After last week's political strife, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board today begins hashing out what changes in its leadership and membership will mean to schools, neighborhoods and taxpayers.

Many are watching - some fearfully, some eagerly. The board has three new members, a new political configuration and a new chair, Ericka Ellis-Stewart, who launched her leadership with take-command style.

"I think it is huge," said Cheryl Pulliam, director of the Public Education Research Institute at Queens University. "We truly are at a crossroads with what I see as a shift in philosophy, at the same time as we're hiring a superintendent."

Big decisions about how CMS spends money, staffs schools, hires a leader and defines its educational mission remain weeks, if not months, away.

But today will bring the first briefing on the 2012-13 budget and a public report on the superintendent search. Ellis-Stewart, the top vote-getter in November's election, is now spearheading that search, taking the place of former Chair Eric Davis and former Vice Chair Tom Tate.

New Democratic domination of the ostensibly nonpartisan board has sparked speculation about changes afoot. For the last two years, no party held five votes on the nine-member board, so a coalition of Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated members made decisions.

Last week the five elected Democrats appointed a sixth to represent the Republican-leaning District 6, a post left open when Republican Tim Morgan won an at-large seat.

State Rep. Bill Brawley, a Matthews Republican who attended that meeting, said the vote has renewed talk of splitting the southern suburbs into their own school district. Meetings about suburban secession from CMS drew hundreds of people in 2005, but concrete plans never emerged.

"People are scared and they are angry. They're afraid that busing is going to come back," Brawley said Monday.

Ellis-Stewart and Vice Chair Mary McCray, the other newly elected Democrat, both say they'll put children's education before adult politics. Both say they're going to study issues, not make rash changes.

Chair: I represent all students

Ellis-Stewart said she's aware of "concerns that our sole focus may be on urban schools, but we are an urban and suburban school district." Her agenda will take the needs of all students into account, she said: "I think people need to hear that loud and clear."

After the five board Democrats chose the little-known Amelia Stinson-Wesley for the District 6 seat, the three members who opposed the choice - Republicans Morgan and Rhonda Lennon and unaffiliated Davis - said they believe a major change of direction is afoot.

All three said they expect the new board to abandon recent reforms that give schools freedom to make decisions as long as they produce academic results. Instead, they said, they expect to see a renewed emphasis on equalizing what's given to schools.

Dorothy Waddy, president of the West Boulevard Neighborhood Association, said Monday she'd like to see CMS make that shift, equalizing teacher quality, course offerings and technology across the board. She objected to the former board's contention that closing middle schools and creating preK-8 schools was good for urban neighborhoods but not for the suburbs.

"My thing is that all schools should look alike, I don't care whether it is in Ballantyne or west Mecklenburg," she said. But Waddy said the new leadership is still untested: "I think the jury's still out."

Natalie English, the Charlotte Chamber's public policy executive, said wait-and-see is the right approach. She said Ellis-Stewart is a thoughtful decision-maker.

"What the average person should know is yes, things are dramatically different than they were four months ago," English said. But she said it's smarter to be part of shaping that path than to hunker down based on assumptions.

Pulliam predicts that the new board will rein in changes that former Superintendent Peter Gorman and the old board launched, such as performance pay for teachers and "strategic staffing" at struggling schools.

"The best-case scenario will be that the board hits the pause button," said Pulliam, who did research with CMS staff on some of those efforts. The worst, she said, is that the new board will undo reforms that have won CMS national acclaim and which promise benefits for students.

CMS won this year's national Broad Prize for Urban Education. The Democratic National Convention in September will bring international attention to Charlotte - and Ellis-Stewart is likely to land in that spotlight, Pulliam noted.

"I think that a lot of the country will be watching us," she said.