Everybody is talking about how Obamacare will look on January 1, 2014.
But how will things look on January 1, 2015?
We put that question to eight smart people who follow health policy.
They represent different political perspectives and come by their expertise in different ways.
There's an economist, three trained physicians, plus a longtime consumer advocate and organizer. Two of them worked for Republican presidents, one served a Democrat.
One frequently criticizes Obamacare from the right, another from the left.
But their predictions have more in common than you might suspect:
1) ****HAROLD POLLACK:
In 2014, the most interesting political and policy stories will shift from Washington to the fifty states. States face a mammoth implementation challenge. They also provide the terrain in which we will see whether bipartisan health policy is actually possible. In some parts of the country, we’ll see some fascinating negotiations as Republican governors and the Obama administration each seek a dignified path to make this thing work.
I hope that we see something else, too: An end to the politics of impunity toward the poor and the uninsured.
It’s sobering to think that the same inequalities that make universal coverage a moral imperative pose the chief political obstacles to universal coverage itself. Those with the most to gain from the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion are economically marginal, disorganized, alienated from the levers of politics, distrusted or disliked by many other Americans. This reality produces a striking sense of impunity among governors and legislators who deny Medicaid coverage to five million people, even as the federal government stands ready to foot virtually the entire bill.
As Medicaid expansion becomes real, Republican politicians who embrace it will begin to profit. Hospitals, cities and counties, and other interest groups in non-expansion states will ask hard questions about why their states chose a different path. Poor people themselves, in campaigns such as texasleftmeout.org, will increase the pressure, too.
It’s important that these recalcitrant officials pay some price—not just to smooth the way for expanded coverage, but to debunk a particularly toxic assumption in American life. Too many politicians assume that poor people just don’t matter, politically. On many issues from the sequester to unemployment insurance, the practical consequences of this assumption are only too obvious.
This assumption is being put to the test. In 2014, I’m betting that some governors will be surprised.
2) ***GAIL WILENSKY:
As expected, 2014 was a tumultuous year for the Affordable Care Act. It started in January with many people who thought they had enrolled not actually being insured--either because the information hadn't been accurately transmitted back to their insurance companies or because they hadn't paid their premiums by January 10. After a lot of pressure from the Administration to cover people retroactively if necessary, people newly insured began receiving services.
Access to health services was less problematic than many had feared because of the smaller-than-predicted numbers enrolling in private insurance. Only 4.5 million got coverage, even after the March surge in sign-ups. And there were the many "red" states that hadn't expanded their Medicaid coverage. Some states reported challenges getting primary care services provided to the newly insured--California having the most significant problems.
Some of the smaller regional insurance companies participating in 2014 decided not to participate again in 2015. Some larger companies that had only selectively participated in 2014 increased their participation only modestly for 2015, still concerned about the significant adverse selection that had occurred in 2014 and their difficulty to price properly.
The biggest uproar occurred when many smaller/mid-sized employers received notices that their existing policies didn't meet ACA standards and weren't being renewed. As expected, the Administration provided a variety of accommodations to these employers.
The best news is that the majority of states that had not previously expanded Medicaid announced intentions to do so for 2015. The bad news is that the newly elected Congress is even less likely to pass any legislative "fixes" than the previous Congress.
(Gail Wilensky has served as director of Medicare and Medicaid and she has chaired the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. She is now an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE.)
3) ***ANTHONY WRIGHT:
By the end of 2014, more than 2 million Californians will be enrolled in new coverage options under the Affordable Care Act. A million will have coverage through our exchange, Covered California, following its second open enrollment period. More will be getting coverage through our Medicaid program. Already 700,000 newly covered people have insurance through an early expansion of Medicaid; by February it will be more than 1 million.
Washington-based media will continue to hyperventilate about Obamacare, mistakenly using every website glitch or early enrollment figure as a binary barometer of the law’s success or failure. But even in a state like California—where the website (mostly) works, premiums came in below expectations, and enrollments are on target—officials aren't putting up a “Mission Accomplished” banner yet. Just as rollout problems were never indications of the ACA’s demise, progress to date is not proof the job is finished.
As elections are about the future, not the past, I predict Obamacare itself won't be a major factor in future contests. The debate will be “What’s Next?”
In states that have been more hostile to the law, at least some officials will change their minds about the Medicaid expansion, allowing it go forward.
In states like California that have embraced the law, officials and supporters of reform will focus on improving the law. Among the questions they will address:
1. How can we ensure a safety-net that survives and thrives—to provide primary and preventative care to the remaining uninsured, including undocumented immigrants that were excluded from the ACA?
2. How can we further regulate the insurance market—beyond basic steps like banning pre-existing condition exclusions—so that insurers compete not on avoiding sick people, but on cost, quality, customer service and prevention? How else can we make the health industry more accountable for improved quality and reduced cost of care? California is likely to debate (through bills, the budget, and the ballot box) more oversight of networks, transparency of health spending, rate regulation, investments in prevention and public health, and more.
While we will concentrate on the unfinished work of implementing the law in 2014, the work to fulfill the full promise of the law will be just beginning.
(Anthony Wright is director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy organization.)
4) ***SEAN PARNELL:
Although it’s unlikely that 2014 will be as bad for the ACA as the initial rollout was, the law still faces significant challenges in the New Year.
The biggest hurdle will be enrollment, particularly among the young and healthy. Deductibles are high, premium subsidies generally aren’t available except to the poorest, the tax for being uninsured is low, and the young have always been overrepresented among the uninsured. This will continue to be the case in 2014 and beyond.
Late in 2014, insurers will announce premiums for 2015. They will be higher, inflicting a political price on Democrats. Expect more creative interpretations and regulatory flexibility out of the Obama administration in order to smooth over more unintended consequences of the ACA.
There will be more Americans who pay directly for more of their health care. The ACA is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to leave 30 million people uninsured, and tens of millions more will get high-deductible plans through exchanges or their employers. These self-pay patients will demand price transparency and discounts for paying in full at the time of treatment, and innovative entrepreneurs will step up to cater to them while ignoring the traditional third-party payment system.
At the end of 2014, I expect to see many advocates of the ACA look back and conclude that while it’s too early to call the law a failure, the meager results fall far short of what was hoped for.
(Sean Parnell is author of The Self-Pay Patient and a writer at www.theselfpaypatient.com)
5) ***DAVID BLUMENTAL:
The most recent CBO projections for ACA coverage, from May 2013, suggested there would be 7 million new privately insured Americans and 9 million new enrollees in Medicaid/CHIP by the end of 2014.
Through December 30, 1.9 million Americans had enrolled in private coverage through the federal and state marketplaces. As of December 20, 627,000 had enrolled in Medicaid/Chip. Let’s assume that by January 1 the numbers stand at about 2.0 million for private insurance (30 percent of the CBO 2014 target) and 1 million for Medicaid (11 percent).
The real deadline, however, for the first ACA open enrollment period is March 31, 2014, when penalties kick in. It would be reasonable to expect enrollment during February-March, 2014 to equal the 2013 numbers, bringing the total for private enrollees to about 4.0 million or 60 percent of CBO projections
Medicaid/CHIP numbers are harder to predict because enrollment can proceed continuously over the year. Assuming 1.5 million Americans enroll in Medicaid/CHIP during 2014, participation in public plans would come to 2.5 million or about 28 percent of projected.
Including the 3 million young people under 26 who have gained coverage under their parents’ plans in 2013, these projections would mean that a minimum of 10 million Americans would have become newly insured under provisions of the Affordable Care Act by the end of 2014.
