The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education approved the 2026-27 budget Tuesday night in a unanimous vote, concluding a tumultuous two weeks of tensions that spilled into the open between the board and CMS staff over the $2.1 billion spending plan.
The board rejected Hill’s first proposal in an unexpected 8-1 vote last month that appeared to leave Hill surprised and unsure of what to amend. In the days that followed, the board met three times in hours-long special hearings to hammer out details, culminating in a contentious five-hour hearing last Friday. Those meetings also featured two closed-session discussions on personnel matters.
Hill submitted a revised proposal on Monday that included some relatively minor tweaks based on key board concerns, restoring a handful of positions and reallocating several million dollars in spending. Despite the two weeks of tension, the board approved the new plan with relatively few fireworks.
On Tuesday, Board Chair Stephanie Sneed reiterated her prior statements that Hill's original budget wasn’t far off. And she cried as she read aloud an email she’d sent to CMS staff on Saturday morning.
"I'm sure some of you can relate to the last two weeks of going to bed late, struggling to sleep, and somehow still being awake before the sun reaches the horizon. I feel and look like I have aged 10 times the rate of normalcy," she said.
She said she believed the two weeks of extra work were worth it, if even one student benefited. And she said they shouldn’t be fighting over money.
"We should not be fighting over whether we fund mental health, whether we fund family engagement, whether we can move a teacher from one school to the other. The system is broken," she said.
Sneed added: “I offer no apologies for the push – it is with students in mind. And even with this budget, it’s not perfect, but it’s better.”
On Wednesday, the CMS Board will hold a joint meeting with the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners to go over the budget. CMS is asking the county for almost $700 million, roughly a third of the district's budget (the rest of the budget comes from the state, at around 54%, with some additional funding from the federal government).
Board member Charlitta Hatch said she believed the pause and subsequent debate resulted in a budget that better reflected public feedback the board had received.
“It has been a lot of back-and-forth, but I think the back-and-forth has resulted in the place that we are now, which is seeing feedback applied,” Hatch said.
Board members didn’t appear to have a single, specific concern about Hill's original budget, but rather broader questions about the budget’s impact on school funding allotments and the district’s ability to hit its board-set academic goals.
But it also became clear that the board was frustrated with the whole process, at times suggesting staff has failed to provide sufficient answers to board questions since work on the budget began in December. This came to a head last Friday, with Board Member Shamaiye Hayes in particular saying Hill’s presented budget options were designed to “prove a point.”
“You definitely have the upper hand in terms of putting something up on a screen and allowing the public and the world to see how stupid we are,” Haynes said. “That is not welcomed in this process.”
Hill, meanwhile, had suggested that the board had not given her enough time to make a new recommendation.
“There’s no way that I could have come up with another recommendation in a week,” Hill said. “That’s not my leadership style. My leadership style is going to the people that are closest to the work and getting feedback. … So what you’re seeing today is absolutely not my recommendation.”
Still, Hill did ultimately submit an amended budget proposal by the board’s Monday deadline. After Tuesday’s budget presentation, Hatch directly asked Hill about whether she could stand by the budget presented.
Hill responded simply: “Yes.”
What changed – and what didn’t – in the budget
Hill’s rejected $2.1 billion proposal assumed a 3% increase in state pay to teachers and proposed around $6 million in cuts to offset any raise higher than 3%, given the state budget uncertainty. The state funds employee pay and raises, but some employees are funded by local dollars — CMS must find money to apply raises to those employees.
But Hill revised the budget to assume a 5% state-driven salary increase. Board members had expressed concern about what would happen if the final state raise was higher – and indeed, just hours before Tuesday’s meetings, Republican legislative leaders announced the framework for a budget deal that would include an average 8% raise for teachers.
CMS Chief Finance Officer Kelly Kluttz said she believed the budgeted amount of a 5% increase, plus the $6 million in cuts, would be able to withstand the raise, noting that factoring in non-teaching staff and the way the raises would be applied, the overall increase could end up being smaller in the context of the CMS budget.
“While we’re encouraged by this development, we must proceed with caution as the (state) budget is not final and there are several things that remain under negotiation," Kluttz told the board.
Those cuts included 26 central office positions in part by rearranging how it structures its support staff — shifting from having separate structures for pre-K and K-12 to a combined pre-K through 12 model. Another cut would eliminate all of the district’s part-time lunch monitors. Board members are questioning the impact on students and staff workload.
And on Tuesday, several members of the public voiced concern about the pre-K program changes.
But ultimately, those cuts remained in the budget, with CMS staff noting that the lapsed salary had already been allocated in the budget.
Hill did reinstate four Department of Social Services liaison positions that had been initially planned for cuts. Board members and members of the public had worried that those cuts could impact services to foster children.. She also proposed reallocating money to new family engagement strategies.
The budget also eliminates a $2.4 million districtwide social-emotional learning framework called Capturing Kids Hearts. The board questioned the program and wasn’t convinced there was evidence to support its efficacy. The budget promises to reallocate that money to other social-emotional learning initiatives, including going out to an RFP for SEL supports that would be offered directly to students.
The overall budget numbers didn’t change – the operating budget still came out to around $1.97 billion, a large majority of the total $2.1 billion spending package. The nearly $700 million request from Mecklenburg County was also unchanged. The budget proposes an average 5% increase to the local teacher salary supplement.
The Mecklenburg County manager will present his recommended budget, and CMS funding level, on Thursday.
