Let’s see if we have this straight.

Rhonda Lennon, endorsed by the Uptown paper of record this past fall as the voice of reason for school board, has a big problem with the Martin Commission’s $572 million school building plan. Lennon thinks that low-priority projects should not have been included in the package, which includes $172 million in COPs spending and a $400 million bond for next year’s ballot.

Further, I have been told that Lennon was incensed that she could not get support for re-opening CMS’ building standards, the costly, gold-plated crux of CMS’ construction crunch. In sum, CMS is staying the course and is not implementing any of the reforms to construction patterns as suggested by the CMS Task Force or a John Locke Foundation study on school construction in North Carolina.

So Rhonda Lennon now joins county manager Harry Jones, who said that CMS had to find a way to control its willy-nilly spending; the CMS Task Force, chaired by Harvey Gantt and Cathy Bessant, which advocated budget reform, de-centralization, out-outsourcing of non-eduational components, and a real, effective magnet program; and not to mention thousands of CMS parents who have made good faith efforts to get CMS to change only to be stiffed by the bureacracy and its defenders.

Surely all these people do not hate public education. Surely they might have a small point about the need for CMS to do something besides beg for more money.

Evidently not.

Incredibly Char-Meck is going to try and sell voters on another $400 million school bond, which is exactly what voters rejected. Moreover, they rejected the bond in precincts across the county, even in areas where the bond money has headed. South Charlotte in particular should have voted for the bonds given the numbers. South Charlotte candidates and activists, in fact, endorsed the bonds, to no avail. This explodes the idea, which is stubbornly popular, that suburban voters voted against the bonds because they wanted a COPs plan instead. No, they voted against the bonds because they did not trust CMS.

Now, lo and behold, we have fresh evidence from the Martin Commission that people working diligently to indentify actual educational needs and not political wants cannot put a dent in the CMS mindset.

Worse, there seems to be a wholly unfounded belief that incoming superintendent Peter Gorman will be able to magically sell the bond to voters next year. But Gorman is supposed to be a change agent, not a new face on the same old CMS status quo. CMS parents and voters will not be fooled.

Time is running out. Rhonda Lennon is obviously not the problem. It is still CMS.