As for costs, the ACA is given some credit (deserved or not) for keeping growth in overall health care costs below historical rates. However, times of rising personal wealth have always been times of rising health care spending. If the economy experiences strong GDP growth in 2014, growth in health spending is also likely to increase beyond the 2012 level of 0.8 percent per capita. A reasonable prediction: both GDP and health care will grow in the 2-3 percent range.
As a percent of GDP, health care expenses would remain unchanged at the 18 percent level.
This would have been viewed as a big accomplishment only a few years ago, but that was then.
(David Blumenthal, who has been a professor of medicine at Harvard and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, is now president of the Commonwealth Fund.)
6) ***TEVI TROY:
One year from now, the Affordable Care Act will be hobbled but still there. The hangover from the botched rollout will continue to haunt the program, but the website will be in better shape, and an increasing number of people will be getting subsidized insurance via the exchanges. At the same time, sticker shock will continue, especially among those without access to subsidized rates, and take-up rates will continually be lower than the administration predicted.
This will lead to a situation where Democrats are touting the number of covered individuals and calling the ACA a success, while Republicans will highlight the increased costs, lower than expected numbers of covered individuals, and the roll out problems to determine that the plan is a failure. The answer to the question of whether the law is a success or a failure will come from the employer-based market. If employer-based plans continue without significant disruptions, the ACA will weather the storm; but if individuals in the employer-based market lose their insurance or see major changes in their plans, the ACA’s political troubles will worsen.
In addition, one year from now, Republicans will be pleased with their election gains in the House and Senate, but will also realize that, even with their political victory, they cannot repeal the ACA while a lame duck President Obama remains in office.
This will set up the 2016 election as yet another do-or-die test for the ACA.
(Tevi Troy is a former Deputy Secretary of HHS and the author of What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House.)
7) ***JOHN Z. AYANIAN:
The most notable change will be 12 million newly insured Americans. In May, 2013 the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected 9 million low-income adults would gain coverage in states opting to expand Medicaid during 2014, and another 7 million Americans would obtain private insurance through new federal and state health insurance exchanges. However, because of incomplete ACA awareness among eligible adults and early technical problems with the exchanges, I expect overall enrollment gains in 2014 will be 12 million instead of 16 million Americans.
A second major change over the next year will be much better functioning insurance exchanges. Major problems faced by HealthCare.gov and many new state exchanges will be essentially resolved through effective technical solutions.
The ACA’s future hinges on the U.S. Senate elections in 2014. If Democrats retain control of the Senate, ACA implementation will continue largely as planned. In contrast, if Republicans control both the Senate and House in 2015, Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress will agree to change several features of the ACA. Essential benefit requirements for insurers will be loosened, financial penalties for uninsured individuals will be lightened, insurance subsidies will be reduced or eliminated for some currently eligible households (those at 300-400% of the federal poverty level), and the medical device tax will be eliminated. Because President Obama will veto a full ACA repeal, its two core components—Medicaid expansion in 25 or more states and subsidized private coverage for most currently eligible households—will be preserved until the 2016 Presidential election.
(John Z. Ayanian is a professor of internal medicine and director of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation at the University of Michigan.)
8) ***DON MCANNE:
There is no doubt that, in 2014, we will see enough individuals enrolled in Medicaid, in the exchange plans, and some new enrollment in employer-sponsored plans (to avoid the penalty, though small this year), that the Affordable Care Act will be considered a success. But success is not measured by enrollment in insurance plans but rather by the ability to obtain access to affordable health care.
Not only will tens of millions remain uninsured, those insured that need health care will face financial barriers of high deductibles and other cost sharing, and many will face lack of choice due to narrow provider networks. Unavoidable care provided out of network could result in catastrophic expenses. We will continue to hear stories of people facing excess costs and network problems that will prevent them from accessing care of their choosing.
Already, from both the left and the right, there is much discussion of single payer (improved Medicare for all) as an inevitability once it is realized how poorly functioning will be our fragmented, dysfunctional system of financing health care. We will not see the threshold for action in changing to single payer reached this year, but within a few years, demand for change will occur.
The feeble recommendations from the right would only make things worse, partly by diminishing what little protection we do have, so there isn’t much left other than single payer. Once enough people understand that all of us can have free choice of care that is affordable through equitable public funding, they will demand single payer.
(Don McCanne is a senior health policy fellow with Physicians for a National Health Plan.)
Local schools facing big budget cuts can expect more freedom on how to spend state money, says Rep. Thom Tillis, a Huntersville Republican who's been tapped as House speaker in the new GOP-dominated legislature.
Before he was elected to the North Carolina State Legislature four years ago, Tillis was a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools parent volunteer, PTSA president and education activist from the northern suburbs.
Now he brings that experience to a top post in a year that could shake the foundations of public education, with Republicans holding a majority in the state legislature for the first time in more than a century and a $3 Billion gap looming in the N.C. State budget.
Tillis says his PTSA work at Hopewell High gave him a firsthand view of how many strings come attached to state money. While he's not ready to offer specifics, he says Republicans are ready to loosen those strings.
"There's about 500 pages of statutes," Tillis said. "How can we ease the burden?"
That's welcome news to CMS leaders, who have long sought more decision-making power.
Board chair Eric Davis, who is registered unaffiliated, says much of the current control dates to the Great Depression, when North Carolina stepped in as small districts went broke.
"We're now in an economic crisis second only to the Great Depression," Davis said, and he urges state legislators to seize the opportunity to get rid of "rules and regulations that tie our hands."
The CMS board is still working on a legislative wish list, but Davis cited rules restricting furloughs and setting the school calendar as examples that limit local options.
Superintendent Peter Gorman said Wednesday that he'd like to see the state give each district its share of the money with no restrictions. Now, state money is often attached to prescribed jobs. Preliminary state plans for dealing with big cuts in 2011 would reduce the number of teachers available at each grade level, a loss of up to 500 from CMS alone, and eliminate teacher assistants in grades 1-3, leaving them only in kindergarten.
Gorman said he'd like the option of cutting something else to preserve assistants. Making those decisions brings more criticism to local officials, he said, but "I'd rather take the blame and be more strategic."
Tillis says his party has some broad strokes plans for education, from allowing more charter schools to cutting regulations. Starting this month, he said, he and other leaders will meet with educators, officials, parents and others willing to help chart the details.
"We want as many people engaged in the process as are interested," he said shortly after Republicans chose him to become speaker.
Up-close knowledge
Mary McCray, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators, calls Tillis' CMS experience "a plus-plus."
"He knows what overcrowded high schools are, what they look like," McCray said.
In 2003, Tillis was part of FUME, a north-suburban parent group organized by Rhonda Lennon, who's now on the CMS board. The group was concerned about school crowding created by CMS student assignment and slow construction of suburban schools, along with other issues.
At Hopewell, Tillis said, concerns about safety and discipline led to a PTA survey of teachers. That taught him to listen to rank-and-file educators, he said.
He said he'll work with groups such as the N.C. Association of Educators, a quasi-union in a right-to-work state, but "I don't view the NCAE as being the voice of teachers."
Tillis says his own family has experienced school choice; his two kids attended both public and private schools. His daughter graduated from CMS's Hopewell and attends Central Piedmont Community College, he said, while his son graduated from the private Cannon School and attends American University in Washington, D.C.
