- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

- This weekend, "Off the Record", yep, we've got your election news.

Out with the old, in with the new, as Mecklenburg County voters clean house on the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board.

In Raleigh, Republicans get their super majority, not in the legislature though, but on the state Supreme Court instead.

And how will North Carolina House and Senate races affect the balance of power in Washington?

Also, CMS looking, again, for another interim superintendent and also a permanent superintendent.

More on the job that nobody seems to want.

And speaking of schools, looks like students are coming back to K5 campuses that lost enrollment during COVID.

Plus, the county supports studying new toll lanes on I-77, but will City Hall support an underground transit center that costs twice as much as putting it above ground?

Lots to talk about next, PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat electronic music) And from our PBS Charlotte Studios in Historic Plaza Midwood, I'm Jeff Sonier, and we're "Off the Record", talking about the stories you've been talking about this week.

And if you watch the news, read the news and listen to the news, well, you'll recognize the names and faces around our virtual table.

Tony Macia from the Charlotte Ledger, Will Wright from the Charlotte Observer and Anna Maria Della Costa from the Charlotte Observer.

You can also join the conversation at home or from your phone, just email your questions and comments to OffTheRecord@wtvi.org.

Well, an election day that was different in a lot of ways, I suppose.

We had, you know, national races on the ballot for US Senate and House, but the most attention here in Charlotte Mecklenburg, I suppose, was on that little school board race that was there to begin with because of the the COVID issues the last couple of years with elections.

A lot of changes on the school board.

I've been here since 1980 and I don't recall any one election where so many newcomers were elected as a group.

Who wants to start us off this week on what we saw happening, that changing of the guard on the Charlotte Mecklenburg school board?

Anybody?

- I'll go ahead.

(Jeff laughs) - Go ahead.

- I think voters were loud and clear that they want change on the school board.

Obviously 3 of 4 incumbents gone.

I think the other thing that was interesting was you have three people that came on, in Lisa Klein, Melissa Easley and Dee Rankin, who have education backgrounds, teachers.

And I think that that also speaks to what voters wanted.

They want teachers to have a voice on the school board.

And you know, teachers have been saying ever since COVID, before COVID, they wanna be heard.

So I think you saw that play out on Tuesday night.

- Yeah, and Jeff, you know, this is really an unusual election for the school board.

This election was supposed to take place last year, got pushed back by a year because of census delays.

But you know, usually these are small turnout elections.

Here you had a US Senate election at the top of the ticket and a whole bunch of other races, including the school board.

So, I don't know how many voters turned out for one of the marquee races and then got to the school board race and said, I don't know these people.

You know, so the dynamic is a lot different.

The districts were different than they were in the most recent election.

You had a lot of drama.

I don't know that there's necessarily a clear mandate because the incumbents that lost were sort of all over the ideological spectrum and they're replaced by people all over the ideological spectrum.

So we're gonna have a majority of newcomers on the school board, but is it gonna change a lot of the dynamics?

I don't know, I think the hope would be you have some new people with fresh ideas.

- Yeah, let's recap.

We had six seats up for grabs and five of the seats were taken by newcomers, either from incumbents running for reelection and losing, or from incumbents who decided not to run at all.

So we essentially have a newcomer majority on the school board.

And you were talking about the educational backgrounds of some of the newly elected school board members.

Four out five of the newcomers elected are all current CMS parents, and the sixth is a parent who's got kids who graduated from CMS.

So I'm wondering, are we seeing maybe something new, in terms of parent power?

We saw political groups organized, representing parents outside the normal political parties.

We saw the NCAE's recommendations, endorsements, for the most part, half of them were rejected by voters.

Is there something else going on here besides just the simple school board election, when it comes to parents wanting more control over their schools and who's representing them?

- I don't necessarily know if that's the case, but I mean, I do know Summer Nunn, one of her biggest things on her platform was she's one of the only ones that still has kids in elementary school, and she wanted to be that elementary school voice on the board.

I think there's something to that, but I'm not sure if it's just a lot of parent power.

I just think they just want different faces and people who are maybe a little bit closer to the ground in the school system.

I just really get that vibe.

