Guns hurt a school’s reputation — but West Charlotte High is still living its legacy
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Guns found in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
In the first few months of the 2021-22 school year, CMS has set a concerning new record for guns being brought to campuses.
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For nearly a century, West Charlotte High School has been a pillar of the West Charlotte community.
It was at the epicenter of the historic integration of Charlotte schools in the ‘60s and ‘70s and went on to produce Charlotte change-makers and leaders.
But lately, with nine guns found on campus over a three-month period, concerns about safety threaten to overshadow the school’s long legacy of greatness.
West Charlotte isn’t the only school where guns have been found and where students, teachers and parents have turned attention to security. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have surpassed the district’s previous 10-year high for numbers of guns on school campuses. Since August, the most, nine, have been found at West Charlotte.
West Charlotte High School community members are fiercely protective of the school and its reputation — their school has a legacy they want to build on, and one that’s easy to attack, they say.
“Lion Pride is nationwide, and it’s consistent and constant and lives and breathes through the school and community. Students, staff, and alumni are proud to wear our logo,” assistant principal Kevin Poirier said. “That’s a testament to where we were, where we are and where we’re going.”
A rich history
The history of West Charlotte High School is long and complex — just like the history of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Initially established in 1938 as an all-Black school, West Charlotte is one of the district’s oldest public schools. Three decades into its history, it became one of Charlotte’s biggest school success stories.
The Supreme Court decided on April 20, 1971, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that the district had to create a busing plan that would desegregate schools after districts nationwide dragged their feet to comply with Brown v. Board of Education’s integration mandate. What followed immediately was outcry — but then tremendous success.
CMS became an example for the rest of the nation.
In that two-decade golden era for the district, West Charlotte became the local poster child for desegregation. It was one of the first local schools to integrate and started busing white students in 1969, ahead of the Swann case.
But the progress was reversed in the ‘90s when another lawsuit overturned the Swann decision and the district largely shifted to neighborhood schools. The buses continued to run but students were assigned to schools based on proximity to their home — minimizing the effect of integrating classrooms by busing children from across town.
As Charlotte’s neighborhoods have become increasingly racially segregated, its schools have, too. Last year only 20 white students were enrolled at West Charlotte. And widespread research shows that school resources tend to follow affluent, white students.
Derrick Chambers said he feels like he saw it all happen before his eyes.
He was five years old when his father Julius argued and won the Swann case, and Chambers went on to attend West Charlotte High School. He learned alongside students from “some of Charlotte’s most influential and affluent white families.”
“We all wanted to go to West Charlotte,” Chambers said. “We took a lot of pride in it.”
But since then, there have been many changes in the district and the Charlotte community, starting with the resegregation of schools, he said.
“The decline started when they took away the busing. People don’t realize how much it destroyed the school system,” he said. “The truth is, there is no equality in the school system in Charlotte-Mecklenburg anymore.”
Eric Montgomery, who was West Charlotte’s senior class president in 1983, agreed that the district has regressed in terms of equity since his attendance.
After attending law school in the Midwest, Montgomery said upon his return to Charlotte five years later, he saw how much the schools had changed.
“Now you’ve got schools which are predominantly minority and poor, and I don’t think that’s a great environment to learn,” he said. “And obviously the poor schools won’t get the same resources.”
Hearing about the gun incidents at West Charlotte and the rest of CMS was disappointing, Chambers said, and signals to him that the school needs more support.
“I really hate to see it at my alma mater because it puts a bad spotlight on the goodness of the school and the goodness of the community,” Chambers said. “I despise seeing violence in the school system, period.”
Guns, here and beyond
A total of 23 guns, mostly pistols, were found from late August until Christmas break. More than a third of those guns were found at West Charlotte High School.
But West Charlotte administrators, students, parents and alumni say the issue isn’t simple and goes beyond numbers.
“This is not a West Charlotte problem,” Chambers said. “This is an everybody problem.”
Judge Lou Trosch, who graduated from West Charlotte in 1984, says the root of the issue is clear — and stems from the larger community.
