The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education on Tuesday night heard Superintendent Crystal Hill's final recommended plan in response to the 2024 Comprehensive Review of Board Policy S-ASGP — the district's student-assignment policy. The plan would consolidate the district's choice programs into six thematic pathways and convert all four of the district's middle colleges to early colleges by the 2027-28 school year. It would cut programs at 11 schools, add new ones at four, and eliminate three themes outright.

Dr. Melissa Balknight presented the recommendation. The board took no vote Tuesday. A public hearing is scheduled for May 12 and the board's vote is set for May 26. If approved, implementation begins in the 2027-28 school year.

The plan is the culmination of a process that began with the December 2024 comprehensive data review and was given direction at the board's January 31, 2025 retreat to focus on Goals A (choice and access) and B (efficiency) of policy S-ASGP. The community-engagement phase, facilitated this spring by Research Triangle Institute consultant Mike Martin, ran through more than 126 engagement sessions across the district's comprehensive high school sites.

The board attached no decision to Tuesday's presentation. It will not, until May 26.

Six themes, one continuum each

The plan organizes program choice around six themes: Visual & Performing Arts, Montessori, International Baccalaureate / Learning Immersion Talent Development (IB/LITD), World Languages, STEM, and Early College. Five would be K-12 curriculum continuums available across the district's three transportation zones. The sixth — Early College — would serve students in grades nine through twelve.

The point of the continuum, Balknight told the board, is that a family who picks a theme would no longer have to re-enter the lottery at every level transition.

"In the new structure, we will offer school continuums from elementary to middle to high school in each of our three transportation zones. This means that no matter where you live in the district, you now have access to an IB/LITD elementary school that will guarantee you a seat in your zone's IB/LITD continuum schools, including middle and high school."

— Dr. Melissa Balknight, member, Superintendent's Cabinet

Three themes that exist in the current catalog would be eliminated from program choice entirely: Cambridge, Computer Science, and Leadership.

Career and Technical Education would separate from program choice beginning in 2027-28, the recommendation says, so that CTE programming can offer tier-one and tier-two credentials at every comprehensive high school instead of concentrating them inside program choice.

Approximately 22,000 of CMS's 139,000-plus students currently participate in choice programs across the district's 185 schools, Balknight told the board.

Eleven schools would lose programs

Under the recommendation, 11 schools would lose their current choice program:

• Visual & Performing Arts (3 schools): Crestdale Middle School, Greenway Park Elementary School, Long Creek Elementary School.
• International Baccalaureate (2 schools): Albemarle Road Middle School, Ranson Middle School.
• Learning Immersion / Talent Development (1 school): Tuckaseegee Elementary School.
• STEM (5 schools): Northeast Middle School, Walter G. Byers K-8 School, Whitewater Middle School, Wilson STEM Academy, Harding University High School.

Arts enrichment classes will continue at every CMS school regardless of magnet status, the recommendation reiterates. STEM and computer-science instruction continue across the district's standard course of study at every grade level. A state requirement now obligates every high school student to complete a computer-science course before graduation, which Balknight cited as a reason the district's STEM and Computer Science magnet labels have grown duplicative.

Four schools would add programs

• International Baccalaureate (2 schools): Marie G. Davis Middle School, E.E. Waddell High School.
• STEM (2 schools): Grove Park Elementary School, Second Ward High School.

Marie G. Davis would become a new IB middle school in the green transportation zone. E.E. Waddell would become the new IB continuum high school in the blue transportation zone, replacing Ballantyne Ridge High School, which was removed from the IB continuum because of projected enrollment pressure in that part of south Charlotte. Students currently zoned to Ballantyne Ridge as their home school would retain access to its IB Diploma Programme.

Grove Park Elementary would become a new STEM elementary school feeding Northridge Middle School in the green zone. Second Ward would become a STEM continuum high school in all three transportation zones.

Middle colleges would become early colleges

All four of CMS's current middle college programs — at Cato, Harper, Levine, and Merancas campuses — would convert to early colleges starting in 2027-28, opening enrollment to ninth and tenth graders rather than admitting students only as juniors. The district's existing four early colleges — Central Piedmont, Charlotte Teacher, Charlotte Engineering, and Hawthorne — would remain district-wide magnets.

Balknight said the wait list for the 26-27 school year for the district's existing early college programs stood at over 800 students. The middle colleges, by contrast, do not have wait lists and have available seats. Converting the middle colleges, the recommendation says, would eliminate the wait list and add roughly 800 seats of early-college capacity for the 2027-28 school year.

For the current school year, CMS early college students are on track to earn 72,540 college credit hours — equivalent, the district says, to more than $21.2 million in potential tuition savings.

What community feedback changed

The April 28 recommendation differs from the draft Hill presented on February 24. The changes the recommendation cites as feedback-driven:

• Statesville Road Elementary School added to the violet transportation zone IB/LITD continuum.
• Myers Park Traditional moved to the green transportation zone IB/LITD continuum.
• Randolph Middle School added as a feeder middle for Cotswold Elementary in the blue zone.
• Elizabeth Traditional moved to the blue zone.
• Ballantyne Ridge removed as a continuum high school in the blue zone, replaced by E.E. Waddell.
• South Academy of International Languages now available in the green transportation zone.
• Grove Park Elementary added as a continuum elementary feeder to Northridge Middle.
• High school continuums adjusted to include both Phillip O. Berry Academy of Technology and Second Ward High School for all STEM students across all three zones.

Mike Martin, Director of Strategic Consulting at RTI International, told the board the listening process ran six sessions a day across all comprehensive high school sites, beginning at 7:30 a.m. and continuing into the evening. Sessions used a digital pre-discussion submission tool so participants could submit feedback before group discussion. The online questionnaire ran from February 21 through April 28, 2026.

RTI did not collect demographic data on in-person attendees — a limitation Chair Stephanie Sneed and several board members questioned during the meeting. Martin said the written report would include a geographic breakdown of attendance based on the high school site each session was held at, plus the school-affiliation field collected on the online questionnaire, but acknowledged RTI had not collected that data from in-person sessions.

What the board still has to do

The plan in front of the board is for program choice only. School attendance boundaries — including the boundaries that would need to be drawn for E.E. Waddell as it would absorb the IB continuum — are a separate process. That work begins in fall 2026 and runs through community engagement of its own before any boundary recommendations come back to the board.

A public hearing on the program choice recommendation is scheduled for Tuesday, May 12, 2026. The board's vote is scheduled for Tuesday, May 26, 2026.

If approved as presented, the plan would take effect for the 2027-28 school year. Rising fifth, eighth, and twelfth graders at any school whose program is being removed would be allowed to remain at their current school to complete their terminal grade, with transportation provided. Students currently enrolled at affected schools may stay if they meet transfer requirements, but transportation would not be provided. Students wishing to continue in the same choice program elsewhere would receive priority placement through the lottery, with transportation provided within their assigned transportation zone.

Hill's FY27 operating budget was denied by the board 8-1 the same night, in a vote that did not specify in open session what to amend.