The Political Beat: CMS board leaders discuss superintendent search, legislative agenda

CHARLOTTE — Following a fall election where five new faces were voted to join the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ Board of Education, the school board has wasted little time getting to work on some of the biggest issues facing the district.

An ambitious timeline in the search for a superintendent, proposed school calendar changes and an agenda for state legislators were among the first action items from the new board members.

The Political Beat’s Joe Bruno sat down with board members Summer Nunn and Stephanie Sneed -- both elected in November -- about the work already underway.

Nunn chairs the superintendent search committee that has set an aggressive timeline to have a new leader hired by the end of this school year.

“We set the timeline to be ambitious and that was to hold us to the work,” Nunn said. “There are quite a few other large school systems out there that are also doing searches. We didn’t want to miss out on certain candidates picking another school system, just because we were delaying our process.”

Sneed is the vice chair of the board and head of intergovernmental relationships. She said the district was particular about its annual legislative agenda to include key issues.

“The overall theme is that we need help making sure that we can produce the best students and that comes in multiple forms,” she said. Among the requests is support for teachers that could make hiring easier and proposals to alter state law on school calendars, Sneed said.

“The teacher pipeline is drawing up, so that’s why it’s important that we have all hands on deck to support us to recruit and retain,” Sneed said. “We want experienced teachers; we want exceptional teachers in our classrooms.”

>>> Watch Joe Bruno’s full interview with CMS leadership in the video at the top of this page.

(WATCH BELOW: CMS discusses ways to improve student performance)

CMS discusses ways to improve student performance

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