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

- This week on "Off the Record," more suburban schools masking up after spikes in COVID, but at CMS, where masks are already required, well so far so good.

But what about CMS test scores during COVID?

Eh, not so good.

Well, back to school also means back to checking for weapons, the good and bad of back to normal.

The Goal Line finally back on track.

Street car service from West Charlotte to Plaza Midwood, but who's riding on this?

And what's riding on this?

Big college football crowds in Charlotte this weekend, good for the hotels and restaurants, but sell outs at the stadium with no social distancing and no masking?

Really?

Plus, if the ACC moves its headquarters out of Greensboro, Charlotte says you're welcome here.

What no moratorium means if you're facing eviction.

And working at Carowinds for 20 bucks an hour.

Lots to talk about next on PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat 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 taking 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.

Dedrick Russell from WBTV, and Eli Portillo from the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.

Also Mark Becker from WSOC and Tony Mecia from the Charlotte Ledger.

Thanks for joining us gang, this morning.

You can also join the conversation, just email your questions and comments to OffTheRecord@WTVI.org.

Well first week of school in the books for Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, and not an entirely bad week when it comes to COVID.

I wanted to talk first about some, I guess, what you call good news regarding COVID, especially in light of what the suburban schools have been going through.

I know, Dedrick, you watch schools for us.

For the most part, I don't know if it's a surprise or not, but good to see that so few COVID cases are surfacing given such a big school system, and I guess we can thank masks for that, correct?

- Yeah, absolutely.

You know CMS called it early where masks would be mandated in all CMS buildings, and they said that the science proves that if one student or faculty member has contracted COVID-19, because everybody is masked inside that room everybody would not have to quarantine, just that person who has COVID-19, and that will not disrupt teaching and learning.

So, and remember, and vaccinations.

We have teachers who are being vaccinated, and students who are of age being vaccinated, and all of that works, vaccination plus masks keep numbers down.

- Yeah, and happening at the same time that a lot of the suburban school systems who decided not to mask initially, but now are changing that policy are seeing spikes in COVID infections.

Sometimes kids, thousands of kids being quarantined because of COVID contacts, I'm guessing that a lot of them will look back in hindsight and wish they did what CMS did from the get go here, right?

- Yeah, you're right because the news, if you look in Florida, if you look at all those states and school districts where masks are optional, you see that there are problems, even a new school in Fort Mill had to go remote because of that.

So I guess the numbers done lie.

Real news does not lie.

And I guess people are just taking hold of that, and trying to try to do their best to keep people safe when they come to school.

- Yeah, by the way, those numbers, 125 cases of COVID in the first three days of schools, three days of school at CMS, that's among 143,000 students and more than, that's about what, one case per school?

That's remarkable in this day and time, in particular with so much going on around us in other school systems at the very same time.

- Yeah, but I would say keep in mind that other school districts who have had problems, they opened school earlier than CMS, so CMS is behind a little bit, so we will see when CMS is open for another week or so to see if those numbers do spike.

- Let's hope they don't.

Let's hope they stay flat, and let's hope that the other school systems that are suffering through this situation right now find a way to get to see at least the early success that CMS is seeing right now.

Of course back to, I mentioned back to school and back to normal also means back to some of what we don't like about normal, and that is violence in schools, and I guess we're returning now, what to screening for weapons at CMS schools for the first time in almost two years.

That's unfortunate.

- Yeah, it certainly is.

Somebody, I'm sorry, let me jump in real quickly.

Talking to people involved, and they find it ironic that everybody's fussing over the masks in schools, and at the same time we get back to what we almost forgot, and that is the weapons in schools.

Fortunately no one actually hurt yet, but four guns found total already at West Charlotte, and the three in one incident.

A BB gun at West Mecklenburg High School, another gun at Mallard Creek and an attempted robbery.

These are all CMS numbers of course.

And they were doing the searches at Independence back to that screening.

It's just so complicated now, but I think we can't take our eye off of one problem because of the other overriding and overarching problem, which of course is the pandemic.

So schools are really, they got a lot of fires to put out and try to keep things, keep things moving forward.

