I caught myself gossiping about our school board to a philosopher on Wednesday morning.
“Our superintendent was suspended for eight weeks this summer without anybody knowing why!” I launched, talking like someone who needs a local news recovery program.
Mark Nepo tilted his head. He’s written more than two dozen books, including the No. 1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening, which Oprah named one of her favorite things. We were meeting to discuss an entirely different subject. He also lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. All to say, he didn’t wake up thinking about the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools drama.
But here I was, that parent.
The night before, I’d been in the back row of the meeting room, re-reading sections of Nepo’s The Fifth Seasonin between presentations. The language contrast alone was jarring: I’d delight in his beautifully written pages about life and death, then hear that CMS rolled out another app for us parents to download this year. (Breaking update for bus riders: the Here Comes the Bus app is out; AlphaPortal is in.)
Then, at 9:44 p.m., board chair Stephanie Sneed broke the biggest news of the summer, almost as an extra-credit note for the few of us who remained: “Today the board of education has made the decision to return Dr. Crystal Hill to her role as superintendent following her temporary leave.”
Seventy seconds later, the meeting was over. A cluster of local news reporters bunched up for a media scrum, asking for more details, but Sneed said she couldn’t answer due to a state law protecting personnel discussions.
As I watched everybody play their roles in the age-old performance — reporters frothing for more information, the board chair deflecting and taking deep breaths — I could hear Nepo’s words about how “there is an unavoidable rhythm between turmoil and peace,” and between “nothing or everything.”
To some degree, with kids, everything is everything. And that’s how you become that parent.
You know the type. The one whose pupils dilate whenever they hear a phrase like “measurable goals” or an “ad hoc committee.” I don’t want to be that! My mother taught first grade for 40 years, and any complaint she ever brought home was about another grown person — parent or principal or colleague. Always an adult. Never a student.
Well, the adults have been at it again.
***
In June, the school board suspended superintendent Crystal Hill, who was hired in 2023 to bring “stability” to a system that had seen its previous three superintendents ousted early. The board hired a private firm to investigate Hill for “matters involving administrative and operational oversight.”
In reinstating her Tuesday, they said the review “identified issues that will require ongoing attention as it relates to leadership and operational practices. We will address these issues directly with Dr. Hill.” That’s still about all we know, though WSOC reported that the concerns centered on consulting contracts, including one that the system entered with Hill’s former boss.
The board held several closed-session meetings this summer. Local media and community members grumbled loudly about transparency. Business leaders and partner organizations, who hold Hill in high regard, wondered who was in charge. Her loudest critics wondered what was taking so long. And the general theme of public discourse was that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the system I’ll be entrusting with my two boys’ future for the next 15 or so years, is too broken to fix.
That’s hyperbole, of course. But information gaps leave room for all sorts of theories.
Sneed assured parents over the summer that Hill’s absence wouldn’t have any effect on the start of school, and that senior administrators had everything running fine.
So why do we even need a superintendent, you ask? I guess it’s kind of like riding in a bus full of capable adults. I’m sure I’d be fine with any of them driving the thing, but given the choice, I’d probably pick the bus driver.
I have vivid memories of the last time the board sent a superintendent walking: Earnest Winston in 2022. The ensuing debate, believe it or not, was whether a businessperson should be next to lead the $2-billion-a-year school system. After all, CMS has nearly 20,000 employees, making it the third-largest local employer, behind only Atrium Health and Wells Fargo. Winston — a good soul, father, and someone I’ve had a strong relationship with for years — had risen through the CMS ranks from teacher to central office to superintendent, only to become everybody’s favorite common enemy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What would it look like, folks wondered then, if the board hired a civic-minded C-suite employee who wanted to make a difference?
Hill seemed to have a little of both. She started her career as a first-grade teacher and ascended to executive positions in other districts. She bonded with top corporate leaders in town, who to this day rave about her. She joined prominent boards related to education. The Charlotte Executive Leadership Council, made up of CEOs running companies that employ thousands, offered its expertise to Hill as she went about the difficult work of untangling the operational knots in one of the largest school systems in America.
