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CMS midyear review discusses new initiatives to attract talent, addresses guns found on school grounds

CMS Interim Superintendent Crystal Hill said there is much work to be done going into the second half of the school year.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Crystal Hill, the interim superintendent for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, said CMS has strong leaders and teachers but more are still needed. CMS leaders announced new incentives for teachers who commit.

Christine Pejot, chief human resources officer for CMS, said they're excited about offering new student teachers for CMS a sign-on bonus.

"That's a $10,000 sign-on bonus to student teachers who complete their student teaching requirement at CMS and then go on to commit to becoming a full-time teacher with CMS," Pejot said.

It's $7,500 for student teachers who do their student teaching in one district but move to CMS.

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Pejot said they're also focusing on their internal pipeline.

"Those are things that we can control, that we have our grow-your-own teacher pipeline program called CMS Teaching Residency," Pejot said. "This most recent year passed, we added core contact area of exceptional children, general education, so that we can have more specialized ECT teachers to serve our student population."

She said they've seen about 200 people leave since October and expect to see 50 more by end of March.

"That's why retention is something that we need to focus on," Pejot said.

CMS leaders also addressed safety.

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Halfway through the school year, two guns have been found on CMS campuses so far. While that's two too many, it's 20 fewer from the same time the year before. The district said it's not without effort.

"I don't want to say it's 100% attributed -- there's other things we put in place like the reestablishment of the campus crime stoppers program, and I think certain things are a deterrent, as well as some of the educational pieces to the parents," Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Johnny Jennings said.

"Absolutely the intervention is one of the most extreme in the district," Brian Schultz, chief operating officer for CMS, added. "So that plays a major part of it. To say it's 100% I can't say it's 100%. We've also done some additional things."

Schultz said they're continuing to collaborate with law enforcement and add employee safety training. He said at the end of the day, school safety goes hand-in-hand with student learning. 

"If 20 fewer students are suspended, well it's an automatic 365 days you're out of school, so that's 7,300 days of school for just those students," Schultz said.

Contact Jane Monreal at jmonreal@wcnc.com and follow her on FacebookTwitter and Instagram.  

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