One of the GOP's top priorities is lifting North Carolina's 100-school limit on charters, which get public money but don't report to local districts.
"I believe this year if you see nothing else, you will see a more friendly environment for charter schools in North Carolina," he said.
Not all charters are successful, Tillis said, but a wider range would offer more options and more success stories. His goal, he says, is recognizing standouts among charters and traditional public schools.
Swinging for doubles
The 2011 session convenes Jan. 26; that's when new members will be sworn in and the speaker will be formally elected.
The legislature could re-examine the state pay scale, Tillis said. He said he's intrigued by CMS's quest to base teacher pay on student progress and other measures of effectiveness, rather than seniority and credentials.
"I believe it's worked well in business and been successful in some other districts," he said.
And he said he'd consider loosening the state-imposed limits on when the school year stops and starts, as long as changes don't harm the economy. Some businesses that rely on summer vacation trade and/or student labor lobbied for a uniform school year.
Every creative approach that state and local officials can find will help, Tillis said, even though he doubts there's one big answer to dealing with cuts.
"I don't believe there are any home runs out there," he said, "but I do believe there are a lot of singles and doubles."
North Carolina Republicans narrowly selected state Rep. Thom Tillis of Mecklenburg County on Saturday as their nominee to become the next speaker of the North Carolina House. Tillis is a relative newcomer with fiscal expertise who was the GOP's floor chief for the past four years.
House Republicans claimed 68 seats on Election Day, all but assuring sole GOP control of the 120-seat chamber and the speaker's post for the first time since 1998. The actual vote for speaker occurs Jan. 26 on the session's first day.
Democrat Joe Hackney, who loses his position as speaker to the incoming Republican majority, issued a statement Saturday congratulating Tillis.
"My Democratic colleagues and I look forward to working with him to make our state better," Hackney said.
"We will also continue to support action consistent with our principles. We will oppose policies that take North Carolina backward, that threaten to destroy the remarkable progress we have made in our public schools, our community colleges and our universities, or that threaten our outstanding and highly lauded climate for business."
Tillis, 50, who just won his third term to the Legislature, defeated three other candidates, including Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake, the minority leader since 2007.
Results of the private meeting, secret-ballot vote weren't released by caucus leaders, who would only say that Tillis won on the second ballot and that the final margin was thin.
Stam unanimously was elected majority leader, which Tillis called a sign of the amicable competition and the good feelings Republicans had for both candidates. Two other candidates who had sought the majority leader's post dropped out for Stam.
"We went in there unified and we came out unified, and I have every reason to believe that that's why we're going to go into the legislative session and make history," Tillis told reporters after the meeting.
Stam said the GOP will lead cooperatively and constructively. "We're still going to cooperate with Democrats whenever we can. In the past, it was out of necessity because it was the way to get our bills passed, but, in the future, we'll do it because it's good government," he said.
Tillis, a former IBM business consultant first elected to the House in 2006 and became minority whip in 2009, has won points for running the campaign operation that raised money and recruited candidates who defeated more than a dozen Democratic incumbents. He said fiscal issues such as taxation and narrowing a projected $3.2 billion budget gap would be the immediate work of the new majority.
"This is a part-time legislature that's going to try and solve that crisis over a six-month period. Most CEOs would go running for the door if they had to take on the task that we've worked hard to take on," he said.
"Our priorities are going to be what they were in the campaign," Tillis said. "We're going to focus on the fiscal situation. We're going to focus on trying whatever we can to create jobs. We're going to live up to our promises."
Stam, an Apex attorney completing his fifth term, also talked fiscal matters but appealed more to social conservatives and has been involved in Republican Party politics since the early 1970s. He first joined the House in 1989 and returned more than a decade later.
Reps. Ric Killian of Mecklenburg County and Mitch Gillespie of McDowell County also ran for speaker Saturday. They were removed from the ballot after they trailed in the first round of voting.
Outgoing Speaker Joe Hackney, D-Orange, has been in the Legislature for 30 years. State GOP Chairman Tom Fetzer said he didn't believe Tillis' relative inexperience is a liability.
"He's going to bring a businessman's focus, a businessman's perspective to the job of speaker. He's not a career politician," Fetzer said. "We need to disabuse ourselves of this notion that people have to be around there forever to effectively lead."
Tillis and Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, chosen Thursday as the GOP's choice for Senate leader, will become the top Republican leaders in state government, setting the tone for what legislation will be heard and which lawmakers will get plum committee assignments. They'll also serve as chief negotiators with, and likely foils of, Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue.
Tillis said he won't have all the answers leading the House but said he knows where to find them.
"I have the kind of experience that you need to lead a caucus that has tremendous institutional knowledge," Tillis said.
Unity is a sensitive issue for House Republicans, who struggled through a fracturous decade between those aligned with or against former co-Speaker Richard Morgan, R-Moore. The infighting surfaced in primary elections during the 2004 or 2006, taking out several GOP incumbents. Stam, 60, is credited with restoring the caucus.
House Republicans also agreed to nominate Rep. Dale Folwell of Forsyth County as speaker pro tempore, a largely ceremonial position but one Tillis said Folwell initially will use to help with new member orientation. Folwell still must be elected by the entire chamber January. The caucus also elected Rep. Marilyn Avila, R-Wake, as chairwoman of the joint House-Senate Republican caucus.
The day was largely a joyful one for Republicans, who have held control or partial control of the House for only six years since the 1898 elections. When asked what it will be like switching from minority leader to majority leader, Stam replied simply: "We're going to win a whole lot more votes."
Twelve years ago, the school board declared war on the suburbs. That war would eventually break the county financially, destabilize the school system and launch middle-class flight.
Last Tuesday, the chickens finally came home to roost. At a school board meeting that at times threatened to turn violent, Minority parents accused school board members of Racism. The board closed or reconfigured a long list of schools with heavy minority and poor populations to save money. Understandably, outraged protestors believed this to be an assault on poor minorities, given that whiter, more suburban schools were left untouched.
They're right in their instinct that their children will pay the price for the fiasco school leaders created over the last decade, but not for the reasons they think.
Rewind to 1997, when white suburban parents sued to end busing for racial integration. The school system fought them bitterly in court, but lost. In retribution, the school board's majority and Superintendent Eric Smith decided to starve the then-booming suburbs of school-building dollars. The formula used to calculate where schools should be built was jiggered to show negative growth in the suburbs during a time when the county regularly ranked among America's top 10 fastest-growing places due largely to suburban growth.
Suburban schools were allowed to burst at the seams while the school system went on a billion-dollar building spree, throwing up schools in low-income areas where the bulk of the county's growing population didn't actually live. This was by design. The courts had blocked the school system from busing kids by race to achieve school diversity. They would use space to achieve it instead.
Eventually, school leaders believed, suburban schools would overflow and occupancy would violate fire codes. Suburban, mostly white children would be forced into the half-filled urban schools. Diversity could still be achieved through spite.
Waddell High School, the focus of much of the crowd's anger Tuesday night, was a classic spite school. In a contentious 5-4 vote, the school board decided to bypass desperately overcrowded suburban areas and locate Waddell just a few miles from struggling Olympic High School in a lower population west side area.
Waddell was state of the art, with science labs and a media center that most school districts would envy. Yet it opened half full in 2001 and struggled to attract students while bursting suburban schools were forced to hold classes in their gyms. Waddell was closed Tuesday as a high school and will be replaced with a magnet school.
