Ann-Margret Gidley has volunteered thousands of hours in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools over eight years, she told the board Tuesday night: PTA president, booster club leader, school improvement team, a seat on former Superintendent Crystal Hill's parent advisory council. Last year, she said, the district named her a "superstar parent," one of five district-wide.
Then she read the board a petition she wrote after watching its Sept. 22 meeting online, the night five members voted to fire Hill. It has 1,179 signatures, she said.
"Our community is formally calling for the immediate resignation of school board members Stephanie Sneed, Charlitta Hatch, Gregory D. Rankin, Liz Monterrey Duvall and Shamaiye Haynes," she read. "We have lost confidence in the current board's ability to serve in the best interest of the public that you are meant to serve, and we request that these five members resign effective immediately."
About 45 minutes later the meeting reached board member reports. All five spoke. So did three of the four who voted against the firing. None announced a resignation. One of the five, Shamaiye Haynes, said she will not step down.
Where things stand
The board fired Hill 5-4 on Sept. 22 "with convenience," a contract term that requires no stated cause and entitles her to severance. Charlitta Hatch, District 1, made the motion. Gregory "Dee" Rankin, District 3, who had become chair that day when Stephanie Sneed, District 4, gave up the post, counted the hands. Vice Chair Liz Monterrey Duvall, at-large, and Haynes, District 2, made up the majority. Monty Witherspoon, at-large; Lenora Shipp, at-large; Anna London, District 6; and Cynthia Stone, District 5, voted no. The same night the board released an 18-page public report on its own investigation of Hill, which said the review "did not find evidence of improper conduct by the Superintendent." A week later the board voted 6-2 to start a search for her successor.
Those are the facts the petition rests on. What the board members answered Tuesday was everything that has been said since.
Monterrey Duvall: an apology, and a denial
Monterrey Duvall began with an apology to Witherspoon. "I want to apologize to my colleague, Monty, for cutting him off while he was speaking at our last meeting," she said. "That was disrespectful and I shouldn't have done it. Regardless of whether we agree or disagree, Monty is my brother and he deserves the same respect I would expect in return. So I'm sorry, amigo."
She apologized next to district staff, educators and families "for how the events of the past several weeks have unfolded." "I'm genuinely devastated that so many people feel let down by the board," she said.
Then she addressed what she called the elephant in the room. "There are ongoing investigations involving our district, and we need to allow those processes to play out," she said. "I also want to clarify my own involvement. I have no personal or business association with Raki McGregor. I first met him when he was serving as an advisor to the superintendent through the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council."
McGregor, according to Hill's memo to the board last month, owns Qonnect LLC, the consulting firm the memo said was being paid $30,000 a month through the Raleigh law firm the board hired for its educator housing project. Monterrey Duvall said she has built a career outside public service and is financially independent. "I don't do this work for personal or financial gain," she said.
“I have no personal or business association with Raki McGregor.”
Liz Monterrey DuvallVice Chair, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of EducationVideo: Charlotte Government Channel
Hatch: "nine people who can disagree"
Hatch told a story about the night before her election, when her son asked whether you still take the shot even if you don't know it will go in. "I've heard people say my political career is over, but I never came here to build one," she said. "I came here as a mother, a CMS graduate, and now parent committed to urban education reform by centering the voices of those that are not traditionally represented at policy-making tables."
She cited the district's own results: 43 percent of students tested in grades 3 through 8 were not proficient in reading last year, and 58 percent of students tested in Math 1 were not. "A system can function as designed and still fail to meet every child's needs," she said.
"Democracy does not require agreement. We will disagree with each other, the superintendent and sometimes the community," Hatch said. "The test is not whether nine people can agree, the test is whether nine people who can disagree still govern."
Haynes: "I will not"
Haynes said she had struggled with what to say. "I didn't come into this work to be a politician," she said. "I didn't come into this work to be jealous of someone or to have the work of an entire decade reduced down to BS."
