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The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board made sweeping changes in its magnet schools Wednesday, ending months of debate over programs that were once the hallmark of local school desegregation efforts.
The board largely followed recommendations that Superintendent Peter Gorman offered last month for eliminating unpopular or ineffective magnet programs and modifying others.
The magnets were created as desegregation tools in the 1990s, but board members re-evaluated their role now that Mecklenburg schools are no longer under court order to desegregate.
CMS serves about 18,000 of its 134,000 students in magnet programs. A standing-room-only crowd of magnet-school parents packed the meeting chamber Wednesday night. Many were accompanied by children toting hand-lettered signs imploring board members to save their schools.
The changes will cost about 2,800 students their current school assignments. Almost 90 percent of those are minorities.
That fact drew criticism from Vilma Leake, now the board's only African American member after George Dunlap's appointment to the county commission. She said magnets were being stripped from high-poverty schools, many of them on the city's west side.
She tried to block the board from moving the world language program from E.E. Waddell High, but was voted down.
“I think it's unfair,” she said. “I'm concerned that we're sitting here, not supporting the weakest of the weakest in our district with magnet programs.”
Board member Larry Gauvreau, long a vocal critic of magnets, said the changes weren't sweeping enough. He said the board's actions Wednesday left the public as “bag holders of a failed desegregation scheme,” and asserted that there are more magnets now than in the 1990s.
“Nothing is changing,” he said, “and that's tragic.”
The board voted to allow children in partial magnets that are eliminated to remain in those schools' “regular” programs without CMS transportation. That would affect about 1,400 students in schools around the county.
At least 100 people attended the meeting in support of Villa Heights Elementary, whose magnet for gifted kids was slated to move to Lincoln Heights Elementary.
Board members, who have been bombarded with calls and e-mails from the Villa Heights parents, agreed to leave the Villa Heights program intact. Lincoln Heights, a high-poverty school that stood to become a full gifted magnet, will remain as is.
“We feel relieved,” said Art Johnson, Villa Heights' PTA president. “We feel sadness for the situation at Lincoln Heights. Their needs are not being addressed.”
