CMS school board candidates: District 3

There are two candidates running in District 3. There is no incumbent.

Gregory "Dee" Rankin (Democrat): Rankin is a former CMS teacher who also taught in private and charter schools. He previously served as the chair of the education committee for the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte Mecklenburg and is the co-chair of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools Equity Committee’s student wellness committee. His campaign is focused on "equity intertwined with excellence and expectations should be at the center of each decision to ensure that students receive the resources necessary to be college and/or career ready." 

WATCH RANKIN'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Steven Rushing (Democrat): Rushing is a first-time candidate running for the district that covers northeast Charlotte. He's a CMS parent who happens to be the only Latino candidate in the race in 2022. An accolade he is proud of and promotes in his bid for school board. Rushing points to the increasing number of Hispanic and Latino students in CMS and the lack of resources to meet the needs of these students and their parents. Rushing is also focused on increasing state and local funding to increase teacher pay and resources in the classrooms. 

WATCH RUSHING'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

You can stream WCNC Charlotte on Roku and Amazon Fire TV, just download the free app.  

WCNC Charlotte Education Reporter Shamarria Morrison interviewed each candidate running for the school board about their positions on a number of critical topics facing education. Each candidate was given up to 16 minutes to respond to questions regarding the following topics: School safety, the CMS superintendent search, teacher and staff retention and CMS achievement scores.

WCNC Charlotte asked the following questions of each candidate:

School Safety

• In 2021, CMS had a record number of guns found in the first half of the school year. In response, the board directed the superintendent to make changes. The most front-facing included almost 10 million in weapons detectors, and more than $400,000 on clear backpacks. As of Sept 26, CMS reported no guns found on campuses this year. What other moves does CMS need to make to continue to make school safer? NOTE: After we concluded all but one of our interviews (Steven Rushing) we learned one gun was found at Julius Chambers High School
• An ATF report shows the number of bomb threats targeted at schools has increased more than two-fold from 2019-2021. In 2022, Every Town Search tracked at least 113 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 41 deaths and 82 injuries nationally. Who has the answers to stop school gun violence and how would you utilize their resources? 

CMS Superintendent Search

• CMS will start its superintendent search and interviews in earnest after the November elections. For the past decade, the district has had trouble keeping anyone in the top position for more than 3 years. What do you attribute to the superintendent turnover and how will you change this on the board?
• What is the one important question you’ll be asking the next superintendent of CMS schools and what is the answer you want from them to consider them for the job? 

Teacher and Staff Retention

• As of Sept 22, CMS is still searching for more than 350 teachers to fill classrooms. Although the district has current stop gaps to fill these positions like, guest teachers, funding will run out for them. What is in board control to increase teacher and staff retention? 
• In February 2022, WCNC reported at that time about 11% or just over 1,000 of CMS’s teaching staff had retired or resigned. Common reasons we heard for them leaving was pay, morale, school culture, and workload. What is a culture issue CMS is facing and how will you work to fix this? 

CMS Achievement Scores

• WCNC compared four area districts' performance grades to CMS. The schools we compared were Catawba, Union County, Gaston, Cabarrus and CMS. CMS’s grade level proficiency scores were towards the bottom of the batch, but the district growth scores are towards the top. What should parents take away from CMS’s performance scores? 
• On a statewide level, traditional public schools on average had higher grade-level proficiency scores than charter schools. WCNC analyzed area charter schools and CMS’s proficiency levels for Black and Hispanic students. The charter schools had higher proficiency levels for these students than CMS. The number of charter school enrolments for students in North Carolina has increased over the last five years according to the Department of education. How do you keep Black and Hispanic students in traditional public schools when some would argue for decades traditional public school has failed them?

