Molly Griffin
Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools
By Rick Handford
                  
Current at-large Board of Education member Trent Merchant introduced the recently elected CMS Board Chair, Molly Griffin. Molly earned her undergraduate degree at Duke before receiving her law degree from the University of South Carolina. She became a partner in the law firm of Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, and has served on numerous non-profit boards serving children, including Communities in Schools, a Child's Place, and the Children's Theatre of Charlotte. She and her husband Robert have five children and one grandchild. She was first elected to the Board of Education in 1997 as the representative of District 5. In 2006 she became Vice-Chair of the Board and was elected Chair in 2009. Molly is well respected by people of many diverse ideologies and across the political spectrum.
 
Molly began with an overview of CMS basic facts. The system has 137,000 students from 161 countries and having 140 different native languages. Forty-two percent are black, 34% are white, 16% are Hispanic, and 8% are Asian/other. The $1.2 billion annual budget covers employment of over 9,000 teachers, almost 9,000 support staff, and some 1,500 administrative personnel. The system has over 170 schools, 1,200 mobile classrooms, and 19 million square feet of total facilities in Mecklenburg County.
 
With regard to academic performance, it is improving in almost all of the areas measured, with scores up in writing, math, English, geometry, civics, history, SATs and Advanced Placement. Reading is down, but that is primarily because the standards for reading were raised, as they should have been. When a similar increase in standards for math took place two years ago, scores also fell initially, but have subsequently improved.
 
National test scores consistently place CMS above the national average, the state average, and most other urban school districts. While the news is good, it is not all good. Increases in performance are behind the pace required to meet the No Child Left Behind requirement for all students to be at grade level by 2014. There is also a large "achievement gap" between racial and socioeconomic groups, on the order of 35 percent when measured in terms of students meeting grade level requirements. The gap is remaining about the same even as scores are improving across the board. Perhaps the greatest problem is the drop out rate, with 6-7% of students dropping out each year. Only about 2/3 of incoming 9th graders graduate in 4 years.
 
Improvement in performance by students will require improvements in the leadership of the schools, from the Board to the Superintendent to the principals to the teachers. Molly's intention is to start the improvement process this year with the Board. Productive, professional meetings focused on student achievement along with shared leadership in areas where certain Board members have special talent, expertise or interest should improve performance. As regards Superintendent Gorman, the Board hired him to implement policies that the Board had formulated over many years. It is time to get out of the way and let him do his job, and focus on Board performance.
 
The key manager in the school is the principal. The current group of principals in CMS is getting older and approaching retirement, and there are a number of programs/strategies currently being used to grow and recruit the next generation of effective principals, including a national program, "New Leaders for New Schools" and a local program in cooperation with Winthrop University, "Leaders for Tomorrow". The goal is to recruit and train 50 new principals over the next six years to work in high poverty schools. In addition to training and recruiting principals, there are programs that seek to make the principals that we have more effective. These include "Freedom and Flexibility with Accountability", allowing proven principals to implement their own new ideas to improve performance, and "Strategic Staffing", where principals and their teams are moved into poorer performing schools. This team approach stems partly from teacher feedback indicating that they were not willing to move into poorer schools alone, even for more money, but would be willing to go as part of a team.
 
Nationally, well over half of all teachers graduated in the bottom half of their high school class. It is important to find new ways to attract the best and brightest graduates to consider teaching. Thanks to a $4 million grant from the Spangler Foundation, CMS now has 215 teachers in the Teach for America program in CMS, and their performance has been good, both locally and nationally. CMS has also been given permission from the state to implement a pilot "Pay for Performance" program that will allow teachers to be compensated on the basis of classroom performance instead of education and seniority.
 
In the present environment, the budget is of major concern. Given a state mandate to prepare for cuts of 3, 5, or 7 percent; and county direction to cut 5%, combined with the need to open six new schools this year, the shortfall looks to be about $70 million. As 85% to 90% of the budget is salaries and related expenses, some of the cuts will be painful. By fortunate coincidence, CMS has just gotten a grant from the Gates Foundation for an audit of the budget by Education Resource Strategies, a group that analyzes school system budgets and makes recommendations of how to get the most student achievement per dollar spent.
 
