Shaping the Mecklenburg County Budget: Your Important Role

As explained in a blog post from this weekend, my letter to the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), if you live in Mecklenburg County, then you have a vested interest in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. This is true whether or not you have a connection to CMS (through employment, a child who is a student, etc), because the health of our schools will be a significant determining factor in the health of our city.

Good schools help to make a city vibrant and increase its economic viability more than any other public service (or, arguably, anything, since the private sector is dependent on a good pool of potential employees, and good schools attract and help to retain families, especially those with young children).

The better off Charlotte is, the better off you will be, personally. The more businesses and individuals come here (or stay here), the more employment opportunities there will be, the lower unemployment, crime, etc. Likewise, the converse is true, and bad schools will ultimately cause downward economic pressure and urban decay.

On June 15, the BOCC will be voting on the final budget, so they need to hear from you as soon as possible, while they are still putting the budget together.

An open letter to the CMS school board

“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”
- John Adams

To the School Board, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools:

I am the father of three students at Smith Academy of International Languages: two in the French program, one in Chinese. Next year, my wife and I will have five students there: two in French, two in Chinese, and one in Spanish. The year after next, we’ll have six there. It is a remarkable school, and it does a remarkable job fulfilling the exhortation above, made 250 years ago by John Adams, then an unknown 21-year-old.