WATCH ALL THE CANDIDATE INTERVIEWS HERE

Click here to sign up for the daily Wake Up Charlotte newsletter  

Gregory "Dee" Rankin: I want to first say, on the data from last year that you were talking about, can we say it's a good thing that they found the guns? I think the gun issue is bigger than just CMS? Right? It's a community-wide issue. So let me first say is, I want to say they did, they did a great job with implementing those processes of the searches and in the different plans, they put in place to find the guns, because imagine if we didn't, who knows what would happen? Right. So I think that's that that step was first I think now I think the district is moving in the right direction with putting just putting continued emphasis on school safety and knowing that it's accepting the fact that it is it's a real issue. It's here to stay. It's now a part of our culture. And this may be something we may not have had to dealt with, you know, 10-15 years ago, but now we're here. So we're going to can we can continue using, you know, the scanners. I think doing random searches in the school is also effective. And also I think, promoting the "see something say something" app and allowing our students to be feel comfortable to utilize that. And if they see something, say something because they know students know and they hear things I want them to those tools to be comfortable to use that without feeling like they will be you know someone'll find out who said anything, you know. So I think those are the districts moving in the right direction. But you know, maybe implementing a few things like the searches and maybe increasing the knowledge about the See Something, Say Something app will be great. A lot of the things we're talking about is, is spawned from the community. And the first line of defense are parents. Right? Hopefully, if we want to, hopefully, our parents are empowered enough that they see or know that they- their child, their children are involved in certain activities, that they're comfortable enough to address those. And past that we have community organizations, mentoring programs, your boys and girls clubs, your rec centers. I mean, I think it'd be great to start implementing some of these programs about gun safety in this particular area where the kids are going from there with this getting- get that faith community involved, because individuals in our faith community also are sprinkled throughout the community, they can also give some feedback and just touch as many people as we can throughout the community to help spread this. As we know this, this, I would say, idea that about how do we keep ourselves safe, but also at the same time understanding what is gun safety. And how do we keep these guns out of our community and out of the hands of our kids? It's gonna take a collective effort is not just a school thing. It's a community thing. It's gonna take all of us together to figure out what can we do and then of course, from there, once you start creating legislation, you know, with policy and those different things, I think all those things together could help if we started doing this together as a community.

WATCH RANKIN'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Steven Rushing: Part of it starts at home, the parents have to actually step up and be like, I need to make sure that my child doesn't have a gun in their book bag, go through their stuff before they leave the school before they leave the house. You know, my daughter, I made sure her book bag everything signed her lunches in there, I looked through her book bag and said there's some papers, sometimes the parents are such in a hurry to get the work, they're not paying attention to what the kids are taking with them. And that's a bad idea. So first start off at home, I think we should every school should have some kind of a police officer presence as well. If there is a active shooter situation, it's good to have an police officer on the campus that may be able to do something. As far as the children with guns, there's just too much access for it. And we have to find a way that we can limit that on the actual campus before they even come into the school with them. Again, I think part of that is at home, it starts with the mother or the father, whoever the actual adult figure is at home, you have to monitor what those children are bringing the home, I mean, bringing the school from the home, because they got they didn't get it at school, they brought it into the school. So I think part of that is also the parents.

WATCH RUSHING'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

**NOTE: All of these quotes are transcriptions of their on-camera interviews with Morrison**

Gregory "Dee" Rankin: I want to know what type of leader they are. And because that's very important. And for me, the response I want to hear is the type of leader that is, like I said before that's engaging, that's motivating, but also purpose-driven, but also understands the importance of student outcomes. That's it. And if everything is driven from that, based on data, then I think that will be the key. You have to be able to develop relationships, not only with staff, with the board, with your executive team, with the students, you have to be able to have that relationship and make individuals want to be able to follow your lead, you're the superintendent you're leading almost 140,000 kids and a number of staff towards a particular goal. So you have to be a motivator at some point. And I think that should be one of the things that a superintendent is able to do.

