I get it now.

At first I didn’t, but now I do.

I understand now why Mecklenburg Commissioner Vilma Leake and some others are angry over the “process” being used to fire and reassign CMS teachers in this latest round of staff cuts.

I started to see their concerns on Saturday when I sat through a community form on education at C.N. Jenkins Memorial Presbyterian Church. About 75 people attended the gathering, including some teachers who said they had gotten layoff notices.

Some said they were among the 178 teachers fired for poor performance, and as the Charlotte Observer said in a Sunday editorial, “Few of us will lament 178 low performers getting laid off.”

Well, not so fast.

We heard from one teacher who’d been in the classroom since 1968. She rattled off a list of universities she attended over summer breaks to stay current. She said she had gotten excellent reviews until January, when a new principal arrived and decided quickly that this teacher needed an “action plan.”

Others told of similar stories, suggesting that, as layoffs loomed, some principals may have used “action plans” to weed out teachers they simply didn’t like.

As Leake has asked repeatedly, if these teachers were such low performers, why did CMS wait until now  -- conveniently when layoffs are needed -- to get them better or get them gone?

No one wants bad teachers in our classrooms, of course. But on Saturday, I heard from too many teachers who said the difference between staying and being fired can boil down to whether a teacher routinely brings cupcakes to an appreciative principal.

This issue deserves a fuller airing.