Between 2001 and 2004, 17 new schools were built. Of those, just four were in booming suburban areas of the county. Dozens more urban schools were renovated from top to bottom. Some of this made sense. Because of the lawsuit, minority kids would be returning to neighborhood schools that were decrepit and needed to be renovated.
But the school board took its construction orgy to levels so outrageous that classes in new urban schools were half full with ratios of 15 kids to a teacher. The school board blew a billion dollars on school construction, doubling the county's debt load while the population only grew by 28 percent. By 2010, Wake County had 6,000 more students than Mecklenburg did, but 17 fewer schools.
In the process, the school board made a terrible miscalculation. It wrongly assumed that suburbanites would put their kids on buses to half-empty urban schools once suburban ones burst at the seams. Instead, parents began to bypass absurdly overcrowded schools here and moved to Union and York counties.
The board alienated an entire generation of suburban parents who could have diversified our schools, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the busing lawsuit. While thousands of new children a year showed up to school in neighboring counties, our schools bled middle-income white kids. In 1998, our schools were 58-percent white. Today they are 33 percent; the schools built to hold them remain partially full.
Worse yet, the county is now struggling to operate its schools and libraries while paying down its enormous school construction debt. On Tuesday, the school board took the first step in cleaning up this mess, closing down and consolidating schools so that they can get back to the business of educating kids.
For instance, CMS black and Hispanic students in grades 3-8 were more likely to pass reading and math exams than the same groups statewide and in Wake and Guilford counties, N.C. school report cards for 2010 show.
CMS's black, Hispanic and low-income students were more successful on high-school exams but less likely to graduate.
The report cards package information that has already been reported in different formats, and confirm trends that have been emerging for the last few years. But the easy comparison of schools and districts often provides the clearest gauge of accomplishment.
And the question is timely in Charlotte. People angered by the board's recent decision to close 10 schools serving mostly African American and impoverished students have accused officials of Racism and filed complaints alleging civil-rights violations.
Board Chair Eric Davis, Superintendent Peter Gorman and others have argued that they're closing buildings to protect academic gains in a shrinking budget. CMS has spent millions putting extra teachers, technology and other aid into schools serving the neediest students, most of whom are black, Hispanic and impoverished.
The report cards provide detailed data on academics, safety, discipline and faculty, broken out by school and district. They illustrate CMS's progress with minority and low-income students, even though those groups continue to trail white and non-poor students by large margins.
In the last couple of years, districts across North Carolina have seen more disadvantaged students pass exams, partly because the state now requires students who fail the first time to take the test again.
Gorman has complained that retesting inflates pass rates and provides false hope to some students and families. But because all N.C. districts are playing by the same rules, district-to-district comparisons give perspective on the gains.
Just a few years ago, such comparisons were embarrassing for CMS. Minority and low-income students trailed state averages on most measures, especially in high schools. Wake outperformed CMS by large margins.
But in recent years, CMS has surpassed Wake and the state on many measures, especially for disadvantaged students. White and nonpoor students in both districts do extremely well, with pass rates of 85 percent or higher.
CMS's edge is most pronounced on the high-school exams. But the low graduation rate counters that advantage; pass rates could be rising because weak students are dropping out, rather than staying and flunking tests.
Wake's overall proficiency rates remain above CMS's because Wake has fewer poor and minority students. Last year about a third of Wake students qualified for lunch subsidies, used to gauge school poverty, while just over half of CMS's did.
As national experts laud Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' success with low-income and black students, some local families are taking to the streets, accusing officials of shortchanging those very children.
A proposal to close eight urban schools, where less than 10 percent of the total enrollment is white, has state and local NAACP leaders accusing CMS of racism while crowds stand and cheer.
School change is always tumultuous. But people are startled by recent arrests, protests and strident rhetoric in a city known for polite discourse and reticence about race.
"I don't know how widespread it is, but the people who are angry about it are extremely angry," said county commissioners' Chair Jennifer Roberts, who attended a recent NAACP meeting where leaders urged about 200 people to fight school-closing plans, going to jail if necessary.
Tasha Houston, a housekeeper, says she'd never marched for anything until she showed up for a public forum about closing J.T. Williams Middle, where she has a child. Her sense that school officials are mistreating African-American and low-income families led her to the street.
"It's like a volcano is erupting," Houston said, "and we have to deal with it."
Hundreds of parents, including many from the suburbs and affluent in-town neighborhoods, have protested recent changes in boundaries and magnet programs.
But talk of closings takes anxiety to a new level. Superintendent Peter Gorman has suggested closing eight of CMS's 176 schools. They're home to about 4,000 students, mostly black, Hispanic and low-income. The schools were tagged, he says, because they have empty classrooms and/or academic failings. And with budget cuts looming, he says, it's better to sacrifice buildings than teachers.
"We didn't target any one group," Gorman said last week. "What we're doing is targeting problems, and our problem is the financial challenge."
Historic echoes
But to some, it's the latest twist in a cycle of discrimination that dates back to Jim Crow schools, continued with urban renewal projects that razed black neighborhoods, and gathered new force when courts dismantled CMS's desegregation plan about 10 years ago.
That history makes skepticism understandable, says Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, a West Charlotte High alum. He says CMS leaders bear the burden of persuading a wary community that proposed changes will help their children succeed.
Tension spiked at an Oct. 12 forum on westside and central schools, when the board cut off public comments from an overflow crowd. The board plans to hold a makeup session for 19 speakers on Tuesday, but some say the damage is done.
The Rev. William Barber, president of the N.C. conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, came to Charlotte last week to help plan follow-up action. He says Charlotte's national prominence and historic position as a leader in the quest for desegregation makes it the ideal place for a long-term fight against neighborhood schools isolated by race and income.
"Resegregation of schools is the enemy of educational excellence," he said Friday.
Fiery rhetoric
When the Rev. Kojo Nantambu was elected president of Charlotte-Mecklenburg's NAACP branch last fall, he promised to shake up a dormant civil-rights community.
For months, he spoke at school board meetings, denouncing Gorman and the board as racists who encourage school resegregation. Aside from a handful of fellow activists, he got little attention.
Then the school-closing plan landed, bringing out people like Houston, who says she's normally too busy working to attend meetings. Now Nantambu is getting standing ovations from dozens eager to join his fight.
Nantambu was arrested after the Oct. 12 forum, charged with disturbing the peace when he led the crowd in chants of "We want more time!"
His rhetoric in follow-up meetings has been fiery: Resegregation is evil, and CMS is perpetuating "spiritual and mental torture" of children. At an NAACP meeting on Monday, he pinned the blame squarely on Gorman, along with unspecified people controlling him: "They do not want black children and white children to go to school together. They do not want rich children and poor children to go to school together." Nantambu has not returned repeated calls from the Observer after his arrest.
Hero or Villain?
When Gorman was hired from California in 2006, he succeeded the district's first black superintendent, James Pughsley. He took over a system that had recently switched, after a long court battle, from race-based assignment to a mix of neighborhood schools and magnets.
And he was hired by a board that had seen the number and influence of black members decline as white and suburban voters mobilized around school issues. To many community and business leaders, Gorman was a refreshing face of reform. He has emerged as one of the nation's high-profile superintendents; on Monday, the Broad Foundation honored CMS as one of the country's five best urban districts. But to some in Charlotte, he symbolizes white political control of a system where about two-thirds of students are black or Hispanic.
County Commissioner Vilma Leake, who says she "reluctantly" voted to hire Gorman when she was on the school board, agrees with much of what Nantambu says about CMS. She blames Gorman for laying off hundreds of employees - including bus drivers, teacher assistants, maintenance workers and other positions dominated by African Americans - and populating his upper echelon with white administrators.