Molly's responses to questions included the following additional information: (a) The morale of the teachers and staff in CMS is pretty high, largely due to confidence in Superintendent Gorman; (b) That changes to the system to reduce incentives for teachers to retire after 30 years have started and will likely continue; (c) That the economic situation is limiting the County's ability to sell bonds to finance planned new construction and is precluding expansion of desirable programs such as Performance Learning Centers and Media Centers; and (d) That the crime situation in the schools is better than it tends to be perceived.
 
We look forward to watching Molly's progress in improving the student achievement within CMS in these most interesting times.
      
   
Head Table: Todd Stevens, Jeff Payne, Karen Calder, Mac McCarley, Trent Merchant, Kemp Dunaway, Steve Montgomery;
Invocation: Dave Adams;
Visitors & Guests: Bill Constangy; Health & Happiness: Cecily Durrett; Song: Biff Virkler; Piano: Thomas Moore; Photos: Bert Voswinkel

• Jan Thompson introduced Karen Simon as the club's newest Rotarian. Karen is the Director of Inmate Programs for the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office and can be reached at Karen.simon@mecklenburgcountync.gov. Welcome, Karen.
         
• Tim Newman was elected chair of the Art Institute of Charlotte; Carol Gray will be executive director of the Lake Norman Regional Transportation Commission.
       
• Well wishes are extended to John Nicolay, who was scheduled for gall bladder surgery this week; Wes Sturges is doing well following surgery to correct a brain issue.
       
• Wes Clark, CNP Technologies, invites you to the second annual Optimize Your Enterprise Technology Solutions Showcase on February 17, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm. Pre-registration is required: http://optimize09.eventbrite.com.
 
• The holidays are over and the HOST DINNERS are cranking up. Alan and Mindy Adler are hosting dinner on February 28 and are in need of another couple. Three dinners are scheduled during March: Chuck Cocke on the 7; Bill Staton on the 21; and Lynn Wheeler on the 28. Sign-up is available here.

• Tom Burgess is coordinating Flight of Honor applications and will be glad to discuss the opportunity to participate. Contact Tom at 704-366-5911 or email tnburgess@bellsouth.net.

Memorial fund set up for shooting victims
Rotary International News - January 29, 2009
   
The Rotary Club of Clackamas, Oregon and Rotary International District 5100 (parts of Oregon and Washington) have established memorial funds after two Rotary Youth Exchange students were killed and five others wounded in a shooting outside an underage nightclub on January 24 in Portland.
 
The two victims, Ashley Lauren Wilks, 16, of Happy Valley, Oregon and Martha Paz De Noboa, 17, of Arequipa, Peru were at the club to celebrate a birthday with nine fellow exchange students when the incident took place. The five injured students have all been released from the hospital.
 
Investigators of the Portland Police Bureau described the shooting as "a random act of violence," and said that the victims did not appear to be targeted and did nothing to provoke the 24-year old gunman, who later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
 
"We are deeply saddened by this tragedy, and our focus now is on supporting the surviving victims and their families, and the family and friends of the students who have died." District 5100 Governor Dennis J. Wickham said in a release. "Immediately after being notified of the tragic incident, Rotary's procedures and personnel in place for such an emergency were activated."
 
District 5100 has established a fund to help defray some of the medical and travel costs incurred by the victims, their families, and the host families. Any funds remaining after paying these expenses will continue as the Martha (Tika) Paz De Noboa Memorial Scholarship Fund. Contributions for the scholarship funds can be sent to the following addresses:
 

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; Page A10
   
The global effort to eradicate polio, which began more than two decades ago and has suffered repeated setbacks, will receive an additional $635 million in an effort to finish the job over the next five years. The money will be used to intensify vaccination campaigns in northern India and northern Nigeria, the two regions that account for more than 80 percent of the remaining cases of the paralyzing infection. In addition to those two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only others where "wild" polio virus still circulates. Providing the new infusion of cash are Rotary International, the service organization that first proposed the eradication of polio and has raised $825 million toward the goal; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the governments of Germany and Britain.
 
About $6.17 billion has been spent so far on the eradication effort. The United States has contributed $1.4 billion over the years and is the biggest single donor. "If we don't do this, we will lose all the investment we have made in the past," Gates said at a Rotary conference in San Diego.
 
The $255 million Gates pledged comes 14 months after a $100 million donation his foundation made in 2007 as the virus resurged in India. Since then, he and his wife have committed themselves to eradicating malaria, a task that will be much harder than ending polio. Gates suggested that a failure to rid the world of polio would be a major setback to progress in global public health that his foundation is spearheading.