The $56 million question: Who won the CMS-county quarrel?

When Mecklenburg County commissioners voted last month to withhold $56 million from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools budget — demanding a detailed plan to close the racial achievement gap first — the outcome wasn’t hard to predict. Despite what advice commissioners may have been given, state statute doesn’t allow counties to strong-arm school districts that way. CMS was going to get its money. Commissioners weren’t going to get their plan.

That’s where we landed this week, when the county and CMS announced that after a month of public bickering and mediation, Mecklenburg would provide the school district its $56 million and more. In return, according to the agreement, CMS would not provide a new achievement gap report or do anything substantially different than what it had been doing.

It was a clear procedural win for the school district. It also was a small political victory for commissioners, who got to tell their constituents that the county put up a fight for minority students and their families.

But what about those children? Did they get anything out of this?

Maybe.

If the CMS-county fight results in CMS having a fuller sense of discontent with schools in communities across the county? That’s a win.

If the fight results in the kind of collaboration commissioners and school board members talked about this week, instead of the sniping we usually see between the two bodies? That’s also a win.

If that collaboration prompts a real exploration and confrontation of factors — inside and outside the classroom — that contribute to the achievement gap? That would be the biggest win of all.

That’s a lot of ifs, however.

One encouraging sign is the conciliatory posture both commissioners and school board members took this week at the end of their ugly dispute. Commissioners, including chair George Dunlap, resisted the temptation to take public shots at the school board or CMS Superintendent Earnest Winston (a small step, but still a step). School board members mostly held their tongues when the county exaggerated how much it got in the deal.

An exception: Commissioner Leigh Altman posted on Facebook and again in an email to constituents that the agreement includes “implementation of the Student Outcomes Focused Governance model, with the assistance of an outside consultant who will help guide CMS.” That’s not in the agreement, however, and school board member Jennifer De La Jara called Altman’s post “complete malarky,” noting that CMS already had been working for months on the governance model.

We hope the county is doing more than mouthing the right words about working with CMS. Commissioners can and should acknowledge that academic achievement gaps don’t happen in a vacuum — that economic and structural inequities must also be addressed for children and families to have a better chance at success.

We hope, too, that school board members and CMS officials realize how public support for the county in this quarrel came not only from concern about what’s happening in classrooms, but frustration at years of standoffishness, defensiveness and outright dishonesty from the district and school board. We’re encouraged that’s begun to change in recent months, but CMS officials need to be more responsive and forthcoming with communities that plainly doesn’t trust the people tasked with educating their children.

In other words, no one really won in the fight for $56 million. Resources were wasted. Public officials postured. It looked an awful lot like the dysfunction we’ve too often seen from our local public servants.

Perhaps this week’s agreement was more of that — a public face-saving before everyone retreats to the bunkers that have long been home. But Charlotte and Mecklenburg need something different. County commissioners and CMS need each other. Students and families need this week’s agreement to be the start of something good, not just the end of something ugly.