Meck-Wake charter gap: Smacking my head

A light bulb went on when I read the front page of this morning's Observer.

I've been puzzling over the large numbers of charter schools opening or planning to open in the Charlotte region, compared with much smaller numbers in Raleigh's Triangle area.

A number in the fact box with Mark Washburn's story on Mecklenburg County hitting the one million mark grabbed my attention:  Charlotte's metropolitan statistical area,  which includes surrounding counties,  has 2.3 million people.  Raleigh's has 1.2 million.

What?  Charlotte's metropolitan area is almost twice as large as Raleigh's?

That caught me by surprise,  probably because I've been so focused on the two school districts.  When I started the education beat in 2002,  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools was the state's largest district,  with Wake second.  A few years later,  with CMS growing fast and Wake growing faster,  those positions switched.  I knew Charlotte was bigger than Raleigh,  but in my mind the two regions were comparable in size.

School districts,  of course,  are limited by county lines.  Charter schools are not.  Many of the large charters in our area are located near county borders and draw from two or more counties.  So the fact that we have so many more people in our greater suburban area probably signals a significantly larger market for charters,  whether they're located inside or just outside Mecklenburg.

Plenty of important questions remain about what the charter surge will mean for CMS, taxpayers, property values and,  above all,  for students.  But at least the raw numbers seem a bit less perplexing now.