- Yeah, when you're a parent, it changes your perspective, I suppose.

And I heard that from a couple of candidates, that the experience that the existing board members had, or have, is not the same as someone who's, as you mentioned, has elementary school kids or a child that's a third grade reader and they're talking about third grade reading scores.

I mean, it gets a lot more personal for parents who have kids in school being affected by some of these issues that the schools are being affected by.

And I wonder if that changes the decision making, 'cause we've got some big decisions coming up for this new school board and a lot of newcomers who will be dipping their toe into the political side of the CMS for the first time in a meaningful way.

Do you think these newcomers shift the direction that the board's been going in the past?

And and do you think it'll affect, for example, the choice of a new superintendent, going forward?

- I mean, I think you just have a bunch of different people with a bunch of different perspectives on there.

Obviously if you have different people on there, they could make different decisions.

But again, I don't think that it's...

It's not like you have, you know, one particular ideological element in control of the school board.

I think the dynamics of, you know...

The mix of people endorsed by the teachers groups on one side and the sort of Moms for Liberty types on the other side.

That doesn't, I don't think, changes a whole lot.

Obviously the hiring of the superintendent is gonna be one of the main things on the plate of these new school board members.

- Yeah.

We'll come back to the superintendent search in a few moments.

One last quick question about the school board election.

You know, a couple of years ago when city council saw a lot of millennials getting elected, they talked about it being a millennial city council.

Is that what we're seeing now with school board?

I mean, the changing of the guard, we're not necessarily seeing all youngsters, if you will, being elected, but we certainly are seeing people getting into politics for the first time.

And I don't know if that's a shift that's gonna happen on all elected boards eventually, but we certainly saw it happen in a big way on Tuesday night, didn't we?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, on a night when a lot of incumbents won and a lot of favorites won, this was the race that really stuck out.

Then you had three of four incumbents fall.

I mean, yeah we've seen that across the country over the last several months, as it relates to school boards all over the place, so.

But yeah, I mean, most of the incumbents won, most of the favorites won, except for this school board race.

So it sort of makes you scratch your head and say, "Okay, what was up with that?"

"Are there special circumstances there?"

- I've heard people say, you know, the parents, they love their schools, they love their teachers, they don't necessarily love their leadership at CMS.

So to the new school board members, be careful what you ask for because you might just get it, and good luck over the next three years.

As you mentioned, Tony, not the only race on the ballot that night, but certainly the most interesting one.

But in Raleigh, some changes, with a shift back towards the Republicans and close to what they were hoping for, and that's a super majority.

Will, what's your impression on what happened Tuesday night and how that affects the state lawmakers going forward?

- Yeah, it was a good night for Republicans.

Maybe not the perfect image of a night, in the sense that the Republicans did not get a super majority in both chambers of the State House.

They got one in the Senate, then the house they came up one short.

There are still, put a small caveat on that, still less than a handful of races that are close.

For example, in Cabarrus County and Concord, that race is...

There's still a possibility that Echevarria, the Republican, could come ahead, but it's unlikely, but it's still possible.

But running on the assumption that that doesn't happen, there is still...

Came up one seat short in the house, at least, so Governor Roy Cooper's veto should still be effective.

And the other big race obviously is the Supreme Court.

Republicans now have control of the North Carolina Supreme Court and that will make a huge difference when it comes to redistricting, in particular.

These congressional maps that we have, for example, having Jeff Jackson winning in South Charlotte and out to Gastonia.

Those maps are not gonna be around for the next election.

It's unlikely.

So that will be a huge difference maker for sure.

- Yeah, the super majority gives any party that's got it, but in this case the Republicans, opportunities to do things without the threat of a veto.

Obviously that threat is there, but even if it wasn't there, that Supreme Court can overturn some of those decisions.

And we've seen that in particular in the gerrymandered maps.

This, it's kind of a green light.

I mean, in some ways, winning the Supreme Court super majority is probably a bigger deal on those issues than having the super majority in the legislature, right?

- Yes, and I think that everyone's eyes were on the US Senate race.

And Republican Ted Budd winning is a big victory for Republicans, 'cause it was expected to be a close race.

