By Eric Frazier
efrazier@charlotteobserver.com

After warning for months about $100 million in budget cuts and hundreds of teacher layoffs, Superintendent Peter Gorman is expected to reveal a 2011-12 spending plan tonight that would turn this year's dire predictions into next year's bitter reality.

His budget proposal will land on school board members' laps amid rising alarm and activism among parents, teachers and community groups. Gorman says the cuts will damage local classrooms, but adds that he has no choice given predictions of substantial declines in state, local and federal money.

Groups mobilizing to fight the cuts say they are determined to protect local teachers and classrooms.

Whether they can remains to be seen.

Gorman said late last week that he'd received no new projections from the state that would deter him from including in his budget plan the deep cuts he's been warning about, including layoffs of nearly 600 educators and downsizing the Bright Beginnings preschool program.

His proposal "will be incredibly close" to what he's already told the public, Gorman said. "There's no major changes whatsoever."

School board members, who've said they see few alternatives absent additional state or local money, appear likely to approve most, if not all, of Gorman's budget-cutting plan.

School board chair Eric Davis said the real decisions will rest with Mecklenburg commissioners and N.C. legislators, who together hold the purse strings for more than 80 percent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' $1 billion budget.

Those officials are finding themselves at the center of an accelerating swirl of activism from community groups concerned about the impact of a third year of budget-cutting.

The cuts have been debated at meetings around the county in recent months - gatherings called by groups as varied as the NAACP and the west Charlotte-focused Save Our Schools organization to suburban south Charlotte parents mobilizing to save middle-school sports.

MeckEd, a nonprofit that rallies support for public education, has also been holding meetings around the county, telling civic groups about CMS' budget shortfall.

The Council for Children's Rights and other groups have mobilized around the Bright Beginnings program, sending waves of children and adults to speak at school board meetings.

And Get Real 2011, a series of 75 community-engagement workshops and public hearings by the nonprofit Crossroads Charlotte group, spotlighted education as the community's biggest concern.

"A grassroots advocacy effort in Charlotte has been going on in the past few months like I've never seen before," said Bill Anderson, head of MeckEd. "Everybody understands if we get this third year of cuts, it's going to be devastating for CMS."

On Wednesday, the day after Gorman presents his budget, a new advocacy group called MeckFUTURE plans to stage a rally in support of CMS at 6 p.m. at the Metro School, 405 S. Davidson St.

The group, which includes parent leaders from schools across the county, is also organizing an ambitious lobbying campaign to persuade commissioners to glean new money for CMS from the recent property revaluation.

MeckFUTURE organizers have said the county's increased property values could give commissioners as much as $50 million in new money that could go to CMS. The group said on its Facebook page that $34 million could save 389 teacher jobs and 164 support positions.

An Observer analysis shows that keeping the current tax rate would raise an additional $66 million beyond what would be raised by a so-called "revenue-neutral" budget that lowers the tax rate to keep the county from collecting additional dollars via revaluation.

But as the county commission begins its budget discussions this week, that idea is shaping up as a major point of contention. Commissioner Jennifer Roberts and several other Democrats say they're open to that concept, even if they've not decided for sure how they'll vote.

Not all property owners would pay more taxes if commissioners leave the rate intact. But many will, and Republicans say recession-battered property owners need stronger government protection.

"Unless the rate is dropped significantly," Commissioner Bill James wrote in an e-mail, "there will be massive tax increases."

At a recent meeting at Providence High School, some in the crowd of about 200 told three Republican Mecklenburg lawmakers they'd be willing to pay more taxes to help CMS.

But the lawmakers were cool to that idea. In a later interview, Rep. Ric Killian told the Observer most people he hears from aren't saying they want to pay more taxes.

"I hear special interests saying that. I think the average person recognizes the situation that we're in," he said. "We have to balance our constituents' needs with the ability for them to pay to meet those needs."
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Observer staff writer Ann Doss Helms contributed.

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