A current list of Gorman's 14-person executive staff includes three African Americans, one of whom, legal counsel George Battle, was hired by the board, rather than Gorman.
Last year's school board election brought in a new majority. Richard McElrath and Joyce Waddell, elected last November, are now the only African Americans on the nine-person board.
McElrath and Waddell attended Monday's NAACP meeting, standing and applauding for some of Nantambu's and Barber's comments. But even though they disagree with parts of Gorman's plan, both say he's not the villain.
McElrath praises Gorman for speaking up about the way housing patterns shape racial and economic isolation of schools. And Waddell notes that the board employs Gorman, so bad decisions rest on them.
Vice Chair Tom Tate, who is white and represents a district with many urban schools, agrees. He has questioned whether Gorman's plan is fair to disadvantaged kids, but "I do not think that there is anything that is motivated by racism of any sort."
CMS asks for Trust
Board Chair Eric Davis, one of the members elected last fall, touted the student-assignment review that led to the closing plan as a new era in citizen participation. Starting in July, board members and staff have spent dozens of hours in meetings with parents, educators and others interested in schools.
The process gets mixed reviews. Supporters applaud the time spent listening and Davis's willingness to respond quickly to flaws in the system. Skeptics say they can't keep up with rapidly changing proposals and crucial meetings held during work hours, and complain that CMS staff filters public comments.
Officials unveiled plans for closings and other major changes before they had estimates on savings or details on how the changes would work. They said they wanted to hear public views before delving into details - essentially asking the public to trust CMS to work out the plans before school opens in 2011-12.
No way, many parents, volunteers and educators say. They've chided CMS for trying to launch complex efforts, such as converting elementary schools to accommodate pre-kindergarten to eighth grade or launching year-round school, on a speeded-up timetable and shoestring budget.
Earlier this month, the board voted to pull some popular magnets and suburban neighborhood schools off Gorman's list for closing or other change. That fueled suspicion that inner-city schools are getting short shrift.
As Houston, the J.T. Williams parent, put it: "They're not targeting the schools that have these giant PTAs. They're targeting our children because we are who we are."
Key meeting dates
Decisions about 2011-12 school closings will take shape on Tuesday, when Gorman's staff presents final recommendations, and Nov. 9, when the board votes.
Both meetings are likely to be packed. Parent groups are planning candlelight vigils and other strategies.
Bud Cesena, chief of CMS police, says he hopes to avoid making more arrests. If chants or disruption arise, he says, his force will get the school board into a back room, leaving the meeting chamber to protestors and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
Foxx says he has been on the phone with board members and other leaders, trying to figure out how to bring the community together in two weeks. "There's some important dialog that's got to take place between now and then," he said .
But tension isn't likely to end Nov. 9. One scenario: Some version of the current plan could be approved on a split vote, with the board's two black members on the losing end.
The question then becomes: What next?
Barber says the state NAACP and allied groups are in it for the long haul. He said he plans to bring civil-rights lawyers to Charlotte for a panel talk about legal options.
In Raleigh, Barber has led school-board sit-ins to protest school resegregation. Some wonder whether Charlotte will see similar scenes.
"This could be as fragile as Wake County, just because everybody's nervous or on edge," said Kathy Ridge, executive director of Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education, or MeckEd. "I hope it's not a tinderbox getting ready to blow."
Malachi Greene, a former Charlotte City Council member who is African American, sees other options.
"It's another one of those community problems that we've got to roll up our sleeves and do the Charlotte way: Work it out without tearing Charlotte apart," he said. "We've got to get through this without hurting what we all love, and that's our children and our community."
The U.S. Education Department is reviewing five civil-rights complaints alleging that Charlotte-Mecklenburg's school closings and other assignment changes discriminate against black and Hispanic students.
The department, which does not reveal who files complaints, expects to decide within a couple of weeks whether the complaints merit an investigation.
In a worst-case scenario, a finding that CMS violated federal civil rights laws could block federal money or lead to a Justice Department probe. However, the Education Department tries to negotiate a resolution without resorting to those steps, according to its Web site.
Education Department spokesman Jim Bradshaw said the first complaint was filed Oct. 29, before last week's vote to close 10 schools and change programs and/or assignments at about two dozen others. Four more were filed after the vote, he said Wednesday.
Most students affected by closings and major changes are black or Hispanic and from low-income homes, prompting some to accuse Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools of racism or class discrimination. Feelings ran high: About a dozen people protested outside Superintendent Peter Gorman's house the weekend before the vote, and board members Eric Davis and Kaye McGarry received death-threat letters afterward.
Gorman and Davis, the board's chair, have repeatedly said closings and school mergers were based on empty classrooms and/or academic weakness. They note that CMS spends millions providing extra teachers, supplies and other aid to high-poverty schools serving mostly minority students, and say sacrificing buildings could help protect such aid in the face of huge projected budget cuts.
"Most of the schools we closed are in the African American community. That's factually accurate," Davis said the day after the vote. "We didn't close them because they're in the African American community."
Parents at Waddell High, which will close next school year, held a news conference the day after the vote urging parents to file complaints with the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.
"We all need to do this together," parent DeAndra Alex said. "We need to do this proactively, and we need to do this forcefully."
The Observer has filed a request for the complaints and any other related documents. The Office of Civil Rights deletes "personally identifiable information" from any information provided, Bradshaw said.
The President of Charlotte's NAACP chapter has called former mayor Pat McCrory "Racist" in a televised interview, after McCrory said comments by Kojo Nantambu might incite violence.
The two men's comments are the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute triggered by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to cut costs by closing a number of schools, mostly in African American and Latino communities.
In recent days, two CMS board members reportedly received threatening letters, tied to their votes to close the schools.
During interviews with at least two Charlotte media outlets Monday, McCrory said Nantambu's protest chant during last week's school board meeting could lead to violence.
After the school board voted 5-4 to approve a cost-cutting plan that included the school closings, Nantambu began leading a chant, "No justice, no peace!"
McCrory told WBTV, "This should be a man of peace who's encouraging respectful dialogue, even during disagreements -- as opposed to a mean tone and very violent words."
Nantambu, also in a WBTV interview, countered that his chant was not intended to trigger violence. "In a society or community anywhere, if there is not justice, there's not going to be peace," he said. "But it doesn't mean there's going to be violence."
Then Nantambu criticized McCrory, saying, "That's the way he perceives it. That's because he has a very distorted view of reality in himself. And because he's a racist himself."
When asked by WBTV reporter Brigida Mack if he were calling McCrory racist, Nantambu responded, "Yeah, he's a racist."
McCrory later said Nantambu "sbould be ashamed of saying that."
Nantambu said during the weekend that the NAACP had no involvement in the threatening letters received by board chairman Eric Davis and board member Kaye McGarry.
Emotions bubbled to the surface during last week's CMS school board vote, prompting someone to put their feelings down on paper.
"In the letter it's clear and obvious they are being targeted because of the way they voted on the school issue," said Milton Harris with CMPD's Criminal Intelligence Unit.
On Friday, board member Kaye McGarry received a threatening letter. On Saturday CMS board chairman Eric Davis received one as well.
"Basically the contents of the letter would give the average person concern for their personal safety," said Harris.
Both Davis and McGarry were outspoken proponents of closing E.E. Waddell High.