But I think among insiders, probably the Supreme Court was their higher goal, you know?

Having Ted Budd in the Senate maintains the status quo of North Carolina's representation in that chamber in Washington.

Having Supreme Court will make a big difference for eight years, or six years rather, going forward.

- Yeah, and it's not just the maps that will be affected either.

There's a lot of issues that are possibly in the pipeline over the next few years that could result in court cases that that new Republican Supreme Court will decide.

I mean, you know, it goes beyond just what the legislature says yes to or no to, it gets to what the Supreme Court says yes to or no to, and there's no veto power on the Supreme Court, once they make that decision, that decision normally stands.

- Yeah, I mean on state issues, you know, especially in the other area that you're gonna see, besides redistricting, is school funding.

The Leandro case has been going on for almost 30 years, guaranteeing the right of a sound basic education for students in North Carolina.

There have been a lot of battles on that, that the existing Supreme Court, dominated by Democrats, or I'm sorry, I think it's 4-3, Democrats, came out with a decision last week saying, "Okay, you need to fund education in North Carolina."

So now there are questions, well, how does that stick around?

Is the new Republican court able to undo that decision?

So, you know, like Will said, a lot of different issues potentially on the docket there.

- Yeah, I mean Leandro was what, a 20 year old court case that that was decided, what, two or three days before the election.

So it makes you wonder if Democrats maybe saw the writing on the wall, and were hoping to make a decision among those four justices that were in office right before the election that may or may not stand up when the new justices, the Republican majority, takes over.

A lot of, you know, they say the judicial, it's not political, it's not supposed to be political, but it's extremely political here in North Carolina when it comes to a lot of key issues, I suppose.

Hey, I saw a story this morning in "The Observer" about...

It talked about the Countrypolitan voter, and how Democrats are still having problems, not necessarily in the big cities, but in the counties just outside the big cities.

And I guess we kind of saw that in this election and almost every election this cycle, when it comes to those justices, the almost super majority at the GOP level of the US Senate race.

Talk a little bit about how, you know, what Democrats are doing wrong when it comes to winning some of those races, and whether demographics changing will result in a political change long term.

Anyone wanna tackle that quickly?

- I think we might see parts of the surrounding counties of Mecklenburg become more blue as time goes on.

I mean, we're seeing now, likely, very likely, a Democrat representing Cabarrus County, or part of Cabarrus County.

But I think it would take a long time for Gaston, or Union, or the rest of Cabarrus County to flip blue.

But that said, when you're running these statewide races, like for Supreme Court, for US Senate, democrats have to do decent, at least, in rural areas.

You know, you can't just rely on Mecklenburg, Durham and Wake Counties to get you a victory in North Carolina and the other Democratic strongholds across the state.

But as far as what they're doing wrong, I believe they're trying to figure that out.

(Will and Jeff laugh) But, you know, we'll see if their strategies are gonna be effective, but they're gonna have to do something differently, I think, to be reliably successful statewide.

- Yeah, Will, if you know what they're doing wrong, you could make a lot more money, right?

We all could.

(laughs) Hey, you mentioned the US Senate race.

I guess we have to mention it as well, since it was front and center for most of this campaign.

I guess the win by Ted Budd over Cheri Beasley shows that, at least in North Carolina, a Trump endorsement still makes a difference.

Not just in the party, but maybe among the voters as a whole.

That was a little different here than it was in a lot of other states across the country on election night, right?

- Yeah, I don't know how much Trump's endorsement played into it.

I'm sure it definitely had an effect in the primary.

I'm sure it had an effect getting some of the base out for representative Budd.

But Trump's presence in this race was fairly limited.

I mean, he came and visited once to campaign for Budd.

That said, you're right, I mean, Ted Budd won by a decent little margin there, and you know, I'd be curious going forward what Trump's role is.

I heard from some local Republicans that they thought that Trump's involvement and his presence in the party had them lose seats in Mecklenburg they were hoping to flip.

Like Bill Brawley was running for a seat in Mecklenburg County.

There were a handful of other races that they were supposed to be close-ish and actually fairly close, and they lost those.

