Editorial: City-run charter schools backed with urban tax dollars herald Jim Crow revival?

Friday, June 8, 2018 -- Allowing four Mecklenburg County cities the power to run their own schools and changing state law so all cities can use local taxes to pay for education are steps back into the segregated, inefficient, ineffective past of the 1950s.

Posted 9:00 a.m. Jun 8, 2018 — Updated 9:00 a.m. Jun 8, 2018

CBC Editorial: Friday, June 8, 2018; Editorial # 8310

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

The General Assembly’s latest moves to empower some municipalities to set up their own charter schools and use local taxes to help support them reverses a half-century of policies and progress for North Carolina public education.

The glossed-over but very significant provision in the sweeping policy and budget bill, along with the new law allowing four Mecklenburg County cities -- Cornelius, Huntersville, Matthews and Mint Hill -- to own, operate and finance their own charter schools, represent major changes in state tax and public education policy.

“This is a monumental policy shift in North Carolina that has received very little vetting,” said Scott Moonyham, spokesman for the N.C. League of Municipalities, rightly puts it on the tax change. “It is of enormous consequence because, over time, it has the potential to shift more of the cost of public education onto the property tax base and property tax payers, shifting it away from the statewide income tax.”

Moonyham, and others observe that it would further exaggerate the difference in educational opportunities between wealthier communities and those that don’t have the property tax base and resources to raise adequate revenue.

Haven't we been here before? It doesn’t take much to unmask the intent of the “local” bill, now a law, to allow the four communities in Mecklenburg County to set up their own charter schools. It is about race. Numbers don’t lie.

Of the total population of the four towns (134,205) – 78.4 percent is white. The total population of Mecklenburg County is 1.08 million and 48 percent are white. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Schools report that 28 percent of the students are white, 38 percent are black and 24 percent are Hispanic.

This law opens the door to a statewide return to Jim Crow-era public school segregation. We are headed back to the "separate but equal '50s." Legal challenges to these terrible plans will be costly and time consuming. But that is the sad price all North Carolinians pay for a rigged and gerrymandered legislature that is more representative of a narrow ideology than the will of the vast majority of citizens.

While there was an advocate and sponsor for the local bill to let the four municipalities run schools – Rep. William Brawley, R-Mecklenburg -- no one has claimed responsibility for the budget provision allowing cities to use their taxes to pay for public schools. It was inserted in the 758-page policy and budget bill – that Gov. Roy Cooper’s wisely vetoed – with no public discussion. No one knows who wanted it, why they wanted it or why they believe it is needed.

Fourteen Republicans, including Sen. Tamara Barringer of Wake County, bucked their leadership and voted no. It is unfortunate that other area legislators -- Sens. John Alexander and Chad Barefoot, along with Reps. Nelson Dollar, Chris Malone and Linda Williams – didn’t show the same common sense.

November can’t come soon enough.

Suggest A Correction