WATCH RANKIN'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Steven Rushing: I think it's kind of the same situation with myself why I ran, it's always the same cookie cutter is never anything different. I think now with the new superintendent, what I would suggest is we think outside the box, it doesn't always have to be the same type of candidate, it's always there just like myself, I'm the only Latino American running and has ran in a while, we don't have anybody that's been a superintendent that I can really think of that thinks outside of the box. That's not the usual teacher or principal or something like that. We may have to do like some corporations do where they need fresh blood to make the company run a little bit better, we may need to do the same thing with the position of Superintendent. For myself, my platform is in two different parts for my school board member. So I would ask him two questions, actually, if that's okay, the first one would actually be, how are we going to make our teachers feel supported, and counted. And then the second one, most parts of CMS, there's at least 40 to 50%, and Latin American children, but the parents don't speak English. How are we going to help them when they come to the office and need help, and there's nobody there that can translate for them. They need to feel supported. A lot of teachers, for example, my daughter, her teacher last year, she was it was her first year of being a teacher, and she already quit. She went to work at a call center, which pays her commission because she wasn't one she wasn't feeling valued. And too, there wasn't enough of an income for her to take care of her family. I know for a fact, just in Mecklenburg County, Mecklenburg County, over 100 different teachers were basically recruited from Colorado and Texas for them to go there, by giving them support that they're looking for, and also giving them money that they can actually live off of, I think what we need to do as School Board members, find out where we can remove some money that's not needed, and then play it and apply it to the teacher so that they don't have to come out of pocket for supplies, they don't have to come out of pocket to, you know, take care of some of the children that may not be able to get all the supplies. And now the parents don't want to really contribute to the other kids, they want to take care of just their children. So I think we need to find a place where we can financially help the teachers a little more, but then mostly, they need support in the classroom, they need to know that whatever happens if they send out a note, they sent home a note, your student isn't doing this, a student isn't doing that don't blow up on the teacher. They're not doing it just to make it up. They're not just picking on kids. That's not what they got into this for. They're here to help. So we have to understand that when the teachers bring some home good or bad notes, is for constructive criticism to help them build them into better students,

WATCH RUSHING'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

**NOTE: All of these quotes are transcriptions of their on-camera interviews with Morrison**

Gregory "Dee" Rankin: I think, as a board member, our role would be to help create policy, and a framework that and a budget that increases improve teacher, educator experience, everyone that's in the system, from the teachers, principals, TAs, counselors, you name it, we have to improve that we have to have make sure we improve a framework for them, what's that framework we're talking about, we're talking about increased professional development to I would if, if I had control over this, some of this is at the state level, but if I had any influence, or I would be able to bring back incentives to those teachers who want to go for their masters who want to become a national board, board-certified and pay them for it, right? If we even if we can increase salaries based on those achievements, I think it'd be great. But if we can't, at least we can pour into those teachers who want to pursue it anyway, and find a way to pay for those things. Because if a teacher is more prepared, there'll be they'll feel more empowered and welcomed. And I know for me, I want to make sure I'm with an organization that wants to develop me and grow and see me grow. So I think my role is a board, my board member would be able to create that framework that would, and that would want to see teachers grow and develop, that will be my role. I would say one. Individuals leave jobs, you know, which is teaching, because of leadership. And leadership funnels down from the top down. So as a board, if the board is not leading in a proper manner, the superintendent maybe might not be leading in a proper manner, from the superintendent down to the Learning Community superintendents, and so on to the principals and so on. So I think that if, if you talk to most educators if they feel supported by their administration, they're gonna stick it out. But if they feel as if, you know, administration is not supporting them, you have different administrators coming in and out different years. It's a rotating and revolving door of leaders throughout the district. And there's no consistency across the board, which we can see, there's been consistency, not only at the superintendent level, that may that's that starts falling down to other levels, or different principals are being moved around in different places. And APs over here, teachers aren't supported. So you have to you have to be feel like, as if you're supported, and you have someone that believes in what you're doing and is able to create that culture that we're talking about, to where you can grow and develop as a teacher. Could you imagine having a being a first-year teacher, and you don't even know, you know if your principal is going to be there the next year if your superintendents are not going to be there next year? That's tough. So I think we have to be able to figure out how can we create a consistency across the board from the top down with consistent, effective and efficient leadership.

