CMS Board of Education will meet Tuesday to fire superintendent
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education will meet Tuesday to terminate Superintendent Earnest Winston’s contract, a source close to the negotiations told The Charlotte Observer on Monday.
The meeting will be at 12:30 p.m. in the Chamber Room of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center and will be open to the public.
Earlier Monday, Winston was told by the school board that “separation was the best path forward,” the source said. Winston did not resign.
If the school board does vote to fire him, Winston would get paid $576,000 over two years and have parts of his personnel file made public, the source told the Observer. Two years remain on his contract. If he chooses to resign, a severance would be negotiated. If he’s fired, it wouldn’t be for cause, the source told the Observer.
CMS is the second-largest school system in North Carolina with roughly 140,000 students and 19,000 employees.
The 47-year-old Winston has led the district since August 2019. He was initially chosen for the top job on an interim basis after former superintendent Clayton Wilcox was suspended. Winston later received a three-year contract through 2022, the Observer reported.
In February 2021, the school board approved a new contract for Winston, extending his term through 2025 with a 3% raise. The raise brought his salary from $280,000 to $288,400. The contract also removed a clause that allowed the board to terminate his contract for any reason with 60 days notice.
If Winston resigns or is fired, CMS will be looking for its seventh superintendent since 2011 —when Peter Gorman left to accept a job with an education-focused company.
Increased pressure
Winston and the district have faced scrutiny during the previous year for plummeting test scores, deepening learning gaps and students’ social-emotional and mental health playing out in the form of weapons being brought on campuses and fights and sexual violence in schools.
Winston repeatedly blamed the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We know we must take bold steps to help many of those students who have seen learning disrupted due to nearly two years of a pandemic,” Winston told the Observer in December. “Some of those students, particularly Black and brown students, needed additional attention even before the pandemic. We must do better and are strengthening our plan to do so.”
A majority of the district’s students failed state exams for the 2020-21 academic year, according to results released last September. Results showed 45.4% of students statewide passed state reading, math and science exams during the 2020-21 school year. In CMS, 44.6% of students in all subjects passed the exams.
While test scores show a low number of public school students appearing college or career ready in key subjects, the safety of the district’s children has been at the forefront of discussions for months.
CMS surpassed its previous 10-year high for the number of guns on campuses during the first half of the 2021-22 school year. Repeated instances of sexual assault on campuses have uncovered Title IX violations.
Winston met calls for action by directing a work group in December to develop short-and long-term solutions. The district ordered clear backpacks for high schools. CMS doubled the number of random safety screenings in secondary schools and purchased body scanners.
In late January, the district rolled out a reporting system for students to submit anonymous safety concerns, and Winston included money for more school social workers and psychologists in his 2022-23 budget proposal.
Calls for his resignation
But teachers, parents and students say the solutions are reactive rather than proactive. Parents during board meetings called for Winston to resign.
“This is not a job, it is a calling,” Winston told the Observer when a reporter asked him about parents asking him to resign. “I will make sure our team does everything possible to keep our students and staff safe. By achieving those objectives, the rest will take care of itself.”
Before he was hired as superintendent Aug. 2, 2019, he joined CMS in 2004 as an English teacher at Vance High School, where he also taught journalism and served as adviser to the school’s student newspaper. After two years in the classroom, Winston moved into administration, joining the district’s communications department as an external communications supervisor. In 2008, he became executive coordinator/communications liaison. He also served as chief of staff. Winston also worked as a Charlotte Observer reporter.
This story was originally published April 18, 2022 at 12:40 PM.
