With CMS preparing for steep budget cuts next year, Superintendent Peter Gorman has said publicly that the school district will “do less with less.”

On Friday, April 23, Gorman sat with Qcitymetro.com for a wide-ranging discussion. Below is a Q&A from that interview, edited for brevity and clarity.
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Q. With all that’s going on, how are you personally?
I’m tired, but we’re all tired. While we go through all this budget challenge, we’re still doing our regular jobs. The budget piece just gets added on top, but we’re going to make it. If we don’t fight through this now and make good decisions, we’ll regret it later, so we’ve got no choice. But it’s hard right now. I’m most worried about our staff at the schools due to uncertainty, because uncertainly breeds poor morale. The more we can communicate the better, but our problem is, we don’t know what to communicate. We think the budget will be this from the state; we think it will be this from the county. Well, ‘we think’ and ‘you might get a pink slip’… that’s what breeds poor morale.

Q. At what point do you as superintendent stand up and fight for school funding?
We’re trying to negotiate for dollars, and our negotiating position is strong because we’re negotiating for kids. I think you’re always in a position of strength when you’re negotiating what is good for kids. But I think our negotiating position is weakened by the fact that the dollars are so minimal, and there are other areas being cut. The parks are giving; the libraries are giving. I’m not going to bring 500 parents and say ‘You’re doing us wrong.’ Our elected officials know what this impact is. I really believe they know. They’ve got to make that choice. I do think, though, at some point we’ll have to call the question and say enough is enough. I think our community needs to communicate well that they think we should be the top priority.

Q. CMS increasingly is becoming an African American and Latino school district. How do you stay in touch with those communities?
First and foremost, we try to represent every parent. We want to make sure we are listening to everyone, and also that we don’t assign things by (race). We want everyone to talk to every community. The biggest way we try to do this is though our principals. We think our principals get the best pulse of what’s going on in different communities. So I meet with the principals by learning community about six times a year, and I ask them, ‘What’s going on in your school, in your community? What’s the sentiment?’ They really are our grass-roots people on the ground.

Q. Are you concerned about how you are perceived in the various communities?
Very much so, and the reason I’m concerned is because it’s not me; it’s the district they’re perceiving that way. As the face of the district, if they perceive you that way then they perceive the district that way. It all really boils down to the schools that serve their community. If they see me leading those schools in one particular direction which they don’t support, then that’s an area to really be concerned about.

Q. How do you think you’re perceived in the African American community?
I think there are some pieces that are perceived positively. I think there was some concern in the African American community when we created the Achievement Zone, that it would be categorizing or classifying schools as not being successful. And now that we’re in the process of having to move away from the Achievement Zone due to some tough budgeting, people are asking the question, ‘Why would you do that? We like the Achievement Zone.’ So I would say it morphs over time. A big piece of it, I think, will come down to what kind of education do their kids get. If we can’t make sure we’ve got great principals and great teachers in the schools that serve the African American community, they’ll clearly view it as a two-tiered system.

Q. Can you point to examples where you’ve succeeded in getting top teachers into low-performing schools?
Sure. First of all, I would give you Devonshire (Elementary), Bruns Avenue (Elementary) and Ashley Park (Elementary) -- all of our strategic staffing schools. We’ve had an influx of star, high-performing teachers who have moved into those school, and with that we have had very, very positive results. Sterling (Elementary) is a school that is largely African American and Hispanic. It grew by over 30 points in math last year. That happened because we moved great teachers into that school. We’ve now done strategic staffing 20 times, where we’ve taken teams of at least eight individuals who were star, high-performers – proven high performers with a track record to prove it; not credentials, but results – and turned those schools around. And we’ll keep doing that.

Q. You caught some heat earlier when you said teacher credentials aren’t as important is performance. Do you regret saying that?
No, no. It’s the truth, and we’ve got the research to back it up. Just because you have a credential doesn’t mean you are effective as a teacher. It means you were effective at going to graduate school. We’re looking for teachers who are effective at increasing student achievement.

Q. What are you hearing from teachers you moved into low-performing schools?
The ones who’ve gone in feel good because they’ve gone in with a team. There was a great principal already there. They got the freedom to do what they needed to do. And they also do like the extra cash. They did get some extra cash. I think that we, as a community, have to come forward and say some jobs are harder to do than others and should pay more.

Q. Is that going to be the model for CMS?
For now it is, but it’s not going to be static. We just presented that model in Washington at the Hart Senate Building with other districts and teachers unions and others as a model and a way to improve low-performing schools.

Q. Some residents are now concerned that the new zone system you proposed would create an Apartheid-like system for blacks and whites, affluent and poor. What do you say to those folks?
I’ve had that mentioned to me. I’m concerned about their perceptions, but I’m not concerned about whether the schools will do that because we’re going to provide more services, and it’s not going to be that way. To some extent, people felt that way when we created the Achievement Zone, and it turned out to not be true. We’ve got to earn our stripes every day in the classroom. If we can’t pull it off in the classroom, we’ll never get folks convinced to be with us on moving forward in that direction.

Q. Despite better test scores in some high-poverty schools, we still have many where fewer than 50 percent of the student are performing at grade level. What’s to applaud?
I think what’s to applaud is the growth. We’re growing. A lot of the places that are now 50 percent were, sadly, in the 30s. One example I’d give you is West Charlotte (High School). It was 68 percent last year. It was 39 percent four years ago. We are making that headway.

Q. We hear that one area that may take a hit next year is the gang prevention program. Is that true?
There are many positions that are being taken away. We have a lot of people tell us, ‘Don’t touch the classroom, don’t touch the classroom.’ We try not to touch the classroom. What about counselors? What about psychologists? What about other support areas? Well, where do you touch? We don’t have this huge number of folks. We have the same folks in payroll that we had when we wrote 12,000 checks. Now we write 20,000 checks a month. We have the same folks in maintenance doing 21 million square feet that we had when we had 7 million square feet. So we’re having to cut some of these support areas. If you look at some of these support areas, one of the questions that’s been raised is, ‘What services are part of the school that we should provide and what should others provide?’ One of the areas that has come up in that question is the gang piece. Is that something we should do, or should Charlotte PD, the sheriff’s office and the six smaller municipalities help us with that? That’s been debated, and we’re just not going to be able to offer all of the services we used to.

Q. Will schools be closed next year because of budget cuts?
I’m not recommending closing any schools for next year. But I’m recommending that we start the school closure process for the year after, and that we start it this summer. It is my guess, and I can’t tell you for sure, that we will recommend double-digit school closings.

Q. How do you determine which to close?
That’s what we’ll be rolling out to the board, and the board will have to vote on. I spent this past weekend with the superintendent in Kansas City. He just closed 30 schools for next year. He did it using this matrix on capacity, performance – there’s a whole series of things. I think we need to take into account multiple things.

Q. How would you compare this school board to the one you had last year?
We’re playing offense with this board, not defense. With the previous board, people frequently tuned in to a board meeting for how we said something, not what we said. And in many cases we had to do damage control. We don’t have to do that anymore.

Q. Budget cuts last year were not as severe as anticipated because of last-minute stimulus dollars. Any chance of a repeat this year?
I don’t see that happening. I was really disturbed by House speaker (Joe) Hackney yesterday. He spoke to some news outlets and said, ‘Oh, it’s not going to be as bad.’ I think we are leading people on in a negative way. We’ve got to plan for the worst and hope for the best, and when we tell people things like that and we don’t see hope on the horizon, I think we are just misleading folks. There is not going to be another pot of stimulus money. It’s not out there. No, it’s not going to be fine. We are going to have severe cuts for next year.
 

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