In the United States, guns outnumber people — 120.5 guns to 100 residents, to be exact, according to the international 2018 Small Arms Survey.
With numbers like that, he said, it’s inevitable that there would be more gun incidents in Charlotte.
“What I have seen over the two decades now that I’ve been a judge is that we’ve reached some kind of tipping point where everybody has a gun,” he said. “And when human beings carry guns, they end up resolving disputes in very violent and dangerous ways… For us to think that kids are not going to follow that lead is naive, so it’s not surprising to me at all.
“And to think that this is (only) a CMS issue, that’s the easy way out.”
Malachi Thompson, a sophomore student leader at West Charlotte, said it’s easy for outsiders to make generalizations about the school.
“I think so many people have a closed mind and think because of the history of African-American people that it can only be an African-American person that brought the gun,” he said. “I think that is so close-minded.”
LaTanya Sanford, a science teacher at West Charlotte, said the stigma about the West Charlotte community and high school is dangerous.
“Anytime you mention the west side of Charlotte, people just think ‘bad,’” she said. “And it’s really a wonderful place to be. We hear about the bad stuff all the time, but good things are going on here.”
Sanford compared the energy at West Charlotte to that of a historically Black college.
“It’s almost like a little HBCU,” she said. “Our band has certain traditions and our students and alumni have a lot of allegiance to this school. They love their high school.”
Thompson grew up hearing the school band booming on Friday nights and listening to stories about West Charlotte’s greatness. His family’s history with the school started with his great-great-great grandparents, he said, and he wanted to be a part of the school’s history, too.
Thompson was shocked to hear from a classmate a few weeks ago that one of their peers had brought a gun to school — again. But this time, it had gone off. The identity of the person who fired the gun has not been released.
“I thought it was a joke,” he said. “And that incident threatens to change the trajectory of a school with such a rich history.”
‘Pride is still here’
Kevin Poirier arrived at West Charlotte High School a decade ago. Since then, he’s worn many hats, including assistant principal this year.
When he started at the school, he’d wear WCHS apparel out and around town — that’s when he started to realize the sheer amount of “Lion Pride” in Charlotte.
But Poirier said when people talk about the school today, they often talk about its legacy in past tense. He disagrees.
“That incredible sense of pride is still here today,” he said.
The recent gun incidents, he said, are not indicative of the West Charlotte he knows and loves. When the first guns were found in August, Poirier worried that they’d be covered unfairly.
“My first thought is that the media is going to cover this as if it’s representative of what’s happening, and it’s just not, it’s simply not,” he said. “I want to remind folks that this is not a West Charlotte High School issue. This is a community issue and really a nationwide issue.”
Stakeholders don’t necessarily agree on where to start: Chambers said the community has “gotten away from caring for one another.” Trosch said the number of guns in the community is up. Thompson said students’ priorities have changed from his grandparents’ generation to his generation. Community activist and WCHS grandmother Lucille Puckett said students in CMS are struggling to adjust emotionally back to in-person learning. Former parent Colette Forest said the curriculum has fallen behind.
But despite their different opinions, they agree that it will take a community to change the frequency of gun incidents at CMS.
“The positive trajectory that we are on here at West Charlotte is tangible and has been for years,” Poirier said. “The excellence that exists within the school from current students, staff, and families is reflective of the excellence that exists within the West Charlotte community and the historic West End.
“And to the extent that negative things that are happening in the community that are impacting schools, I don’t believe those are unique to West Charlotte and the West Charlotte community.”
A new West Charlotte high school building is in the works, set to open in August. Poirier also points to student academic success — students raking in millions in scholarships this past year, and they’ve got the largest number of International Baccalaureate students they’ve had in quite some time, he said.
“It should be a time to celebrate a new building, so it’s time for a new attitude,” alumnus Eric Montgomery said. “I hate that the West Charlotte name has this stigma tied to it. But there’s a lot of great people and a lot of great things that have come out of West Charlotte.
“It shouldn’t be marred by these circumstances.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 11:00 AM.