She told the parents from South Academy of International Languages, the language-immersion magnet known as SAIL, there in force over a bell schedule change, that she was proud of them and that she had done the same kind of advocacy for 10 years, unpaid. She said she and Hatch produced the district's first family and community engagement policy, and that the district will implement community schools.
"If people think that I'm going to step down, I will not," Haynes said. "I'm going to fight for that vision. I'm going to be determined in it. And I'm going to demand that every person who opened their mouth to say that we're going to work together, that we absolutely do behind closed doors."
“If people think that I'm going to step down, I will not.”
Shamaiye HaynesDistrict 2, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of EducationVideo: Charlotte Government Channel
Sneed: "an allegation is not a verdict"
Sneed, the chair until Sept. 22, said she had planned to talk about her work for the district and realized few were asking about it. She described what has reached her instead.
"I've been subject to being called the B word, the F and B word, the N word, wish you were dead by both men and women, all wrapped up into threats against my safety," she said. "With no regard to me being a CMS parent, wife and a human being." After 13 years in the community, she said, "no one including me should have to earn dignity."
"For weeks, assumptions and allegations and mischaracterizations have been repeated as facts," Sneed said. "An investigation is not a finding of wrongdoing, an allegation is not a verdict, and of course context always matters."
Sneed is the board member Hill's memo accused of arranging the consultant payments. The Mecklenburg County district attorney has asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into financial irregularities at the district, and the state auditor has said it is reviewing CMS. No finding has been made against anyone.
"My decisions and actions, every single one, has always been centered on students, families, and educators," she said. "The kids are not all right. I will remain to keep showing up for our children."
Rankin: a working group
Rankin did not speak about himself. He thanked staff "in the bus lot, the cafeteria, the hallways or especially the classroom," and said trust "is not something that we can demand. It's something that we must earn through our actions, our decisions, our transparency."
At the end of the meeting he read the board's formal response to the investigation report, which the board had held over from Sept. 22 for discussion. The board, he said, "takes the information contained in the report and the recommendations received seriously and is moving forward to improve processes and procedures within the district." It has formed a working group to put the report's recommendations into practice, focused on conflict-of-interest and contracting policies, workplace culture, "clear procedures for staff to raise concerns," and how vacancies and reassignments are handled. A public work session will follow. He did not say when.
Hatch said the investigation's recommendations reached the full board Aug. 25, and that the board had held, by her count, as many as 15 closed sessions on the matter. "I did not create the report," she said. "It was not my deliverable to produce for the board." The job of deciding how transparent to be, she said, "should have always been and still belongs to the board as a majority."
The other four
The members who voted to keep Hill were briefer. Witherspoon did not give a report. Shipp, a former principal, marked National Principals Month and said the board has to work for "the small wins." Stone thanked teachers and staff and offered to "kind of apologize for making it harder for them right now." She thanked the press, too. "A free press is critical to seeking accountability for all actions," she said, and said she was glad investigators would now answer "what we all are so curious to find out."
London said the past several weeks had been "incredibly difficult" and that she had been "disappointed, frustrated, and challenged in ways I never expected." "I am one of nine board members," she said, "and I am committed to working with my colleagues to find common ground."
Two sides of the podium
Gidley was not the only speaker on the board itself. Janice Robinson rejected the demand that Sneed step down. The "noise" since the firing, Robinson said, "stinks of political exploitation by powers that have long tried to undermine, defund, take control, and dismantle CMS," and she noted that voting was to begin two days after the meeting. She said she met Sneed 10 years ago through the Westside Education Think Tank, which she said Sneed, Haynes and other volunteers created to train Black families to advocate for their children's education. "This demand that Ms. Sneed stepped down, I wholeheartedly reject," she said. "We need to let the investigations take their course."
Gloria Davis, a grandparent of two CMS students, told the board, "I think you let the wrong person go." A retired teacher, Bill Fountain, called the majority "the five who voted to fire Dr. Hill." James Russell, who said he was speaking as "a girl dad in a frenzy," argued the board should not be the body choosing the next superintendent.