And so it's unclear how moderate Republicans and unaffiliated voters in South Charlotte, other places in Mecklenburg County are gonna react to Trump's presence going forward.

- Tony?

- Yeah, I mean, for all the talk that we just had about Democrats having problems in sort of the Exurban counties, you see Republicans having trouble in suburban areas of Mecklenburg.

You look at that Matthew Ridenhour, Laura Meier race on the County Commission.

South Charlotte District Republicans were hoping they could sort of break into the county commission.

You know, it's a completely democratic county commission at the moment.

But you know, Ridenhour, a Republican who's served as a county commissioner before, lost that race, even though this is a sort of suburban type of district.

So, you know, you are seeing continued troubles, I think, by the Republican party in attracting some of these suburban voters.

How much of a Trump effect that is, I think is sort of a open question.

- Yeah, Ridenhour was a popular ex-county commissioner trying to get his old seat back, and you would think that would be about the best opportunity the Republicans, certainly, had this time around, and maybe might have for a while because he was a guy who voters had chosen before, but not this time around.

By the way, as you mentioned, the Mecklenburg County Commission stays all Democrat and the Mecklenburg delegation in Raleigh, all Democrats except for one, John Bradford won in house 98, which means there will be at least one Republican talking with the leadership on behalf of the city and county for funding issues like the transit tax and that sort of thing, going forward.

I don't know if that helps or hurts or if one is enough, but there is at least one Republican speaking on behalf of... Or talking with the leadership in Raleigh, while the Democrats sometimes don't talk with Republicans on issues like this.

Hey, let's go back to schools, shall we?

Day after, two days after the school board election, we're now searching for another interim superintendent.

Hugh Hattabaugh stepping down for personal reasons.

Anna, you're smiling, you've had a busy week.

You wanna talk a little bit about the timing of that and the surprise factor of Dr Hattabaugh leaving?

- Sure.

First of all, I read something this morning and I wanna make it clear.

I talked in depth with him yesterday.

He was not pushed out in any way, shape or form.

They adore him.

He brought a lot of stability, or brings a lot of stability.

He's still on the job until December 31st.

It's something that he had been thinking about for a few weeks.

He has an ailing father who lives in Indiana.

He's 98 years old and refuses to go into a nursing home.

And Hugh said, you know, he's the lone person to take care of him, and also his wife really wants to go back to Florida.

So Hugh just thought it best to step down.

And, you know, I just, he...

He said it was probably about 80% or 90% personal reasons, about 10% where there were some personality issues here and there on the board, which of course you're going to have.

I mean, he has nine bosses, theoretically.

So that's something that's gonna happen.

But he's going to be missed the short time that he was here.

He really kind of...

I wrote about it today, there's just no BS, you know?

He's just a straight shooter, this is what we need to do, this is how we need to get there.

And I think that he should be the blueprint of what the new board should be looking for moving forward for a permanent superintendent, obviously.

There's gonna be an interim now for about six months, but I really think their sights seem to be set on a permanent.

- Yeah, we had eight months of stability, but what comes next?

I mean, that's the question.

That stability was welcome after some of the instability we've seen over the past couple of years.

But it does kind of leave the incoming board, the system itself in a lurch when it comes to some of the changes that have been implemented, some of the direction that the board and the school system is taking right now.

Are we gonna see, I mean, can, you know... How do you reclaim that stability that Hattabaugh brought to the table?

- I think they're gonna look internally for an interim, and I think that's going to help, because he put some people in place and kind of set a direction.

So I think if you keep it internal, that is key to kind of carry that on.

And like I said, it's really now setting your sights on a permanent, and they've been saying all along, they wanna wait until January until the new board is seated, but that needs to really start in earnest here in the next month.

- You know, if you're a fourth grader right now in Charlotte Mecklenburg schools, you've had three superintendents since you started school, you'll have at least one more before the end of this school year, maybe two more.

That just kind of gives you a sense of how quickly things... That that carousel spins when it comes to the new superintendent.

And again, with a new school board majority on board for this next choice, it'll be interesting to see if they... What they're looking for and who they may choose coming up next.

Tony, you wrote a little... - Yeah I think it'll... - I'm sorry, go ahead Tony.

