CMS can’t compete with private schools for off-duty cops, risking student safety
On a Thursday in late January, a problem festering at Ardrey Kell High School had become untenable.
Shortly before lunchtime, Janice Deal sent an email to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools official warning of “a VERY unsafe situation with incoming and exiting traffic at our school.”
The police officer who had been directing traffic at Ardrey Kell had left the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the school’s senior administrator wrote. And they hadn’t been able to find a replacement.
During morning arrival and afternoon dismissal, no one was directing traffic on the road in front of Ardrey Kell. Deal asked: Could CMS help them out?
Four days later, Kevin Earp, CMS director of safety, replied, saying that schools across the district were having similar problems.
Within minutes, Ardrey Kell Principal Jamie Brooks responded with increased desperation.
“I am just very concerned that we are going to have a fatal accident at (Ardrey Kell) out front,” she wrote, adding that some kids were having to “play Frogger” to cross the street.
“My parents are getting extremely vocal with their concerns and they think I am ignoring safety. I need an idea…I need help…,” she wrote. “What can I do to manage traffic at the front of the largest school on a very busy road with no officer?”
Brooks’ plight is not unique within CMS, according to emails obtained by the Charlotte Observer. Schools across the district are struggling to hire off-duty police officers to direct traffic, potentially putting students in danger, morning and afternoon.
Emails dating from Jan. 27 to Jan. 31 of this year show that CMS has not paid enough or in a timely manner, hurting its ability to attract off-duty cops to control traffic at schools. Many officers instead were accepting secondary jobs directing traffic at private schools.
“This is a District wide issue as we currently are not able to compete with the private schools with the budget we are allotted,” Earp wrote in January.
An internal CMPD list prepared in late January shows that several of Charlotte’s most esteemed private schools don’t have similar problems finding cops to direct traffic.
Providence Day School pays officers $84 for a 30- to 45-minute shift; Charlotte Catholic School offers the same amount for an hour-long shift. Charlotte Christian School pays $75 for a half-hour. All three are able to fill almost 100 percent of their shifts, according to the CMPD document.
According to information provided by CMS, the district has been offering as little as $53 per shift for off-duty officers to direct traffic at schools.
“Officers are in high demand in Charlotte,” said CMS spokesman Eddie Perez. “With local and national staff shortages, we will continue to look for ways to be competitive in a challenging market.”
CMS also allegedly struggles to make timely payments to off-duty officers.
Eric Crawford, a CMPD officer who handles secondary employment for the department, wrote in an email to Earp that some officers wait six to eight weeks to be paid by CMS.
“As a department, we do not have a set time officers must be paid from employers, but MOST employers pay within 2 weeks,” Crawford wrote. “So when officers know it’s going to take longer, they are going to sign up for something else.”
Deal said she has seen this first-hand in trying to hire a traffic cop at Ardrey Kell.
“We have officers that will not take a CMS paid job because of the delay in receiving their check,” she wrote in the email to Earp.
After hearing the pleas for help from both Deal and Brooks, Earp said CMS was willing to increase the pay for the Ardrey Kell traffic job. He told Crawford to advertise the job for $65 per shift, a rate nearly $20 less than what some of the private schools offer.
While CMS was willing to bump up pay for the Ardrey Kell traffic post, Earp said the rate at other schools in the district would remain the same.
It’s now been two months since CMS increased the pay, but it’s unclear if the problem has been resolved. Brooks declined to answer questions about the situation, directing them to CMS.
Around 7 last Wednesday morning, with traffic stretching in both directions away from the school on Ardrey Kell Road, there was no cop guiding traffic.
Students crossed the dark street as cars zipped around lines of traffic waiting to enter campus. School employees waving batons directed cars as they snaked through the visitor’s parking lot.
Half an hour later across town at Providence Day, two CMPD officers stopped traffic on Sardis Road as students got dropped off there.
Less than two miles down the road, two more officers chatted as they waved cars into Charlotte Christian’s driveway.
This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