"I feel that as chairman, Davis said we need to make a decision tonight," Kaye McGarry said last Tuesday night at that controversial meeting.
NewsChannel 36 contacted McGarry on the phone Monday, but she would not talk about the threat.
She did say whoever wrote it referenced Waddell in the letter.
"We have it in the lab. We're looking at the forensics. Any forensics that may apply to documents we're applying that to these documents," said Harris.
Police are taking the situation seriously given that whoever made the threat took the time to learn where the board members live.
"We don’t know who wrote the letters. We don’t know their mental status," said Harris.
Davis contacted NewsChannel 36 late Monday afternoon. He, too, declined to discuss the threat.
When asked if he was worried about it he said, "No."
Police think the same person wrote both letters, and they are confident they will learn who that person is and why they made the threats.
Hundreds of students at E.E. Waddell High School held hands and stood outside the school Wednesday morning, refusing to go inside as a silent protest to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to close the school.
In a Tuesday night meeting marked by split votes, angry protests and accusations of racism, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved a sweeping plan to close 10 schools and make other dramatic changes.
In the most controversial item, the board voted 5-4 to close Waddell High and make it the new home for Smith Language Academy, a K-8 magnet. Harding High, which had also been considered as a home for Smith, will turn into a neighborhood school housing many of Waddell's students, along with the International Baccalaureate magnet now at Harding.
Most other efforts to block or revise the plan failed, often with the board's only two black members on the losing end of votes.
"That's a racist vote," speaker John White told the board after the seven white members rejected a move by Joyce Waddell and Richard McElrath to delay a vote on all proposed changes.
Race was a common theme as more than 100 people made one last attempt to sway the board on its historic decision.
The votes change life for about 25,000 students next year. It is the first time the district, which has long grappled with the challenges of growth, has faced massive closings and reassignments because of a shrinking budget.
Most speakers were critical of the plans crafted by Superintendent Peter Gorman and hashed out after five months of board meetings and public forums. Many noted that closings and other major changes would land disproportionately on schools serving minority and low-income students.
Only about 5 percent of students in the schools slated to close are white, compared with a third district-wide.
"Everyone should share the pain, including our suburban families and communities," said Adrian DeVore.
"You are about to wake a sleeping giant called the civil rights movement," said Darrell Bonapart.
Gorman, board Chair Eric Davis and other members say the changes are based on low enrollment and/or academic weakness, not on race or clout. And they say it's just the start of a quest to cut up to $100 million from next year's $1 billion budget.
Before public comments began, Waddell and McElrath argued for pulling the vote off the agenda. Waddell said by waiting until February, officials could craft a fairer plan.
Other members said they needed to vote now to be ready for the 2011 magnet lottery.
After the motion was voted down, a handful of activists began chanting "No justice, no peace." CMS and Charlotte-Mecklenburg police led them from the meeting chamber.
A gray-haired woman collapsed into the space between rows of seats. The board watched quietly as officers worked to get her to her feet.
"You knocked her down?" someone called.
"No," others said.
Another woman, whom police later identified as Niksa Karina Balbosa, 39, was led away in handcuffs. "They are voting to destroy our children," she shouted. "We won't stop until we're heard."
She was charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing, CMS Police Chief Bud Cesena said.
Charlotte NAACP President Kojo Nantambu arrived 15 minutes after the meeting began and tried to get into the meeting chamber, but was turned away. He led a group of roughly 30 people, some with signs, who began chanting in the lobby, calling on the school board to push back the vote.
Even after the board voted to keep the closings plan on the agenda, many speakers urged members to start over. Sarah Stevenson, a former school board member, was among them.
"You have a golden opportunity to be fair and equitable to minority children and minority communities," Stevenson said. "You'd be the first board of education to do that in the 60-something years that I've been active in politics in this community."
The local League of Women Voters also called for a do-over, saying the current plan creates too much disruption and distrust for a relatively small savings.
"This is not the time to be penny wise and pound foolish," said co-president Janet Brinkley.
But some speakers from Smith Language Academy, which now moves to Waddell, urged members to vote.
"It's not fair to the students and the parents to delay the process any further," one said.
Joyce Waddell also made a motion to scrap a plan to close three high-poverty, mostly minority middle schools and move the students into new pre-K-8 schools. She said Gorman hasn't shown that students will benefit from the move. Her motion lost on a 5-4 vote.
Five and a half hours into the meetings, feelings were running high. Audience members shouted at board member Joe White as he spoke from the dais. He snapped back that he hadn't interrupted them when they spoke.
"No wonder we have kids who don't know how to behave," White said. He quickly added that some of the best and most civil speakers earlier in the meeting were students.
On the eve of the controversial vote on closing and consolidating Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, CMS board members Joyce Waddell and Richard McElrath made small contributions to the NAACP's legal research fund.
Both McElrath and Waddell put cash in a bucket passed around at the end of an NAACP meeting Monday night.
Chapter president Rev. Kojo Nantambu called the meeting to encourage the African-American community to come out to fight the school district's cost-cutting proposal. Nantambu asked members to put money into buckets he called "a legal defense fund."
Asked later about the purpose of the funds, he said they are for "legal research," including both looking for more equitable solutions to the cash crunch and exploring the possibility of legal action against CMS.
Waddell has said she has concerns about the impact on poor and minority students, reiterating Monday night, "Look at it, and you can see for yourself. Minority students are the ones taking the largest burden of what's out there."
When asked about the donation, "I do not support suing CMS," Waddell said. "That money is for research."
McElrath did not return several phones calls about the donation.
A CMS spokesperson could not comment late Monday on ethics rules regarding donations and conflicts of interest. She promised more information Tuesday.
Tuesday night the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board voted to shut down 10 schools, expand other schools, and change boundaries.
In the most controversial vote of the night, the board voted 5-4 to shut down Waddell High school and give its building to Smith Language Academy.
That vote also means that Harding High will lose its math and science magnet program to Phillip O. Berry High, and Harding will become a partial neighborhood school instead of a full magnet school. Harding will keep its IB program.
Both Harding and Waddell parents expressed disappointment after the vote.
The four members who voted not to shut down Waddell and make the change to Harding were Tom Tate, Joyce Waddell, Richard McElrath, and Trent Merchant. Board chair Eric Davis, Joe White, Kaye McGarry, Rhonda Lennon, and Tim Morgan voted yes.
The school board also voted to make a host of other changes which are listed at the bottom of this article.
Not long after it began, the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board meeting was disrupted Tuesday night when a group of people started chanting from inside the board chambers.
Several folks began chanting, "No justice, no peace," and were led out of the room by police officers from Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
At least two people were arrested during the meeting, including CMS parent Niksa Balbosa. She shouted, "There is a bigger plan than public knows! Fight for your children! Fight!" as she was being taken, in handcuffs, into the elevator at the Board of Education.
Police tell us that Balbosa will be charged with disorderly conduct and she was being taken to the Mecklenburg County jail. NAACP members told WBTV's Dedrick Russell that they were planning to bail Balbosa out.
The meeting interrupting lasted for several minutes. When police escorted some of the chanters outside, the chants continued in the hall.
In the lobby, NAACP President Kojo Nantambu lead a group of protests in chanting, "Push Back the Date!" referring to their demand that the board not vote on a host of controversial measures Tuesday night.
A woman fell during the chanting and an ambulance was called to check out her injuries which appeared to be minor. Its not clear how she fell.
