The "guiding principles" adopted Tuesday by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board haven’t gone over well in some segments of the community.

With an emphasis on neighborhood schools, not diversity, the document is a blueprint for re-segregation, some critics allege.

We sat with school board Chair Eric Davis to discuss the controversial document, which passed 5-3. The Q&A below is a transcript of that interview. Answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
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Q. With the school board voting to place neighborhood schools above economic and racial diversity, what messages does that send to poor families surrounded by low-performing schools?

The previous student assignment plan in 2001 was based on choice, and it gave parents and students an elaborate way of choosing, which in a way was an elaborate way of escaping an undesirable or under-performing school. What these new guiding principles do is that we face head-on that leaving something, choosing to leave, or having to choose to leave, does not get the job done. What we’ve got to do is face the reality that there are too many schools or too many of our students who aren’t getting what they need in terms of an education. So as opposed to providing a way out, I want to focus on addressing why someone wants or feels the need to leave. I’d rather work with you on making the school in your neighborhood strong, more attractive, better meeting the needs of the students in that area, and building that school up. That’s the direction these guiding principles point at.

Q. And how does the board accomplish this?

Getting more of our more effective teachers in front of the students who need them, and putting more effective principal leadership in schools that need it, and paying teachers more who are facing a more difficult task of helping students catch up, building community support for those schools that need greater community support.

Q. Meanwhile, doesn’t that put an unfair burden on families stuck in those low-performing schools?

There is clearly a greater challenge for those families. The societal impacts that weigh on those families are greater. What is not clear is that by moving students around, that that will result in any better academic outcome for those students than addressing the issues they face head-on, which is not being prepared for kindergarten, not having the support, for whatever reason, to be able to continue to have academic experiences over the summer. I think what we’ve learned in this community is that we can move people around. In fact, we can assign students to schools in Myers Park, but that doesn’t necessarily change their academic outcome. What increases their academic achievement is having an effective teacher and having that support for the student that’s needed.

Q. So would you say that integration, or busing to achieve integration, was a failed experiment?

I think what integration did in this community -- and I was in the third grade when that happened, so I experienced it firsthand – was it caused the community to, in many ways, join together and recognize many of the inadequacies and inequalities in our system, particularly around the quality of facilities, the quality of books. We’re now at what I think is the next step or the next phase of that, which is the inequality we have around the effectiveness of teachers we have in our schools. So that’s why I’m focused on that particular issue as the key strategy toward addressing the needs of children across the community.

Q. Has busing to achieve integration outlived its usefulness?

Nearly every member of the board said they would not support cross-county busing. So if that’s an indicator or an answer to your question, then maybe it has. For such a diverse group – we’re pretty diverse – to find common ground on that issue, maybe that is the answer.

Q. How much of this focus on neighborhood schools is a reaction to white flight, or a fear of white flight, from CMS?

I’ll speak for myself. It’s not in response to that. This proximity issue, while most commonly associated with suburbia and white parents, I’ve found does cross socioeconomic lines. Not totally. I’m not saying that that’s the top priority across the spectrum, but I hear that desire from a variety of citizens across the community.

Q. Let me ask that question a different way. How sensitive is the school board to the fear of losing more of its white students and therefore parental support and taxpayer support?

We need broad community support. We build broad community support by meeting the needs of children, by educating children. I’m more concerned about building awareness and consensus that what’s best for my child is for your child to also get a good education. Their futures are tied together, regardless of whether we live in a walled community or we live in an apartment complex.

Q. School board member Richard McElrath often says nothing good can happen when we concentrate poverty. Is he wrong about that?

No doubt concentrating poverty creates tremendous challenges for us and makes it more difficult. That’s why we need partnership with our city government teammates to develop strategies that will help our community address those issues in their totality, not just having to respond to them through our school system.

Q. You mean housing patterns?

What Richard (McElrath) speaks to so often very effectively is that the school system has to respond to housing patterns. Housing patterns do create these concentrations of poverty. One way we could respond is we could assign students across the county, back to the busing issue. That then requires large expenditures on an assignment approach that has not proven to result in increasing academic outcomes. Where Richard makes an excellent point is that we need that partnership with the city.

Q. He also has said, at least to me, that this issue is all about race and white parents not wanting their children in schools with children of color.

That’s not what I believe. There are as many different perspectives on race as we have citizens in the county. My view is that there are large numbers of citizens and parents who recognize that our futures are intertwined, regardless of the color of our skin or the socioeconomic status. My goal is to build on that support and tap into that common ground and to emphasize what brings us together, not what divides us.

Q. What gives you hope, or what should give hope to parents who live in disadvantaged communities?

What gives me the greatest feeling of movement is the highly effectiveness of our teachers, and the fact that we are emphasizing critical evaluations. We are emphasizing supporting teachers. We are emphasizing that the fundamental building block in education is the relationship between teacher and student.

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