CMS board elects McCray to seventh year as chair. It’s longest stint since the ’70s.
Mary McCray won a seventh year as chair of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board Tuesday night, preserving an island of leadership stability in a local political scene marked by churn.
McCray, a retired teacher and former president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators, was elected to the board in 2011 and voted its chair in 2012, a post she has held ever since. She won a seventh term on an 8-0 vote, with Ericka Ellis-Stewart abstaining.
During McCray’s stint as chair Charlotte has gone through five mayors and the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners has had four chairs.
McCray says this will be her final year on the board, and late last week she talked about using it to prepare for transition. She said she hoped the board would choose a vice chair who could step into the top job after the 2019 election, when McCray doesn’t plan to run. At-large member Elyse Dashew was unanimously chosen as vice chair.
The board’s three at-large seats will be up for election, and Dashew said Monday she plans to seek another four-year term.
McCray has already chaired the board longer than anyone since the 1970s. The only person to serve longer was William Poe, who chaired the board from 1966 to 1976, according to a list compiled by the late Chris Folk, a CMS administrator who was the district’s unofficial historian for decades.
McCray’s leadership has spanned dramatic twists and turns for the district, which serves about 150,000 students and employs about 19,000. She was vice chair when the board hired Heath Morrison as superintendent in 2012 and chair when he was forced out in 2014 amid allegations that he has mistreated staff and misled the board about spending. As spokeswoman for the board, McCray drew fire for initially telling people Morrison was leaving to care for his sick mother, then refusing to disclose details to the public.
McCray also led the board through contentious discussions of Superintendent Ann Clark’s transitional service, the search that led to the 2017 hiring of Clayton Wilcox and a prolonged review of student assignment that ended last year. During her tenure the Council of Urban Boards of Education has twice given CMS its Urban Board of Excellence award and county voters approved a record-setting $922 million in school bonds.
With such high-profile projects as the assignment review, the bond campaign and the superintendent search laid to rest, the CMS board is now laying groundwork for a new era. The board is working to gel as a leadership team with Wilcox, to rebuild fractured relationships with suburban towns and to craft an equity policy for addressing educational disadvantages based on race, class and ethnicity.
This story was originally published December 11, 2018 at 11:24 AM.
