Enlarge Peter Gorman with Study Group Co-chairs Anna Spangler Nelson and Richard "Stick" Williams.

Posted: September 1st, 2010 Greg Lacour

A group of 13 philanthropists, businesspeople, government officials and citizens are joining up under the banner of Foundation For The Carolinas to try to relieve one of Charlotte’s knottiest problems-–how to close the achievement gap and curb dropout rates in public schools.

It’s an increasingly difficult task, especially with the economy taking a toll on tax revenue and public funding for school systems like Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s. So like some other school systems throughout the country, CMS is turning to the business and philanthropic communities for help.

The new CMS Investment Study Group’s 13 members will meet with administrative and staffing help from FFTC beginning September 8. The group will examine other communities’ experiences with philanthropic involvement in public education. By the end of 2010, they hope to produce a set of recommendations on how best to apply philanthropic gifts to help lessen the performance gap between affluent and poor, and minority and non-minority, CMS students.

The idea came from a pair of local foundation officials who approached FFTC recently--Anna Spangler Nelson from the C.D. Spangler Foundation and Thomas Lawrence from The Leon Levine Foundation. Both had paid attention to the series of community forums CMS held in June and July as part of a comprehensive review of the school system. The achievement gap and student equity were by far the topics of most concern to the parents who took part.

Both Nelson and Lawrence became study group members, Nelson as co-chair with Richard “Stick” Williams of the Duke Energy Foundation. The other members: Charles Bowman, Bank of America; Gene Cochrane, The Duke Endowment; Jay Everette, Wachovia; Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx; Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown, Novant Health Inc.; Ronald Leeper, Leeper Construction; Katie Belk Morris, the Belk Foundation; Superior Court Judge Calvin Murphy; Susan Patterson, the Knight Foundation; and retired educator Calvin Wallace.

“The business community in Charlotte has always been deeply interested in our public schools,” Williams said September 1 at a news conference announcing the Study Group. “We certainly understand that few things are more important to the quality of life in our community than the quality of our public schools.”

The group doesn’t have any specific models in mind, but its reading list for the next few months highlights some similar efforts in Missouri, Colorado and California; the California program uses philanthropic funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates and William and Flora Hewlett foundations.

The news conference was held at Irwin Avenue Open Elementary for symbolic reasons, said schools Superintendent Peter Gorman. The Irwin Avenue school was once Harding High School, where in 1957 an African-American student named Dorothy Counts was berated and spat on as she walked toward the front door on the first day of school. Counts was forced to withdraw after a few days, and photographs of her walk gained nationwide attention as symbols of the struggle for equality among minority students.

Gorman said that the group, once and for all, wants to close the gap so evident in 1957 and which, in a subtler way, persists to this day. Referring to statistics that show that about one in three students drops out of high school, Gorman said, “We cannot keep consigning a third of our children to a lifetime of lost opportunity.”

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