School Board Faces Backlash After Freezing Suburban Towns Out Of New Construction

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HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. – School board members are facing backlash after their response to a local charter school bill.

They passed an act that freezes several suburban towns out of new school construction projects.

“This is politics at it’s worst. It’s very unfortunate,” says Huntersville Mayor John Aneralla.

Town leaders and local representatives from Charlotte’s suburbs are calling it a divisive, damaging, even callous move.

Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill, and Cornelius have been taken off the priority list for new school construction.

“It doesn’t seem like you can take somebody’s tax dollars and then not ever build another school in their particular town,” Aneralla says.

School board members are sending a message to the towns after state lawmakers passed a bill allowing them to create their own charter schools.

Leaders of the towns say they were looking for solutions to overcrowding and being mostly left out of recent CMS bonds.

“If we aren’t going to get new facilities, we needed to ensure there might be a way to have seats for our kids in the future,” explains Huntersville Town Commissioner Mark Gibbons.

Critics argue new charter schools would pull resources away from CMS and lead to less diversity in the classroom.

“We want to make sure that our fiduciary responsibility is laser focused,” said Ericka Ellis-Stewart at Tuesday night’s school board meeting.

School board members say they can’t commit money for new construction if students might leave for charter schools.

“We don’t want to build new schools and then not have them utilized,” Ellis-Stewart said.

The school board is also calling on the superintendent to study re-assigning students to schools in their own town, which could lead to more overcrowding.

Students who live in Matthews but go to Providence High would be forced to go to Bulter.

And all students who live in Huntersville would go to Hopewell or North Meck.

The school board says if any of the four towns passes a 15-year-moratorium on building charter schools, they’ll get back on the priority list.

Local leaders aren’t backing down. Some are suggesting they might explore the possibility of splitting CMS into smaller districts.