Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools rewrote its $2.1 billion 2026-27 operating budget without adding a dollar of revenue. The Board of Education approved the new version unanimously on Tuesday — two weeks after rejecting Superintendent Crystal Hill's original budget 8-1.

The board adopted the same operating envelope it had rejected on April 28, with six negotiated changes to the way the money is spent inside it. Every board member who had voted to deny the first version voted to approve the amended one.

What changed inside the same dollar envelope

The single line item that triggered Liz Monterrey Duvall's April 28 motion to deny — the $2.4 million budgeted for the Capturing Kids Hearts social-emotional curriculum — is gone. The funds are being redirected: $1.6 million to deeper classroom SEL investment and $800,000 to a request for proposals for direct-to-student SEL services. Monterrey Duvall had cited the program by name on April 28, pointing to district data that showed only 30 percent of CMS schools meeting the program's culture-and-climate baseline.

The amended budget also reinstates all four CMS-DSS educational liaison positions that Hill's original proposal had eliminated. The funding comes from three reallocated specialist positions and contracted-services dollars, not new money. Stephanie Klitsch of Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, Chief District Court Judge Elizabeth Trosch, Frank Crawford of the Children's Alliance, and CCLA attorney Daniel Brown all spoke during public comment in support of the restoration. The liaisons serve more than 400 children currently in Mecklenburg County foster care.

A third change targets two CMS schools currently rated F by the state and slated to lose teaching positions for 2026-27. The amended budget reallocates three teacher positions from the Charlotte Virtual Academy — possible, Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight told the board, because the virtual program is moving to a more asynchronous model that allows higher staff caseloads — and uses them to restore 1.5 teachers each at Cochrane Collegiate Academy and Hidden Valley Elementary. Balknight told the board the move targeted schools furthest from proficiency, citing Guardrail 1.

The two remaining substantive changes are smaller. Strategy adjustment four — keeping previously announced position eliminations on the books — is unchanged from the original budget. Lapsed salary dollars from current vacancies are not available to restore those positions, Chief Financial Officer Kelly Kluttz told the board, because most of the lapse is consumed by bus-driver overtime (134 of the vacancies are state-paid bus drivers) and by 13 new CMS-owned vans being purchased to serve exceptional-children, McKinney-Vento, and foster students. Strategy adjustment six reallocates $100,000 from three central-office contracted-services budgets to the family engagement line.

The state-budget variable

The change with the most uncertainty attached is the state-salary assumption. The board raised the assumed state-driven raise from 3 percent to 5 percent, with a 1 percent contingency, funded entirely through tradeoffs within the existing budget.

Earlier Tuesday, Kluttz told the board, the North Carolina General Assembly reached an agreement in principle on an 8 percent average teacher raise and a 3 percent raise for other state employees, plus one-time bonuses. The press conference, she said, was at 3:45 p.m.

The math, Kluttz explained, works out. CMS has about 18,000 employees, roughly half certified staff paid on a state license and roughly half non-certified employees classified as other state employees. The 8 percent and 3 percent blended together land between 5.5 and 6 percent — inside the budgeted contingency.

"If the numbers end where they're suggested today, we will not have to make additional cuts to cover the 8 percent," Kluttz told Vice Chair Gregory "Dee" Rankin.

The North Carolina General Assembly has not formally passed a budget since 2024. Tuesday's agreement-in-principle remains preliminary. If the final state numbers land "much beyond" those levels, Kluttz said, the district will return with further amendments.

Two weeks of pressure

Before the vote, District 1 Board Member Charlitta Hatch asked Hill directly, on the record: "Is this the recommendation that you all feel confident and can deliver for the goals and guardrails for our community that's being presented here today?"

"Yes," Hill answered.

Chair Stephanie Sneed, who had declined to discuss specifics with Hill on the dais after the April 28 denial, read aloud from a 5 a.m. email she had sent to staff and her board colleagues on Saturday morning. "Can we expand opportunity for students with what we already have?" the email read. "No one is asking for decisions that would harm the majority of children, create financial instability, violate the vision and values of this community, move us further away from our goals or disregard our guardrails. The push is simply this. Can we stretch the possibilities without forsaking the commitments and foundational responsibilities we must uphold?"

Sneed closed: "I offer no apologies for the push. It is with students in mind. And even with this budget, it's not perfect, but it's better."

Vice Chair Rankin framed the arc differently. "When you have a new team, the first thing you do is you form. Then you have a storm. We've been through this storming process. And the next step of that when you have a new team is norming. So I think we're in the process of norming."

Monty Witherspoon, the lone board member who voted to support the original budget on April 28, voted to support the amended one as well. The others reversed.

The $699 million Mecklenburg County funding request inside the budget — $31.1 million more than the prior year — is unchanged. The state's final budget has been the variable holding everything else still.