There are 25 measures the board is scheduled to consider, which include school closures and other big changes. A crowd of close to 500 showed up, including many who had to watch in the government center lobby and two overflow rooms.
Before the disruption, board member Joyce Waddell had tried to get the board to delay voting on all the measures.
"I am asking that this be delayed until the February meeting," Waddell said.
But Waddell's motion was shot down 7-2, with only board member Richard McElrath joining Waddell.
Here are the changes the board voted to make:
These are the schools that, except for one, will be closed by next school year:
* Irwin Avenue Elementary (students would be sent to Dilworth or Ashley Park elementaries; IB Primary Years magnet program at Irwin goes away; the board originally planned to turn Irwin into CMS offices, but instead decided Tuesday night that the Villa Heights Learning Immersion/Talent Development program would move into the Irwin facility) * Lincoln Heights Elementary (Lincoln Heights students will go to Bruns Avenue Elementary) * Oakhurst Elementary (students will be sent to either Rama Road or Billingsville elementaries; Paideia magnet program at Oakhurst will close) * Pawtuckett Elementary School (Pawtuckett students will go to Whitewater Academy) * Davidson IB Middle (the IB program will be relocated to Alexander Middle) * John Taylor Williams Middle * Bishop Spaugh Community Academy (Middle School) * Wilson Middle School * Waddell High School (Smith Language Academy will move into Waddell's building and take the Waddell name) * Amay James Pre-Kindergarten (closing a pre-K does not require a board vote, so this closure was not voted on Tuesday night) * University Park Elementary (it will not shut down until the 2012-2013 school year; at that time its creative arts magnet will be combined with First Ward Elementary's creative arts magnet)
Here are some other changes the CMS board approved Tuesday night that will start next school year:
BOUNDARY CHANGES:
* Community House Middle students who live north of 485 will now go to South Charlotte Middle * Some Garinger High students will go to Cochrane Middle, which will eventually become a 6-12th grade school by 2014; Cochrane will not have sports but students will be allowed to play for Garinger * Some Nathaniel Alexander and Hornets Nest elementary students will now go to Winding Springs Elementary, which without its magnet will now become a neighborhood school * Students at Tuckaseegee Elementary School will go on to Whitewater Middle School * Students at Barringer Elementary will go on to Sedgefield Middle School * Students living in the Dilworth and Eastover elementary zones who formerly went to Bishop Spaugh Middle will now go to Alexander Graham Middle
NEW MAGNETS:
# Create a learning immersion/talent development partial magnet at Mallard Creek Elementary # Create a Primary Years International Baccalaureate (PYIB) partial magnet program at Blythe Elementary School
MAGNET THAT WILL MOVE:
# Harding High's math and science magnet program will move to Phillip O. Berry High; Harding will keep its IB program and no longer be a full magnet school -- some kids will be assigned to it as a neighborhood school
The President of Charlotte's NAACP chapter has called former mayor Pat McCrory "Racist" in a televised interview, after McCrory said comments by Kojo Nantambu might incite violence.
The two men's comments are the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute triggered by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to cut costs by closing a number of schools, mostly in African American and Latino communities.
In recent days, two CMS board members reportedly received threatening letters, tied to their votes to close the schools.
During interviews with at least two Charlotte media outlets Monday, McCrory said Nantambu's protest chant during last week's school board meeting could lead to violence.
After the school board voted 5-4 to approve a cost-cutting plan that included the school closings, Nantambu began leading a chant, "No justice, no peace!"
McCrory told WBTV, "This should be a man of peace who's encouraging respectful dialogue, even during disagreements -- as opposed to a mean tone and very violent words."
Nantambu, also in a WBTV interview, countered that his chant was not intended to trigger violence. "In a society or community anywhere, if there is not justice, there's not going to be peace," he said. "But it doesn't mean there's going to be violence."
Then Nantambu criticized McCrory, saying, "That's the way he perceives it. That's because he has a very distorted view of reality in himself. And because he's a racist himself."
When asked by WBTV reporter Brigida Mack if he were calling McCrory racist, Nantambu responded, "Yeah, he's a racist."
McCrory later said Nantambu "sbould be ashamed of saying that."
Nantambu said during the weekend that the NAACP had no involvement in the threatening letters received by board chairman Eric Davis and board member Kaye McGarry.
Emotions bubbled to the surface during last week's CMS school board vote, prompting someone to put their feelings down on paper.
"In the letter it's clear and obvious they are being targeted because of the way they voted on the school issue," said Milton Harris with CMPD's Criminal Intelligence Unit.
On Friday, board member Kaye McGarry received a threatening letter. On Saturday CMS board chairman Eric Davis received one as well.
"Basically the contents of the letter would give the average person concern for their personal safety," said Harris.
Both Davis and McGarry were outspoken proponents of closing E.E. Waddell High.
"I feel that as chairman, Davis said we need to make a decision tonight," Kaye McGarry said last Tuesday night at that controversial meeting.
NewsChannel 36 contacted McGarry on the phone Monday, but she would not talk about the threat.
She did say whoever wrote it referenced Waddell in the letter.
"We have it in the lab. We're looking at the forensics. Any forensics that may apply to documents we're applying that to these documents," said Harris.
Police are taking the situation seriously given that whoever made the threat took the time to learn where the board members live.
"We don’t know who wrote the letters. We don’t know their mental status," said Harris.
Davis contacted NewsChannel 36 late Monday afternoon. He, too, declined to discuss the threat.
When asked if he was worried about it he said, "No."
Police think the same person wrote both letters, and they are confident they will learn who that person is and why they made the threats.
Hundreds of students at E.E. Waddell High School held hands and stood outside the school Wednesday morning, refusing to go inside as a silent protest to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to close the school.
In a Tuesday night meeting marked by split votes, angry protests and accusations of racism, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved a sweeping plan to close 10 schools and make other dramatic changes.
In the most controversial item, the board voted 5-4 to close Waddell High and make it the new home for Smith Language Academy, a K-8 magnet. Harding High, which had also been considered as a home for Smith, will turn into a neighborhood school housing many of Waddell's students, along with the International Baccalaureate magnet now at Harding.
Most other efforts to block or revise the plan failed, often with the board's only two black members on the losing end of votes.
"That's a racist vote," speaker John White told the board after the seven white members rejected a move by Joyce Waddell and Richard McElrath to delay a vote on all proposed changes.
Race was a common theme as more than 100 people made one last attempt to sway the board on its historic decision.
The votes change life for about 25,000 students next year. It is the first time the district, which has long grappled with the challenges of growth, has faced massive closings and reassignments because of a shrinking budget.
Most speakers were critical of the plans crafted by Superintendent Peter Gorman and hashed out after five months of board meetings and public forums. Many noted that closings and other major changes would land disproportionately on schools serving minority and low-income students.
Only about 5 percent of students in the schools slated to close are white, compared with a third district-wide.
"Everyone should share the pain, including our suburban families and communities," said Adrian DeVore.
"You are about to wake a sleeping giant called the civil rights movement," said Darrell Bonapart.
Gorman, board Chair Eric Davis and other members say the changes are based on low enrollment and/or academic weakness, not on race or clout. And they say it's just the start of a quest to cut up to $100 million from next year's $1 billion budget.
Before public comments began, Waddell and McElrath argued for pulling the vote off the agenda. Waddell said by waiting until February, officials could craft a fairer plan.
Other members said they needed to vote now to be ready for the 2011 magnet lottery.
After the motion was voted down, a handful of activists began chanting "No justice, no peace." CMS and Charlotte-Mecklenburg police led them from the meeting chamber.
