‘Difficult choices’: Why CMS was the only district excluded from additional COVID-19 funding

Ninety-nine of North Carolina’s 100 counties received a boost to the amount of coronavirus relief funding they received for each public and charter school student, leaving just Mecklenburg County out of the “low-wealth” supplemental funds for education.

When Gov. Roy Cooper set aside $50 million of COVID-19 relief money for schools, half of the package was divided among counties based on the number of enrolled students. The money was earmarked for four things: meal services, emergency childcare, remote learning, and cleaning and sanitizing schools.

The state board of education voted to allocate the other half based on a “low-wealth” percentage, designed to give counties with smaller tax bases and fewer reserves a much-needed boost in crisis funding.

Cumberland County received an additional $1.1 million in COVID-19 money based on its low-wealth index, and Onslow County was given an extra $578,000.

But some of the state’s large, urban counties received the biggest low-wealth supplements from the first round of coronavirus relief money. Wake and Guilford, for example, each received a $1.2 million supplement to the relief money they were given based on their student headcount.

Only Mecklenburg County, considered the wealthiest in the state based on a legislated formula that counts tax revenue, per-capita income and density, received no additional funding after its headcount allotment, which was about $2.4 million.

Mecklenburg County elected officials are criticizing the state’s decision to exclude Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and the county’s public charters from the additional funding, as many of those schools serve high numbers of students in poverty. In a joint statement, 14 state senators and representatives from the county criticized the funding formula as unfairly cutting out one of the neediest counties during a time of crisis.

“Mecklenburg County has the most COVID-19 cases in the state and has more high poverty students than any other school district in the state,” the statement read. “We ... call for fair treatment of all children, including those living in poverty in Mecklenburg County.”

The COVID-19 low-wealth supplements were determined by giving every other county a check based on a proportion of their wealth relative to Mecklenburg. The state Department of Public Instruction said the formula was designed to factor in a school district’s ability to pay for COVID-19 expenses using local money.

While large counties might have received the largest total funding amounts, DPI said, the formula was designed so that as counties are increasingly less wealthy relative to Mecklenburg, their per-student funding increases.

“The intent of the funding formula is to weight the per student amount to school districts that had a lower ability to cover the costs from local funds,” a DPI spokesman said in an email.

Fair to Mecklenburg?

State Sen. Natasha Marcus said this formula gives Mecklenburg County less than its fair share of funding to meet the needs of its students.

“Mecklenburg County got $0 from that $25 million pot of money, even though CMS has more students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch than any other school district in the state and has about 4,000 students enrolled who are homeless,” Marcus said in a statement. “It’s unacceptable to target us this way.”

CMS board chair Elyse Dashew said she is concerned about the precedent this formula could set as the district adjusts to the new reality of providing a public education during a global pandemic.

“Everybody is making big decisions very quickly given the rate at which this crisis is unfolding,” she said. “But we just think this is a flawed distribution model... The children that we serve in CMS have significant needs that are only going to grow as the pandemic grows.”

About 40% of CMS students are eligible for free or subsidized meals, and roughly 4,000 students receive McKinney-Vento services, which provide support to children who are homeless or housing-insecure. Dashew said that the hundreds of families who line up for CMS’s free meal services are just one indicator of the needs the district must serve during this crisis.

“It’s not a Mecklenburg versus any other school district thing,” she said. “I recognize there are a lot of children in poverty who need support all over North Carolina. But I don’t want children in poverty in Mecklenburg County to be invisible going forward.”

State board of education chair Eric Davis said that future COVID-19 relief funding would not be restricted to this low-wealth formula, and that the state board would make individual decisions for new relief packages as they are available. Davis said that, for example, federal stimulus funds would be allocated based on poverty, which would mean a significant boost to Mecklenburg County.

‘Striving to meet the needs of all’

During the regular budget season, school districts in North Carolina receive a low-wealth supplement that is calculated with a different formula. That calculation gives money only to districts that fall below the state’s average wealth index—roughly two-thirds of the state’s 100 counties qualify.

DPI said that while the COVID-19 formula used the same wealth indices, the formulas were entirely separate and meant to address different concerns.

Davis said that for this round of funding, the state wanted to consider a local community’s ability to support its own school system. As a resident of Mecklenburg County, Davis said he paused when he saw that the county would receive no low-wealth supplement, but that he voted for the measure with an eye toward statewide concerns.

“We realize this will disappoint some folks, but we strive to be fair,” Davis said. “We thought in this particular case, taking into consideration the individual counties’ ability to generate funds for their school district should be the primary criteria.”

Davis said that the $50 million is a small piece of the COVID-19 relief money that will eventually go to schools across the state, with hundreds of millions expected as part of the federal coronavirus stimulus package.

“We have difficult choices,” Davis said. “But we’re striving to meet the needs of all.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2020 at 4:45 PM.