And of course the academics, which we'll get to talk to here in just a little bit, are a paramount.

It's all about that at the end of the day.

Dedrick?

- Yeah, and school violence is real.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the student who lost their lives at Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem just this week.

But social issues still happen outside of school and inside of schools.

And talking to principle, when students have not been back in school for some 18 months until some of the issues that happen in the community, in their neighborhood spill into the schools, so we have to come to a solution on how our young people can resolve their conflicts and their issues in a peaceful manner because we can no longer go down this road where our young people have issues with each other, and they cannot solve it without bringing guns and knives to school because if they are like this as a teenager, I just cannot imagine how they will resolve issues when they get our age.

- Eli, you had some thoughts on this?

- Yeah, I know during COVID school shutdowns, when we had so many hundreds of thousands of kids in our region out of schools, there was a lot of concern about what are kids gonna get up to when they're out of school, violence, crime, kids dropping out, and I think in this context of returning kids to school, we can actually say hey, we've got kids, many of whom have not been in a school setting for a year and a half, some who because of family issues because of parents working, may not have even been supervised very much for a year, we're returning kids to an enviornment where hopefully we can address more of these issues where hopefully yes, there is still violence in schools, yes it's tragic, but I just wanted to emphasize that we're getting away from something that we've been worried about for more than a year here, which is kids out of school and these disputes happening on the streets, completely apart from supervision.

- Tony?

- Yeah, I mean I think you nailed it, Jeff.

I mean this is really getting back to normal.

I mean this is unfortunately, this is what goes on in schools.

You have fights, you have people bringing guns, you have issues about safety.

And obviously we need to do what we can to try to mitigate that.

And then we have COVID overlaying, and it's really just one more issue to deal with.

I think it's very challenging for these schools trying to just keep everybody safe.

And there are just so many dimensions to that with the COVID and the violence, and the fights, and it's sad to see.

- Yeah, a couple of other school items I wanna touch on.

I know the state, the governor signed the bill that was passed by the legislator that allows school systems to introduce virtual learning if they need it as this pandemic moves forward.

And also requires school systems to vote each month if they decide to require masks in classrooms.

I suppose that's kind of a give and take on the part of both sides in Raleigh giving some of the freedom back to the school systems, but also letting those school systems know that Raleigh still feels like it's in charge here.

Also we saw school test results come out for, I guess, the last school year, and really the fist entire COVID school year.

Not good news here at CMS or also statewide, right Dedrick?

- Yeah, absolutely, you know this week CMS leaders called the day when those test scores were released, called it a serious and somber day.

Superintendent Earnest Winston said that these test scores were not unexpected, but they are still unacceptable.

And when we look at the achievement gap, all races in CMS, all the students, the scores took a dip 'cause we're now just seeing the effects of the pandemic.

And just to point out something, in college and career readiness, when it comes to math and high school, ninth and 10th graders, when we talk about African American students, less than 5% are college and career ready.

The year before that it was 10%.

But with white students only 14.5% are college and carer ready in high school math compared to 36.7%.

So CMS has outlined proposals about what they're gonna do.

They're gonna use like $50 million of the Cares Relief Fund to provide Saturday schooling, before and after schooling, but they know that this is going to be years to catch up.

This is not going to be an overnight success, it's going to take years, and that's why the superintendent is calling everybody, the community, everybody who's watching us right now, it's going to take everybody to make sure that we get across the finish line college and career ready.

- Eli?

- Yeah, I think it was not unexpected, as superintendent said.

It's kind of like comparing marathon times from one year where you make everyone wear lead ankle weights to pervious years.

I mean, yes, the scores were not going to be great most likely.

But I just wanted to put this in the larger context of the dispute between CMS and the county over funding, over closing those achievement gaps.

You know we just came out of this just a few months really ugly fight between these two boards about whether the county should withhold a substantial amount of money from CMS until it can close these achievement gaps.

Well now these numbers, looking as bad as they are, are kind of landing right after that fight wrapped up.

And I think it's gonna be interesting to see how that plays into these budget discussions and the ongoing, likely to be ongoing dispute between CMS and the county.