A gray-haired woman collapsed into the space between rows of seats. The board watched quietly as officers worked to get her to her feet.
"You knocked her down?" someone called.
"No," others said.
Another woman, whom police later identified as Niksa Karina Balbosa, 39, was led away in handcuffs. "They are voting to destroy our children," she shouted. "We won't stop until we're heard."
She was charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing, CMS Police Chief Bud Cesena said.
Charlotte NAACP President Kojo Nantambu arrived 15 minutes after the meeting began and tried to get into the meeting chamber, but was turned away. He led a group of roughly 30 people, some with signs, who began chanting in the lobby, calling on the school board to push back the vote.
Even after the board voted to keep the closings plan on the agenda, many speakers urged members to start over. Sarah Stevenson, a former school board member, was among them.
"You have a golden opportunity to be fair and equitable to minority children and minority communities," Stevenson said. "You'd be the first board of education to do that in the 60-something years that I've been active in politics in this community."
The local League of Women Voters also called for a do-over, saying the current plan creates too much disruption and distrust for a relatively small savings.
"This is not the time to be penny wise and pound foolish," said co-president Janet Brinkley.
But some speakers from Smith Language Academy, which now moves to Waddell, urged members to vote.
"It's not fair to the students and the parents to delay the process any further," one said.
Joyce Waddell also made a motion to scrap a plan to close three high-poverty, mostly minority middle schools and move the students into new pre-K-8 schools. She said Gorman hasn't shown that students will benefit from the move. Her motion lost on a 5-4 vote.
Five and a half hours into the meetings, feelings were running high. Audience members shouted at board member Joe White as he spoke from the dais. He snapped back that he hadn't interrupted them when they spoke.
"No wonder we have kids who don't know how to behave," White said. He quickly added that some of the best and most civil speakers earlier in the meeting were students.
On the eve of the controversial vote on closing and consolidating Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, CMS board members Joyce Waddell and Richard McElrath made small contributions to the NAACP's legal research fund.
Both McElrath and Waddell put cash in a bucket passed around at the end of an NAACP meeting Monday night.
Chapter president Rev. Kojo Nantambu called the meeting to encourage the African-American community to come out to fight the school district's cost-cutting proposal. Nantambu asked members to put money into buckets he called "a legal defense fund."
Asked later about the purpose of the funds, he said they are for "legal research," including both looking for more equitable solutions to the cash crunch and exploring the possibility of legal action against CMS.
Waddell has said she has concerns about the impact on poor and minority students, reiterating Monday night, "Look at it, and you can see for yourself. Minority students are the ones taking the largest burden of what's out there."
When asked about the donation, "I do not support suing CMS," Waddell said. "That money is for research."
McElrath did not return several phones calls about the donation.
A CMS spokesperson could not comment late Monday on ethics rules regarding donations and conflicts of interest. She promised more information Tuesday.
Tuesday night the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board voted to shut down 10 schools, expand other schools, and change boundaries.
In the most controversial vote of the night, the board voted 5-4 to shut down Waddell High school and give its building to Smith Language Academy.
That vote also means that Harding High will lose its math and science magnet program to Phillip O. Berry High, and Harding will become a partial neighborhood school instead of a full magnet school. Harding will keep its IB program.
Both Harding and Waddell parents expressed disappointment after the vote.
The four members who voted not to shut down Waddell and make the change to Harding were Tom Tate, Joyce Waddell, Richard McElrath, and Trent Merchant. Board chair Eric Davis, Joe White, Kaye McGarry, Rhonda Lennon, and Tim Morgan voted yes.
The school board also voted to make a host of other changes which are listed at the bottom of this article.
Not long after it began, the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board meeting was disrupted Tuesday night when a group of people started chanting from inside the board chambers.
Several folks began chanting, "No justice, no peace," and were led out of the room by police officers from Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
At least two people were arrested during the meeting, including CMS parent Niksa Balbosa. She shouted, "There is a bigger plan than public knows! Fight for your children! Fight!" as she was being taken, in handcuffs, into the elevator at the Board of Education.
Police tell us that Balbosa will be charged with disorderly conduct and she was being taken to the Mecklenburg County jail. NAACP members told WBTV's Dedrick Russell that they were planning to bail Balbosa out.
The meeting interrupting lasted for several minutes. When police escorted some of the chanters outside, the chants continued in the hall.
In the lobby, NAACP President Kojo Nantambu lead a group of protests in chanting, "Push Back the Date!" referring to their demand that the board not vote on a host of controversial measures Tuesday night.
A woman fell during the chanting and an ambulance was called to check out her injuries which appeared to be minor. Its not clear how she fell.
There are 25 measures the board is scheduled to consider, which include school closures and other big changes. A crowd of close to 500 showed up, including many who had to watch in the government center lobby and two overflow rooms.
Before the disruption, board member Joyce Waddell had tried to get the board to delay voting on all the measures.
"I am asking that this be delayed until the February meeting," Waddell said.
But Waddell's motion was shot down 7-2, with only board member Richard McElrath joining Waddell.
Here are the changes the board voted to make:
These are the schools that, except for one, will be closed by next school year:
* Irwin Avenue Elementary (students would be sent to Dilworth or Ashley Park elementaries; IB Primary Years magnet program at Irwin goes away; the board originally planned to turn Irwin into CMS offices, but instead decided Tuesday night that the Villa Heights Learning Immersion/Talent Development program would move into the Irwin facility) * Lincoln Heights Elementary (Lincoln Heights students will go to Bruns Avenue Elementary) * Oakhurst Elementary (students will be sent to either Rama Road or Billingsville elementaries; Paideia magnet program at Oakhurst will close) * Pawtuckett Elementary School (Pawtuckett students will go to Whitewater Academy) * Davidson IB Middle (the IB program will be relocated to Alexander Middle) * John Taylor Williams Middle * Bishop Spaugh Community Academy (Middle School) * Wilson Middle School * Waddell High School (Smith Language Academy will move into Waddell's building and take the Waddell name) * Amay James Pre-Kindergarten (closing a pre-K does not require a board vote, so this closure was not voted on Tuesday night) * University Park Elementary (it will not shut down until the 2012-2013 school year; at that time its creative arts magnet will be combined with First Ward Elementary's creative arts magnet)
Here are some other changes the CMS board approved Tuesday night that will start next school year:
BOUNDARY CHANGES:
* Community House Middle students who live north of 485 will now go to South Charlotte Middle * Some Garinger High students will go to Cochrane Middle, which will eventually become a 6-12th grade school by 2014; Cochrane will not have sports but students will be allowed to play for Garinger * Some Nathaniel Alexander and Hornets Nest elementary students will now go to Winding Springs Elementary, which without its magnet will now become a neighborhood school * Students at Tuckaseegee Elementary School will go on to Whitewater Middle School * Students at Barringer Elementary will go on to Sedgefield Middle School * Students living in the Dilworth and Eastover elementary zones who formerly went to Bishop Spaugh Middle will now go to Alexander Graham Middle
NEW MAGNETS:
# Create a learning immersion/talent development partial magnet at Mallard Creek Elementary # Create a Primary Years International Baccalaureate (PYIB) partial magnet program at Blythe Elementary School
MAGNET THAT WILL MOVE:
# Harding High's math and science magnet program will move to Phillip O. Berry High; Harding will keep its IB program and no longer be a full magnet school -- some kids will be assigned to it as a neighborhood school
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