WATCH RANKIN'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Steven Rushing: Part of the culture is they don't feel safe in some areas. And when they feel safe, it's not always an outside influence. It's an inside influence and they don't feel safe, because again, they don't feel supported by the staff. They don't feel supported by the principle. They don't feel they don't feel safe from the students. Sometimes they can't even relate to some of the students. I think another big problem is cell phones in the classroom, I don't think they need to be in the classroom either. That would actually give teachers the able to control the classroom instead of kids trying to control TikTok. So I think the culture changes depending on where they can go not to make their jobs easier, but that they can feel valued for what they're trying to do. I can't blame them for moving somewhere that is going to make their job not easier. But actually appreciating one of the things that I thought about was I sat down and started thinking about different programs. You know, when you're a business owner, your whole business is to find solutions to problems. If you find a solution to a problem, you can basically take care of things. So my problem my thought process was I created a program called DoD dads on duty. There's dads like myself, that are business owners that have the available time. And it plays a couple of roles. It also helps the teachers out in the mornings, I see teachers scrambling to get kids out of the car and then get them in the classroom and then they have to scramble to the classroom get prepared. If we can have these dads volunteers are times that have been vetted that they're you know, they can be around children. They helped to get the kids out of the cars, not to diminish anything that moms do. But when dad shows up, it's a whole different atmosphere. You know that dad voice and that dad saying good job and get ready to go and stuff like that really pumps up the children but then they also feel secure. So if we could get the dads to come out there and volunteer their time, get them out of the school and then also monitor the hallways. If you have the if I had the available time in the school lets me do it. I don't mind wearing my mask and now walk around make sure the doors are locked. Make sure everybody's safe. Personally, if I knew my dad was walking around the hallways, I'm gonna behave. I'm not gonna really act up either. So it plays a couple of different roles. And then on the same end, it gives the teachers time to get the classroom ready in the morning, ready in the morning, instead of trying to rush from the cars to the classroom, they may not even, they may not have even eaten breakfast. They're just at a hustle and bustle. So the safety aspect is dads on duty are basically doing that they're protecting their children, they're protecting the school. And at the same time, they're giving an atmosphere of you better pay attention, because it might be your dad walk in the hallway tomorrow, when I was in school, if that was me, I would have been like, wonder what day my dad's gonna show up. And my dad was a tall, you know, Special Forces army, I didn't want nothing, you know, and it wasn't anything about, you know, punishment or spankings or nothing. Dad's just have a voice. And you know, some children unfortunately, don't have that aspect in their home. But now you can get a dad, that's going to give his time. And as soon as you get out of the car, you got a grown man saying, "Hey, you can do it today, have a great day", give them a pound, give them a dap, whatever it is, and they go right into the classroom, they feel better. And they're less likely to be agitated, upset, or anything like that. And I think this would be a great program to add.

WATCH RUSHING'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

**NOTE: All of these quotes are transcriptions of their on-camera interviews with Morrison**

Gregory "Dee" Rankin: As a parent of, you know, I have two daughters that attended CMS, and I think their school was a C school. But it's a great school, it is a phenomenal school, the first thing I will say is, don't just go by the grade, that's given, right? So looking at those scores, if you see that there's growth there, now growth should not be the focus, but growth should be celebrated. Right? That means that school is moving in the right direction, that they're doing something right, to continue to grow students, where they need to be now then what I would do, is I would identify who's growing, right? Which group which- are we growing everyone in the school because a lot of times when we talk about we have these conversations, we only focus on the lower tier of the students. But we have some high achievers in these schools. And they should be growing as also. So I think that if I was a parent, I would say, one, be engaged, be involved. However, that may be, two I would say, look at the growth, look at the college and career readiness scores as well, because that's the focus. But is the school moving in the right direction to go towards that? And if they are, I would say that's a good school, that's a good school, I'm not going to base just on, you know, the letter grades that are given, there are a lot of factors that go into those. And I think that we should really pay attention to more than just that. I would push back. Because as a parent, you need to find identify what's best for your child, right? What's the best fit charter schools within traditional public schools, one are governed differently, right? So we have to understand that. So there are certain parameters, traditional public school had to have to work under. And I'm a fan of traditional public school, I wouldn't be running for the-for the school board. So because I like to, I like to have some say, in my tax dollars. So when you're, when you send a child to, you know, a charter school, they're governed by a private board, you have no say who's on that board. You have no say in certain things like, you're not guaranteed transportation, you're not guaranteed, you know, lunch, certain, you know, certain things aren't guaranteed. So I will just make sure that whatever you're looking for, make sure it's a good fit, and just not denounce all and put all the traditional public schools in one bucket because we have school choice amongst our public schools, as well as traditional public schools as well. You can there's so many different programs and, you know, magnets in this school choice opportunities within the district. And they've they're proven to do well. So I would just, I would say, just be fair, if you had one bad experience at say, one local restaurant, don't throw all the restaurants in that same bag. Right? Find out what's the best fit for you, and what's the best fit for your child. And I say we give traditional public school a chance. Understand, I mean, looking at the data, which I do look at data. As you said earlier, you know, overall, charter schools did not outperform public, traditional public schools. So just because it says charter doesn't mean it's going to be better letter that may be a good fit for your child. But just because it says charter doesn't mean it's going to be better. So I would say find the best fit. And we I think, CMS has a multitude of programs that could fit, you know, whatever your child's needs are.