- Yeah.

Mark, you had some thoughts about this test score situation.

- Yeah, I mean it's Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, job one is teaching and learning.

And we've already talked about the masks and the COVID situation, and we've talked about the violence in schools, but at the end of the day all of that really just gets in the way of learning.

And I think these numbers are distressing.

Not even half of the students.

And CMS is not atypical of the rest of the state.

It's about a little bit lower, I think, than the rest of the state's numbers.

But fewer than half of the students who took that test passed, or got a passing mark on it.

That's not good.

Of course that shows what a year out of school will do.

And as wonderful and amazing as the technology is that allows all of this remote learning and so forth, kids really need to be back in the classrooms, and that's why we're spending all of this time and energy talking about masks, and talking about the vaccinations and talking about the security at the schools 'cause we have to get back to kids learning.

And I'm kind of old school so to speak, I guess you need to learn in the classroom, right?

I am old.

- Old school.

(laughing) Yeah, I wanna, yeah, I wanna, go ahead.

- Can I jump in here?

- Yeah, sure, please.

- I just wanna make the point, this is also, I mean while we're saying this is the pandemic that's causing this, this is also, I think, we need to realize in part a policy choice.

I mean we look back a year ago there was no requirement that the schools be closed, that they go fully virtual.

There was no recommendation from the county health director or the state or the CDC at the time that schools go fully virtual.

CMS made a choice.

Different districts made different choices about the extent to which they wanted to return to in-person learning or not.

CMS chose largely to keep students out of school for moths, now we're seeing some of the results of that.

I mean that could have happened anyway, but I think it's also important as much as we're looking forward to kind of look back and say look, what were some of the decisions?

Right now we're in a period where the CPOVID numbers are triple what they were a year ago, yet we have students back full time in class.

So I think it's fair to look at what did we know then exactly, and what were the decisions our elected leaders made, and were they the right decisions?

Instead of just saying well this is unavoidable, and this is unforeseeable.

- Dedrick?

- Yeah, and accountability is going to be key here.

CMS says that they will let the community know, they will let county leaders know, give them updates about where we are with this achievement gap and with the academics because that is what county leaders wanted.

They wanted more transparency, so CMS said that it will provide that transparency.

And also they said one of the strategies is that right now they are assessing each student to find out where they are, and to give them the resources and help they need.

And also more counselors are gonna be on there because we know that students, some students have been traumatized by COVID-19.

So all of that plays in to the achievement gap.

But accountability is going to be key to make sure that we get those numbers up.

- Yeah, decisions have consequences, and I think that's gonna be the next step is looking at what are the, what were the consequences of the decisions made at CMS and other school systems, and is there a way we could have, if not avoid this, at least minimize what we're seeing right now?

Hey, one last thing about schools.

Tony, you had a story in the ledge this week that talked about the investigation at Meyers Park High School, and through court records hearing from CMS for the first time regrading how they responded to some of those charges of sexual attacks on campus.

You wanna talk briefly just a little bit about what those court records show?

- Yeah, obviously a serious and sensitive issue that's been covered fairly exhaustively by the media here in Charlotte the last few months.

A lot of good work done out there raising some of these, the allegations that are out there by these young women who say they were sexually assaulted, and that really nothing happened, and that there was an inadequate response by CMS and police.

We had a story this week looking at court records and a couple of cases that actually really for the first time provided a pretty thorough look at what exactly CMS and CMPD did.

Now they've been reluctant to let spokespeople and their leaders talk about those publicly because they're the subject of litigation, and it's very sensitive, but the documents outline really the specific steps, and the things that they did on the ground in real time so we laid those out in the ledge this week, and it's really, I think provides a fuller look at those cases, tries to put it in context.

Obviously there will be more work done on this, but it's certainly an important issue, and it's good to get, I think, more information out on.

- Yeah, I think your stories show there was a process.

Whether that process was adequate or not is for others to decide, but it does kind of give a fuller picture of how the police, how the resource officers, how the schools individually and collectively investigate these sorts of serious charges.

And as CMS' investigation goes forward, I suppose we'll find out more about that, but good story in the meantime.

