See photos as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students head back to class for 2024-25 year

More than 141,000 students started class Monday in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which was joined by most of the rest of the state.

CMS debuted three new facilities Monday along with 663 new teachers.

Superintendent Crystal Hill met with students at Idlewild Elementary School and told them to “focus on being 1% better every day,” during a first day in which she traveled to different schools around the district.

In the 2024-25 school year, the district will be focused on “balance and equity” when it comes to school performance by providing targeted support and increased resources, CMS Deputy Superintendent Melissa Balknight told reporters at a back-to-school briefing last week.

Three new facilities opened their doors Monday, including Ballantyne Ridge High School and Knights View Elementary School in south Charlotte, as well as a new building for Bruns Avenue Elementary. The district’s first three electric school buses also took to the roads.

New CMS Chief Operations Officer Tim Ivey last week also announced all students will be eligible to receive free breakfast at school this year. Otherwise, meal prices will remain unchanged.

CMS still faces a teacher shortage, with 293 remaining vacancies. The district also has $190 million less in federal funding this year after the expiration of COVID relief funds. As a result, CMS cut approximately 500 guest teacher positions ahead of the 2024-25 school year.

However, Hill says district leaders prepared for the change well in advance and factored it into the budget adopted earlier this year.

“A great deal of work has gone into the 2024-25 school year,” Hill said. “We know the number one thing to impact student achievement is to have permanent teachers in the classroom, so we’ve really spent a lot of time sourcing and training those teachers and making sure they’re ready the first day, which will help us retain them.”

This story was originally published August 26, 2024 at 12:27 PM.

Rebecca Noel

The Charlotte Observer

Rebecca Noel reports on education for The Charlotte Observer. She’s a native of Houston, Texas, and graduated from Rice University. She later received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. When she’s not reporting, she enjoys reading, running and frequenting coffee shops around Charlotte.