WATCH RANKIN'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Steven Rushing: That kind of comes into the funding, we don't have enough if you don't have enough teachers to provide the coverage that's needed per student. So you think about if there's one teacher for every 30 students or 20 students, that's a lot of coverage. So somebody's falling through the cracks, unfortunately, so we need to have a little bit more funding. If the school the school board members can meet with city council to get more funding for the teachers so that we can get more teachers in the classroom that would help the education grades, the overall stats, because if you think about it, we will purchase more talent from other countries to come here. To be scientists to be rocket builders to be engineers to be everything like that, we will spend that money there. But if we just invested in our school system and invested in our teachers, we would grow our own talent at home with our children, but they're not getting what they need, because there's not enough coverage. So we would rather spend money and bring import education and scientists and genius when we have it right at home. We're just not cultivating it. So I think we should need we need to find a way that we can get the funding. If we can find funding for so many other things, we can find funding for school- you know, sports and things like that, which, I'm for sports, it's I think it's a great character builder. But if you can spend that much money on certain items that may be able to just kind of take a little bit more of a backseat. I think we should do that. I think the money needs to be allocated to where it's needed, which is the education part. The funny part about that is my one of my daughter's is in CMS and the other one is in a charter school. We actually removed her from the charter from the public school system and CMS because she was not making the grades. She was not getting the help she needed. She was not getting the coverage. Her classroom literally had 25 students for one teacher, and she was not getting the help that she needed. So when we moved her over to the charter school, there's two teachers to have 15 students. She turned around her grades from being a D student to an A student she turned into student student council. Like it she performed better because of the coverage. We're losing teachers and CMS but some of them are going to charter schools because of the funding because of the support system because of the availability and smaller classrooms. They can actually make a difference. They feel like they can do something with these students. What we have to do in CMS is make the teachers feel like they are the top of top of the pyramid, we have to make them understand that we're here to support them in and outside of the classroom. That means the parents helping out at home. I know it's hard if you're working one or two jobs and make everything ends meet, you can't help them with the homework. But there you got to invest in your own children as well. You have to be able to help the teachers by helping out with the homework. Teachers are the secret sauce to making productive children and productive grades. If they feel secure, they feel supported. They feel that they have somebody's got their back, then these grades will go up. The kids will come out of the charter schools and come back to CMS because they're going to actually get what they need to succeed.

WATCH RUSHING'S FULL INTERVIEW HERE

**NOTE: All of these quotes are transcriptions of their on-camera interviews with Morrison**

As a reminder, early voting in North Carolina starts Oct. 20 and lasts through Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022, at 3 p.m. After Nov. 5, you may register to vote during the one-stop early voting period. This process is called “Same-Day Registration.” Complete details on registering to vote in North Carolina and the qualifications you need to meet can be found on the North Carolina State Board of Elections website.  

North Carolina voters are not required to show a photo ID.  If you are a DMV customer with an N.C. driver’s license or DMV-issued ID, you may now register to vote or change certain parts of your registration online.

Register to vote in North Carolina here.

Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.