Watch: 2 CMS board members say why they voted ‘no’ on controversial south Charlotte plan

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board member Lisa Cline expressed support during a Tuesday meeting for a school boundary plan that she later voted against.

That was a figurative statement, Cline said. The District 5 board member said she didn’t get what she wanted, but she wants to see “anything that we start” successful. You’ve got to look at the positives, she said.

“I may have said ‘no’ to the vote, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to support the plan,” Cline said.

Cline and Summer Nunn, who represents District 6, spoke about their votes Tuesday in an live-streamed interview with The Charlotte Observer. The vote was 7-2. Board members Elyse Dashew, Stephanie Sneed, Jennifer De La Jara, Lenora Shipp, Melissa Easley, Thelma Byers-Bailey and Gregory “Dee” Rankin voted for it.

Nunn said she voted “no” because Superintendent Crystal Hill’s final recommendation needed further revisions — similar to what happened between drafts one and two. But CMS was also running out of time.

GO DEEPER: Parents upset by the decision are pondering what's next

“You’ve got to also give parents enough time to enroll their kids and put them in sports and get them ready. I don’t want to say a double-edged sword, but we just had to move forward with it,” Nunn said. “I ended up voting ‘no,’ because I don’t think they were given the same amount of opportunity. I thought maybe we could tweak it a bit further.”

Issues with final plan

Cline said parents in her District 5 felt there wasn’t enough time for them to assess the data and maps from the final recommendation that would affect them.

“There were some areas that had not been in the earlier drafts and that even goes back before draft one, two. There were certain areas that had not been addressed,” Cline said.

One of Nunn’s biggest concerns was swings made between the drafts and the final recommendation. For example, the Polo Ridge Elementary zone was not mentioned in the first two drafts. But the final recommendation called for a new feeder pattern — Polo Ridge going to the new relief middle and then on to the new relief high school.

“Maybe we hadn’t done engagement in that area, or that community felt that they were going a different route,” Nunn said. “Once the recommendation was made, it was the recommendation, and then it was given to us. I think it’s one of these things where staff are the experts on this, not the board.”

When looking back at the whole process, Nunn said she sees positives in learning how to communicate with parents whenever new schools come along. That’s something CMS needs, she said.

“We need to have this process very defined,” Nunn said.

Bond referendum

Cline and Nunn also talked about a $2.5 billion bond referendum that’ll be on November’s ballot. It got an OK from Mecklenburg County commissioners during their budget vote Tuesday night. It could pay for up to 30 schools in the county.

Cline said she thinks the issue of needing more schools will persist as the Charlotte area continues to grow.

“We’ve got middle schools that are proposed, and the south county desperately needs middle schools,” Cline said.

South Charlotte’s Community House already is the largest middle school in the state, Cline said.

Nunn supports the bond, saying that some of the schools are aging and at capacity, needing more classrooms.

“We got schools that are 60 years old, we have schools that are overcrowded so we really-really need more classrooms,” Nunn said. ”My daughter school is on the bond. In her kindergarten class, if the AC breaks, they can’t fix it. Those parts don’t exist anymore.”

A majority of voters in Mecklenburg County will need to vote “yes” on the bond referendum in November for it to pass. County officials predict a 1-cent property tax increase in the 2024-2025 fiscal year to pay for the $2.5 billion bond and likely further increases in future years.