS grab a larger share of the county's students? Hand in hand with that, the official numbers will help show what the new charter schools will do to the CMS "market share." That refers to the percentage of students in the county attend the public school system as opposed to private schools or charters.

As of last year, CMS lagged behind several other major urban districts in North Carolina, according to figures published by Wake County business group Wake Education Partnership this past week.

About 79.1 percent of students in Mecklenburg County attended CMS, compared with 10.8 percent in private schools, 6 percent in charters and 4.1 percent home schools.

CMS had a smaller market share than the public school systems in Wake, Forsyth and Guilford counties, but exceeded that of Durham County.

That's below the goal the district set out for itself. Last year, CMS projected it would hold an 81 percent market share through 2021. That was a key provision of their capital need projections.

On the flip side, CMS has more students this year than those projections called for the district to have. They were counting on 144,209 in that plan.

3) Where are the new students? I'm also after a school-by-school enrollment breakdown that will show us where in the county the biggest jumps occurred. A number of readers have also asked me whether an influx of immigrants from Mexico and Central America is a part of the unexpectedly high enrollment numbers this year. Yes, Charlotte has hundreds of children coming to the city from those areas.

CMS does not verify the immigration status of children looking to enroll. Some groups will use the number of English as a Second Language students as a rough approximation of immigration. CMS would not provide a number of ESL students this year, deferring to the official report.

Former CMS leaders in thick of Guilford tablet mess

Peter Gorman and Maurice "Mo" Green,  former superintendent and deputy superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  are facing questions about their roles in a botched purchase of tablets for 15,000 Guilford County students and faculty,  according to the Greensboro-based Rhino Times.

Gorman

Green left his job as Gorman's deputy to take Guilford's top job in 2008. Gorman resigned as CMS superintendent in 2011 to work for the news division of Rupert Murdoch's education technology company,  now known as Amplify.  That's the company that got a $3.2 million contract with Guilford County Schools to provide the tablets,  which have been recalled after problems with cracked screens,  overheating and exposed wires,  according to various news sources.

Green

The Rhino Times, an alternative weekly that used to have a Charlotte publication, made a public records request for emails between the district and Amplify.  "The emails disclose a close and long-lasting relationship between former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrators,"  especially Gorman and Green,  Paul Clark reports.  Former CMS staffers Nora Carr,  Jocelyn Becoats and Cynthia Shah-Kahn,  who now work for Green,  and Robert Avossa,  now superintendent in Fulton County,  Ga.,  were all part of the email exchange about the selection of Amplify,  the purchase of tablets and/or publicity about the purchase,  according to the article.

"The reason the school board got only one choice appears to lie in the complex web of pre-existing relationships between former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrators,"  Clark writes.  "The Guilford County school board has a terminal case of Charlotte envy.  Almost everything launched at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools finds its way to Guilford County."

I haven't done any reporting on this situation  --  CMS keeps me more than busy  --  but the article raises some important questions about the process in Guilford and the tactics used to sell and promote educational technology.  I had to grin when I saw that Shah-Kahn had rejected Amplify's attempt to get the district to sign off on a fake quote from Green promoting the company.  "The mo quote is awful,"  she is quoted as saying in an email to Guilford administrators.

Every district in America is spending big bucks on educational technology,  which means every taxpayer in America has a vested interest.  The Guilford mess is a good reminder that it's wise to be cautious,  even when the vendor has a familiar face.

Prepping for the Broad Prize

Guilford County Schools has paid a Denver consulting firm almost $40,000 to do a simulation of the Broad Prize for Urban Education judging,  according to a district news release.

The release says the researchers who did the Broad-based  "diagnostic report"  described Guilford as  "a rising district nationally,"  but noted that it  "still has more work to do before it can join the elite ranks of Broad Prize winners."

This year's winner is Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  where Guilford County Superintendent Maurice  "Mo"  Green got his start as an administrator.  He was Peter Gorman's second-in-command before taking the job in Greensboro in 2008.

Like real Broad Prize judges,  staff from RMC Research Corp.  analyzed data and did a three-day visit that included classroom visits and focus-group interviews.  The group rated Guilford on the Broad Prize Framework for School District Excellence and suggested improvements,  such as more rigorous curriculum and more support for teachers.

The $38,600 cost,  which includes follow-up services,  was split between a Broad Foundation grant and money raised by the local Businesses for Excellence in Education.

Guilford,  North Carolina's third-largest district after Wake and CMS,  was one of four in North Carolina that was eligible for this year's Broad Prize,  based on size and having at least 40 percent of students from minority groups and eligible for federal lunch aid to low-income families.  Wake,  with a 33 percent poverty level as measured by lunch subsidies,  was not eligible.