Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools held their back-to-school briefing Wednesday.
The meeting is held each year to update the community on where the school district stands on issues from teacher vacancies to student safety.
“Last year, while I came in with my eyes wide open, I didn’t have the depth of why we did some things,” said superintendent Dr. Clayton Wilcox.
After a year on the job, Dr. Wilcox has reorganized his staff and hired a new transportation director as well as a new chief of police with a renewed focus on safety.
You may remember last school year, two CMS school buses caught fire, one with students inside. Both were Thomas Built Freightliners, and at the time, CMS had 259 in its fleet.
“Thankfully, a lot of those busses were replaced with newer busses over the summer. We do still have some in the fleet so we’re making sure those busses are inspected before they hit the road, and those are also on our radar to be inspected on their monthly inspections,” said Adam Johnson, executive director of transportation.
To address school safety, CMS said they’ve hired more officers, added 60 new school psychologists, counselors and social workers and put their school staff through lockdown and active survival training.
CMS said they’ve also expanded their visitor, vendor and volunteering screening. Now everyone, including the superintendent, must sign-in digitally at every school. The district hopes this will allow them to keep a closer eye on everyone who enters a school.
However, when it came to security upgrades, CMS said only minor changes were made, including adding new locks and fencing.
“You know a lot of people would say put up metal detectors like in airports, and we just can’t really do that with 3,000 kids coming, just can’t do that every day. But what we can do is alert the humans in the building to be more observant. We can, where it makes sense, lock the facilities differently and secure them and we are doing those things,” Dr. Wilcox said.
As far as facility improvements, the superintendent admitted there is a lot of work to be done, especially after NBC Charlotte highlighted issues concerning mold, poorly-maintained bathroom and falling ceiling tiles at several CMS schools during the 2017-2018 school year.
“I’ve had the opportunity now to travel the county now and see the conditions of some of our schools and see where we need to prioritize some of our maintenance and facilities upgrades,” he said.
Dr. Wilcox was also quick to address concerns over the water quality at its schools. Last year, CMS said it began to voluntarily test its water. They later posted results of the testing on their website, and NBC Charlotte's Defenders obtained documents that showed some schools had levels higher than 400 parts per billion.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires action to be taken if lead amounts exceed 15 parts per billion. Initially, 24 schools tested positive for high lead levels. The good news is that those schools have been retested and only seven are still reporting issues.
“We are going to continue this testing moving on to the additional elementary schools, then our middle schools and high schools, and each time we find an issue, we will correct that issue,” Dr. Wilcox said.
This school year, CMS said they’ve grown to a little more than 148-thousand students -- up from 147,000 last year. School starts August 27, but as of Wednesday, NBC Charlotte learned there are still roughly 78 teacher vacancies.
When students return to school, some, however, will have additional social and emotional support. CMS said they’ve hired an additional 60 psychologists, counselors and social workers across the district. They are also piloting a “Caring School Community” in 48 schools which helps students become caring, responsible members of their school communities.
Also new this year for parents and students is a new app called Nutrislice that will show each school’s lunch menu. In the new app, the menu items will contain calorie counts and allergy information. The district has also rolled out a new totally anonymous way to report bullying online.