But let's switch gears and talk a little bit about The Goal Line.

Finally back on track, made its first official expanded trip this week from Johnson C. Smith to Plaza Midwood and back.

Eli, you kind of watch transit from a distance and from closeup, what are your thoughts on this service finally back on track, and whether or not it's the kind of service that can maybe change what casts recent images when it comes to empty trains, empty buses and COVID?

- Well it's free through the rest of this year to ride, so we're gonna see people get on it.

We don't know how that's gonna be influenced by COVID.

We don't know how that's gonna be influenced later next year when they put fares in place.

So I think at least for these first few month period we're kind of a situation where I don't think you're gonna be able to draw a lot of conclusions about how popular it is, how successful it is, 'cause people aren't working up town on top of that.

So we're kind of just in a real hey, look there's a street car phase, and I think it's gonna be a long time before we have a good sense of that.

Now, that being said, it goes through some areas that have been really hot redevelopment areas for years and years, and then areas like Elizabeth Avenue, right where the street car was already running for a while, but there's (clearing throat), excuse me, just been nothing built there near Novant Hospital.

So I think sometime next year maybe we'll get a better sense of whether ridership will pickup, look anything close to projections, and I think over the next few years, whether we see real estate development take off some of the more quiet parts of that line is really gonna be the next criteria to judge it by.

- Mark?

- Yeah, I guess the question is why would I ride it?

Why?

Why would I get on that wonderful, it looks great, but am I commuting?

Am I parking somewhere and then going to the Panther game, being dropped off nearby, or am I just having fun?

Am I going out to dinner?

That's the question.

'Cause I don't think its, yet, maybe it will be at some point, a viable commuter line.

It's not gonna move any faster than traffic does, and that's a big difference from the Light Rail, right?

And so it's a slow ride into town.

Right now it's a free ride, but I'll be curious to see why people ride it aside from the novelty of it at this point.

- Why and if I suppose.

Dedrick?

- Yeah, you know, some businesses on the west side, near Johnson C. Smith, some businesses are excited that it's there with that shiny new toy coming their way, and they think that will boost business, and that some people will now explore that side of town without having to worry about parking and things like that.

So I guess time will tell if businesses do see a boost with that, but I guess the projection is maybe 4100 people a day may ride or something like that.

So time will tell, but I see the good and bad of it.

But the good thing is about it is that it's coming on a side of town that many felt were neglected, and that no shiny new things come on my side of town in the west side.

So a lot of people there are excited about it, and hopefully it will bring new life into that part of town.

- Yeah, John Lewis mentioned it'll be two years because of COVID where, whether they can decide if this is a success from a ridership point of view, but he also mentioned out loud that another measure of success will be real estate development along the line.

And that's really the first time we heard a transit official talk about the real estate aspects of it.

And, again, if it can- - I mean- - Go ahead.

- I was just gonna say certainly on the west side I think you're gonna see that.

And one of the interesting points is if you look at the Elizabeth area, the other end of it, it is not that far from a lot of pretty big apartment complexes over in Plaza Midwood off of Central Avenue, so you could actually see some commuters start to do that.

There's been obviously a lot of development in Plaza Midwood, Elizabeth, but I think you're right, I think we're gonna see probably more of that to be able to jump onto something where you don have to pay $20 or $25 to park uptown if you live in one of those close neighborhoods that could make some sense.

- Mark, you wanna wrap this up?

- Yeah, I mean I think everybody likes a shiny train, right?

And it's pretty cool.

But I think over the next couple of years, as we un-COVID, will people actually get on it and make it worthwhile?

It's a nice ornamental asset for the uptown and those near areas, and it'll be fun to see five points and on the other end Elizabeth kind of take advantage of it, but we'll see exactly what it becomes in a couple years.

I'm curious.

- Moving on to a couple of other topis before we run out of time this week.

College football, big weekend.

Appalachian versus East Carolina at the stadium, UNC Charlotte versus Duke at UNC Charlotte, Georgia versus Clemson at the stadium.

Put's a lot of focus on us.

Kind of lets the tourism folks say we're back in business again.

