Don’t look now, but the brains behind Wake County’s winning $970 million school bond campaign are rumored to be in the mix to stage-manage what could be CMS’ push for a $620 million bond in November.
Democrat consultant Brad Crone and Republican Ballard Everett guided the Friends of Wake County campaign, with the help of $600,000 in pro-bond spending.
A sure sign of their influence would be the formation of a new, pro-bond group with staff on loan from the Charlotte Chamber. But there are significant hurdles to the top-down, everybody join hands approach for Mecklenburg.
First, such a campaign would have to explicitly ignore if not contradict the recommendations of not one, but two widely acclaimed citizen panels.
The findings of the Harvey Gantt-Cathy Bessant CMS Task Force on remaking CMS would have to be glossed over. Why? Because CMS has not acted on the report — at all. Where the Task Force said that decentralization could save CMS money, CMS under Peter Gorman found a way to make decentralization cost $6 million more.
In fact, a Friends of Mecklenburg County campaign would have to deny and evade on the very issue of CMS reform. There has not been much, if any, under Gorman. We got 20 teachers fired out of 8,000, some $6 million in “learning communities,” and went and re-hired Curtis Carroll and put him in charge of several failing high schools instead of one.
Oh, and we just gave CMS building czar Guy Chamberlain a two-year contract extension.
That is the Peter Gorman track reform record to run on — or away from.
But let’s not forget the Martin Commission. Remember all the angst stirred up by former Gov. Jim Martin’s little committee on future CMS bonds? Remember the Commission — at all? It initially suggested a $400 or so bond for 2007.
So it just is not credible to say all those people are misguided.
CMS needed a different approach — not more and better salesmen of the same old, same old.
Looks like we got the latter.
