I have often imagined the horror of being accused of a crime I didn’t commit, hauled into court while the real perpetrator goes free, out there somewhere smiling.

I watched that scenario play out last night at the school board meeting.

One by one for nearly four hours, more than 100 angry parents and residents – the majority of them black – rose to accuse the collective school board of insensitivity, incompetence or worst – outright racism.

All the while, those truly responsible for our painful school cuts were nowhere in attendance, their names never so much as mentioned as a suspect.

During a recent interview, school board Chairman Eric Davis expressed frustration that the CMS board has become a “punching bag” for community anger. He’s right. It seems that voters have chosen to ignore the fact that two elected bodies – the N.C. legislature and the Mecklenburg commission – decide each year how much money our schools will get. And lately, we all know, both have been doling out less, even as student populations swell.

In a report last month, the nonprofit Public School Forum of North Carolina estimated that state lawmakers next year may slash as much as $1.1 billion from public education. That’s equivalent to the entire CMS annual budget. (That estimate also came before voters gave Republicans control of both chambers of state government.)

With less money all around to educate our children, the question then becomes: How do we as a community share the pain so that no one group or demographic suffers disproportionately? In that emotional debate, parents are right to demand fairness from the CMS board. (I’m not so sure they got it.)

But there seems a bigger question at hand: Namely, are we still a nation that values public education?

In the recent mid-term election, there was little if any debate about funding schools -- not in the races for county commission and not in the races for the N.C. statehouse. It’s as if we decided to give those candidates – the true funders of CMS -- a collective pass.

No, it has become easier, instead, to kick our school board.

To be sure, public schools will never get all the money that administrators and school boards would want. (That, too, is reality, Mr. Davis.) But advocates of public education in North Carolina (and every other state facing similar issues) would be wise to direct at least some of their protests and frustrations toward those who control the purse.

As I sat there at the board meeting Tuesday, watching one sector of our community maul another in an angry scramble for shrinking resources, I couldn’t help but wonder if the real perpetrators of our community’s upheaval, those who fund our schools, were out there somewhere smiling.

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Glenn Burkins is editor and publisher of Qcitymetro.com. Email editor@qcitymetro.com.

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