Thoughts on how this is gonna boost what has been a depressed restaurant and hotel industry since the beginning of COVID.

Tony, you wanna take this one?

- Yeah, sure.

I mean obviously the hospitality industry has really taken on the chin more than most.

And yeah, I mean I think this is obviously helpful.

I think they would tell you they really need something maybe a little more sustained than some one off event.

They would really like to see a return of business travelers coming back in a way that they really haven't yet.

I mean certainly I think for the hotels especially I think it's gonna be very helpful.

Restaurants, I think, are actually doing pretty well in terms of getting the number of people back that they had pre-pandemic.

But I mean certainly a shot in the arm to have some big events, and help fill up some of these hotels that have been pretty empty.

- Eli.

- Yeah, and it just gets back to something that I feel like I've mentioned every week in this pandemic, which is how confusing it can be for people to make risk assessments and judgements.

Garth Brooks canceled his stadium tour, which was gonna be at Bank of America stadium as well for the rest of the year over COVID spike concerns.

So if you said a year ago are you gonna be judging between Garth Brooks and the Clemson football team for which version of pandemic risk do you believe in, that would probably have surprised a lot of people.

So it's, there's a lot of this strange cognitive dissonance still going on.

- Yeah, let's remind folks there will be no masking and no social distancing in the arena itself, in the stadium and in the concourses.

I went to a pre-season game for the Panthers the last couple of weeks, and that was a half filled stadium, but the concourses were still mobbed.

And so I just wonder if a lot of folks will feel entirely comfortable with 70,000 strangers shoulder to shoulder, no masks, and then down to the concourses and the restrooms and everything.

It does kind of fly in the face of a lot of what we're hearing right now about this spike in delta variant cases.

Mark?

- I think the short answer is yes.

I think people will feel comfortable, wanna feel comfortable.

Whether it's a good idea though, we're talking about the schools and the problems they have, the optics are really questionable, right?

- Dedrick?

- Yeah, so, you know you have to mask in indoor areas there at Bank of America.

When we were doing a story about fan fest, when people signed their tickets, that they are saying hey, you have to be responsible.

If you feel sick or if you have been around somebody with COVID-19, please do not come to the stadium.

And then also I found it very interesting that the tickets for the fan fest that say that Bank of America will not be held responsible if something happens to you while at Bank of America, Bank of America will not be responsible for that.

So I found that very interesting that they put that in the fine line that they're protecting themselves just in case something happens at the Bank of America stadium as it relates to this pandemic.

- Yeah, this will be a good- - Maybe the Panthers won't be any good, and only half the people will show up.

- (laughing) Always a possibility with this team, I tell ya.

Yeah, I guess this could be a good test for what the Panthers wind up doing as the season goes forward as well.

But it does put the spotlight back on Charlotte, let's folks know nationwide at least that Charlotte's kind of back in business when it comes to tourism.

We're just about out of time, just wanted to touch on a couple things that we won't get a chance to discuss.

The moratorium that was helping folks facing eviction went away thanks to the Supreme Court.

We'll probably talk more about this next week, but a lot of the local municipalities in the states are now looking at possibly shouldering this burden, but we've got a lot of backlog of eviction cases that will now start be, will begin processing, and that's gonna mean folks losing their homes.

Also the ACC looking at moving from Greensboro to somewhere.

Charlotte's a possibility.

We already stole the Krispy Kreme headquarters from Greensboro, I suppose the ACC would be a likely target.

And 20 bucks an hour at Carowinds.

Fall and winter workers there looking to fill those empty positions, so if you wanna put on a mask and dress like a zombie, and make 20 bucks an hour, there's our opportunity right there.

Always an option for us as well I suppose, we're kind of scary sometimes.

Hey- - Let me take my mask off.

- Don't do that, don't do that.

(laughing) - It's not mask optional.

- That's right, we have a mask mandate on this show.

(laughing) Hey, gang, I wanna thank you for joining us this week.

Always a great discussion.

Thanks for joining at home as well.

You can always join in via your comments or questions on email, just send them to OffTheRecord@wtvi.org.

We'll see you next week right here on "Off the Record."

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