- Jeff, if I could cut in on that, I think it's also gonna be interesting what sort of people they get applying for this.

I think CMS has a reputation of having high turnover in this job and are you able to get the top tier type of candidates that you want, after all the turnover that we've had and superintendents.

Now, you do have a number of very highly qualified people internally who could take over on an interim basis.

You might recall that before Hugh Hattabaugh came in, Scott McCully, who had been with the district for a while, left and came back.

He was interim superintendent I think for two days, something like that.

(Jeff laughs) So you'd probably see something like that on the short term.

But longer term, who do they get to apply for this job?

And do you have somebody... Is there another Hugh Hattabaugh out there?

- Right, yeah.

I guess we'll find out over the next couple of months.

You know, that's one of the first big issues that the new board will tackle.

One of the next big issues after that is something you wrote about this morning, Tony, and that's possible new districts down in South Charlotte, redrawing the lines of where students will be going to school in the future with new high schools.

Talk a little bit about that, if you don't mind.

- Yeah, I mean there's a lot on the plate.

Even though they're looking for a new superintendent, you know, the work of CMS goes on in doing a lot of the things that they wanna do.

You know, you have issues on school safety, you have the search for a new superintendent.

And one of the things is student assignment.

CMS looks at student assignment lines and boundaries every few years.

There's one that's gonna be, really, coming up in the next couple months that is gonna get a lot of attention, I think.

And that's because CMS is building, has under construction, a new high school in the Valentine area.

It's actually in the south Mecklenburg zone.

But that's gonna cause a ripple effect of student assignment really throughout most of South Charlotte, in the Myers Park, Ardrey Kell and South Mecklenburg zone.

That's a huge zone where parents are notoriously very engaged in school assignment decisions.

And so it's just starting to...

Some of those details are just starting to kind of leak out, but that's certainly gonna be a big focus, I think, over the next couple of months.

- Yeah, anytime you try to redraw the lines on schools that you're happy with now, it certainly brings out crowds and it certainly brings out criticism.

That new board has its work cut out for it, obviously.

One other quick school thing, CMS enrollment up in K5 schools down in South Charlotte.

That's a reversal from what we saw during COVID, right?

- Yeah, we saw during COVID in 2021, or 2020 and 2021, you saw big exits from elementary schools in South Charlotte.

They led, CMS, in enrollment drops, as people, you know, turned to homeschooling, private schools, those sorts of things.

Looking at the enrollment numbers that CMS put out last month, you can now see that those enrollment drops have stopped.

CMS had predicted that a couple years ago.

They said they thought after COVID, students would return, and it looks like they are, or at least they're not leaving in the same numbers that they used to.

So, you know, overall, the district's numbers... You know, we think of Mecklenburg County as a growing county, but CMS's enrollment numbers have been largely flat the last couple of years.

There was a drop during COVID.

Still below our peak in the 2015 to 2019 timeframe.

So parents, I think, feel like they have options, and some of them are exercising that.

But I think it's good for CMS to have some stability in enrollment.

- Yep, we've got about a minute left.

Two quick things.

County commission this week endorsed studying a plan for new toll lanes down to the state line on I-77.

That's not a final decision, in fact, we may have another decision coming up this week, this coming week, and we'll probably talk about that next week on this show.

But the transportation center.

90 million if it's underground, 45 to 55 million if it's above ground.

Seems like an easy decision, except CATS likes the more expensive one.

Anybody want to just weigh in very quickly about that?

- Yeah, so the city's been working with a developer.

They want to put offices and retail and the Hornets practice center on that site.

And so the developer's preference is to have the bus station underground.

That seems that seems to be the direction that the city council is going too.

That's the recommendation from CATS.

But there are some questions on how that would work, how much that would cost, that sort of thing.

- Yeah, no final decisions on that yet, and it'll be interesting to see how council members react to the high cost plan that CATS seems to like right now.

Again, another topic for another show.

There's always another show, and I wanna thank you all for joining us on this one.

If you're watching at home, remember you can always join the conversations as well, just send your comments or questions to OffTheRecord@wtvi.org.

Thanks for joining us this week and we'll see you next time, right here on PBS Charlotte.

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