Some of her decisions and reshuffling of central staff irked people, which happens when new leadership takes over any organization. I also know of at least one neighborhood that was heartbroken when Hill’s team moved a beloved principal to another school.
But most people I’ve talked to over the past few weeks said some form of this: The numbers speak for themselves. By many state standards, she’s been successful. Last year the system achieved “historic” academic gains in reading and math, WCNC reported at the time. And school leaders are hopeful that this year’s scores, to be released in a few weeks, will be even better.
Which is what made this summer so unexpected. In a city enduring widespread leadership transitions, the superintendent’s position, for once, was steady.
We’ve had seven superintendents in the past 15 years, and 10 in the past 25. That’s more churn than at police chief, city or county manager, or mayor. It’s on the high end compared to peer districts in the U.S., too. Prince George’s County in Maryland ties CMS with 10 superintendents in the past quarter-century. Guilford County Schools, the third-largest system in North Carolina behind Wake and CMS, has had four.
What adds fuel to the distrust, in these conflict-obsessed times, is that CMS is notoriously tight-lipped during controversies. Past boards were quiet on reasons for the departures of Heath Morrison and Clayton Wilcox. But with Winston, that board released documents related to his personnel file, using a clause in the state law that “authorizes a Board of Education to make available for public inspection any information or portion of an employee’s personnel file that is essential to maintaining the integrity of the Board.”
The same state statute includes suspensions. But this board, which has largely turned over since 2022, has to this point declined to say much.
In any case, the fact that she returned to work Wednesday breaks the board’s long-running trend of choosing change over stability. They said as much in their release: “We believe this provides the best path forward while maintaining continuity and stability for our students, employees and families.”
Statistically, it’s the better choice. Recent research, published in 2025, shows that student achievement generally decreases in the years after a superintendent’s departure — and that turnover is “most detrimental to large, urban, and high-poverty school districts.”
***
Here’s a harsh reality check: For as much chatter as the superintendent’s suspension generates, it’s background noise for most Charlotte residents. The streams of young professionals along the rail trail in South End likely haven’t paid it any mind. And even among families, the central public school system is becoming one of many menu items for a child’s education, with the growth of charter schools and private school vouchers. Axios reported earlier this month that Alpha Schools and its AI tutors plan to expand to Charlotte.
Those are the real issues CMS must face these days.
Go back to Nepo’s line about the rhythm between nothing and everything.
This summer’s drama is not nothing, and it’s not everything. But this moment is the pivot point, where it can tip toward one or the other. If the board and superintendent can heal whatever caused this wound, and heal the public trust, it’ll drift closer to nothing. If they don’t, and the tension and distrust grow, it slips toward everything.
Humility can be both the most difficult leadership trait to summon and the most precious. Our schools need it now.
I’m not an education scholar, but I am a parent. My asks of the school system aren’t complicated: Give kids a good and professional teacher, along with a good and supportive principal who sets a strong culture, and provide support for that principal. If my kids can’t succeed under those circumstances, that’s on them and us.
I grew up in rural public schools that were the outcasts of our district. Our high school had about the highest poverty rate in the county, and we struggled on standardized tests. The hallways were an arena for fistfights. On weekends, bored kids “huffed” gas, and one awful weekend, a girl who sat one lunch table over from me died from it. I found a group of friends who wanted something more, and we hitched ourselves to the teachers who demanded more from us. My closest high school friend became a nuclear engineer who just retired from the Navy as a captain. My brother runs a division of a big construction company here in Charlotte.
I’m a believer in public schools to this day because of that experience. Kids’ll be fine, if adults show them the way … and then get out of the way.
I guess that’s my last ask from a school system: Show, but don’t become the show.
I believe most of the people involved in this summer’s drama know as much. Board member Dr. Charlitta Hatch even said it directly in her back-to-school address Tuesday night: “Children cannot become background noise to adult conflict.”
That’s right. And that’s what I’ll be watching, as that parent, and as a reporter. With children, the only thing that’s “everything” is how we move forward.
As Nepo, 75, writes in The Fifth Season, “As the years unfold, I find I am less and less concerned with how things differ as I am ushered ever more deeply into the mystery of how things go together.”
Dear CMS, that’s the mystery worth exploring now.