Hands up who saw this coming?
Mecklenburg County commissioner Parks Helms has taken on the case of George McDonald, the CMS art teacher caught about to shoot up heroin in a locked Bruns Road Elementary classroom. McDonald was arrested and charged with possession in connection with the incident on Monday.
Helms tells the Uptown paper of record that he has known McDonald for years, that McDonald had struggled with addiction for years, that his family had been seeking a treatment option, and that McDonald did not intend to hurt anyone.
This would make McDonald a high-functioning heroin addict, one supposes. So high-functioning that evidently no one at CMS noticed he was a heroin addict. But does CMS really want to take a stance that CMS teaching standards are so low that a heroin user struggling with addiction can do a fine job? Didn’t think so.
Here’s what I would like to know: Was McDonald’s relationship with Helms known to CMS officials and administrators? And did that relationship influence the way they treated McDonald?
This is not pure speculation, not in the hyper-political world of CMS. We have a very recent example.
Even going back to her days as a student teacher, Tricia Cotham was known to other CMS staffers as a “golden child” as a result of being the daughter of the former chairman of the county Democrat Party and a top Democrat fundraiser. That is why Cotham’s former co-workers were able to spot right away that she had the inside track to replace Jim Black in the General Assembly. And that is exactly what happened.
So it is not completely out-of-bounds to wonder if Helms’ halo rubbed off on George McDonald over the years.
