Let’s see, after missing last year’s projected enrollment by almost 100 percent, CMS has missed this year’s projected enrollment by over 100 percent. This would seem to be a something of trend, one that some folks saw through last year.
Namely that CMS has hyping “enrollment growth” as a reason for voters to support last year’s $500m. school construction bond, lest their precious flowers wind up in trailers. Nevermind that the trailer explosion was caused by CMS willfully refused to build schools where kids actually lived for, oh, at least five solid years.
Here’s the other little wrinkle that no one will want to look at: Has the Hispanic population in CMS declined since last year? Oh, I know no one tracks that directly, but English as a second language students are a good proxy. Could it be that the softening local construction economy drove illegal immigrant labor from Mexico and Central America away from Charlotte and CMS? Are we allowed to wonder about that out loud?
The truth will come out sooner or later, and it will start with the school-by-school enrollment numbers.
