At 4:08 on a Monday afternoon, Committee Chair Charlitta Hatch gave the other three board members on the call two minutes to silently review five sections of draft policy language — access and navigation, community alignment, system integration, equity indicators, student outcome correlation. When they finished and raised their hands, Hatch grinned. “You can lower your hands down now, class,” she said. “This is so fun.”
It was the kind of moment that tells you something about what the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education’s Family and Community Engagement Ad Hoc Committee has become over its six weeks of existence: four elected officials who have been meeting regularly since mid-February to write policy language from scratch, who rib each other when someone logs in late, and who have reached the stage where a two-minute silent review feels like a shared accomplishment.
The committee met virtually on March 30 — Hatch of District 1, Vice Chair Dee Rankin of District 3, Shamaiye Haynes of District 2, and Cynthia Stone of District 5. Board Chair Stephanie Sneed of District 4 joined remotely for the second half. They spent roughly 85 minutes on two items: the final sections of a draft family engagement policy that would be the first of its kind for the district, and a question about the board’s own operating procedures that turned out to be harder than anybody expected.
Conditions, Not Activity Counts
The policy itself is straightforward in concept, even if the drafting has been anything but. The committee wants CMS to stop measuring family engagement by how many parents show up to events and start measuring whether families can actually navigate the system, get their questions answered, and trust the district with their children.
The draft defines a set of structural conditions the board expects to see district-wide: access and navigation, responsiveness and resolution timelines, family trust and perception indicators, representation in decision-making, alignment of community partnerships to district goals, and equity metrics disaggregated by student subgroup and school. The superintendent — currently Dr. Crystal Hill — would determine how to measure and report on those conditions, with a minimum reporting frequency of once a year.
The meeting’s first debate was about whether the monitoring section restated what the policy had already said. Rankin thought it did. “The conditions are what should be monitored,” he said. “So why do we have to list all those down here?”
Haynes argued the repetition was the point. “Some things in policy work appear to be redundant,” she said. “But really, you do have to spell it out for people. A person can read one section of a policy, not read the other section. You just want to make sure each section can sort of stand on its own.” What made her argument land was the context: “We’re not making policy for this superintendent or for our understanding. We’re actually making policy for future boards so that it’s crystal clear.”
Stone sided with Haynes. “I’d rather have more than we need than not enough,” she said. The monitoring language stayed.
The committee also scrapped a roles-and-responsibilities section that had attempted to define expectations for everyone from the superintendent to families to community partners. Anna, the board’s policy advisor, delivered the clearest rationale for cutting it: “You can’t make a family come to school and engage on behalf of their student. You can just set up the framework that allows them to actually do that.” Hatch accepted the consensus without argument. “Let’s scrap it for now,” she said.
The Question Nobody Had Written Down
Then the meeting shifted, and the committee found the harder problem.
The board’s operating procedures manual — the document that governs how the nine-member board conducts its own business — does not define how individual board members use district staff for community engagement. There are no written rules about how many events a board member can request staff support for, what qualifies as board business versus personal outreach, or who coordinates the logistics. Board members operate on precedent, and as Hatch put it when she introduced her draft of proposed new language: “Individual board member engagement is not defined. Staff support is not defined. We’re operating based off precedents, but we’re not operating based off policy.”
Hatch had written a proposed section specifying that the superintendent and district staff would provide “reasonable logistical and informational support” for board engagement — coordinating logistics, assisting with outreach, providing translation services, summarizing engagement themes. She described her role drafting it with characteristic self-deprecation: “I am truly just a vessel to give us something to react to.”
But the committee split on a fundamental question: should the manual govern individual board members at all?
Rankin said no. “To have in a board operating procedures manual a policy on how an individual board member is engaged, I think is overreach,” he said. The manual should describe how the board operates as a body. What individual members do in their districts is their business.
Sneed, joining remotely, disagreed — and she was specific about why. “There needs to be guardrails set for individual board members and what the engagement looks like,” she said. “Staff is not going to support you on 25 events. That’s not reasonable.” She gave an example of the kind of line she wanted drawn: a board member shouldn’t be able to request district staff support for a political event — “the purple people eater party,” as she put it — and the rule against electioneering should be written down, not left to common sense.
Haynes wanted the guardrails running in both directions. Board members should have advance-notice requirements — “It’s not fair to the district or to the staff involved if you decide next week you want to do some heavy engagement and then you’re like, ‘Hey, y’all support me in doing this.’” But the district shouldn’t be able to deprioritize board members’ planned engagement either. Her language was vivid: she didn’t want staff to be able to “float us on down the river” by citing competing district events whenever a board member requested support.
Stone, who joined the board more recently, admitted she wasn’t sure where the line was. “I just haven’t really come up with the idea that I need them for anything like that,” she said. When she mentioned that CMS communications staffer Sherry Costa had attended a PTA meeting with her, Rankin confirmed: yes, that counts as staff support. Stone hadn’t known. “I’m new,” she said. “I’m no policy wonk on this stuff either.”
That exchange — a sitting board member unsure whether her own use of a district employee constitutes staff support — captured why the committee thought the question needed answering.
They didn’t resolve it. The conversation lasted 30 minutes and produced agreement on a few points (specify the superintendent and chiefs, not just “district staff”; add reporting frequency; include anti-electioneering language) but no final text. Hatch asked members to submit their edits individually. Anna, the policy advisor, noted the timing: a new Board Governance, Support, and Engagement Policy goes into effect this week, along with a newly established office to support the board. The manual revisions should align with that new structure.
What Comes Next
The committee’s charter expires April 24. Hatch said she’ll ask Chair Sneed for a two-month extension — enough to finish the operating manual work without needing to ask again. The charter amendment would go through consent on the full board’s agenda.
Before the engagement policy is referred to the Policy Committee — chaired by Rankin — the ad hoc committee wants CMS staff to review it. Hatch plans to invite Dr. Steve Esposito, an assistant superintendent whose portfolio the committee identified as closest to family engagement; Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight; and Beth Thompson, who Haynes described as overseeing the district’s strategic plan. Sneed supported the idea: “Have Steve come in advance,” she said, because Esposito’s team will carry the heaviest implementation lift.
As the meeting ended, Chief Dolan — the committee’s staff liaison — waved to get Hatch’s attention. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wave so frantically,” she said. She needed to know the next meeting date so she could request attendance from Esposito, Balknight, and Thompson. Hatch said she’d have dates by Tuesday.
CMS spring break starts this week. The Policy Committee meets next on April 16.
The Charlotte Mercury covers CMS board meetings, committee sessions, and policy decisions from the public record — transcripts, board documents, and named sources.