Rep who wants to split CMS: Effort would likely take years

CHARLOTTE — State Rep. David Willis wants to recall school board members and break up the state’s second-largest school district, but he recognizes that splitting Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will be an uphill battle.

Representative David Willis says he knows CMS won’t be split up overnight but he thinks the district is too big and the ongoing controversies are proof of that.

He also wants to give Mecklenburg County families a chance to hold their elected officials accountable at the ballot box sooner than the elections are currently scheduled.

As CMS families deal with the fallout of the firing of Dr. Crystal Hill and await the findings of numerous investigations into the district, Union County Representative David Willis is planning to introduce legislation that would break up the district and allow recall elections of the CMS Board Members.

“I think we’ve, you know, we’ve pushed our teachers and our students and our families far enough and they’ve reached out to me because they can’t get help in Mecklenburg County,” Willis said on the phone to Channel 9’s Joe Bruno.

Willis recognizes any move to split up CMS will likely take years because of lawsuits and pushback. He wants to set up a study committee to determine what the new districts would look like geographically and how this would work financially.

“We’ve got pretty plenty of precedent on merging school districts, but we don’t really have a lot of precedent on separating school districts, especially within a single county,” Willis said.

But there is precedent for recall elections. State law provides a recall process for dozens of governmental bodies in North Carolina.

The three at-large school board members are up for a vote next year. The district representatives aren’t up until 2029. Willis thinks parents deserve a say on their leadership sooner.

“There may be some school board members that are doing a fantastic job, but they’ve gotten lost in the shuffle and I think the simplest and easiest way to approach this is just to have a recall election. Allow folks to appoint the folks that they feel can get us out of this mess and keep us out of this mess,” Willis said.

CMS has not commented on the proposed legislation

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