Blair heads off for a pre-Christmas trip to Belize with Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse for 10 days to deliver “Operation Christmas Child” boxes.

There is little doubt that Charlotte is becoming more fractured than ever. Throughout 2005, the Republican minority on the County Commission and School Board proposed various alternatives to CMS’ collective and ever escalating problems.

We opposed the recently adopted 11% tax hike and proposed a $254 million School Bond plan that was fiscally affordable, focused on real needs and prioritized spending.   

The majority rejected this advice preferring $427 million, ultimately rejected by voters.  

If Charlotte is to fix what is wrong, it first has to be honest enough to discuss it.

Charlotte has many good qualities and Julie and I have made it our home by choice. One of its failings however is “dysfunctional civility” that causes Charlotte to collectively ignore real issues for quick solutions that look good but lack substance.

If the State of NC’s motto is “to be rather than to seem”; Charlotte’s unofficial motto is “to seem rather than to be”.

Last year about this time NC Judge Howard Manning opened a can of worms when he stated that CMS’ problem was not money but management. Later he referred to what was happening in the inner-city of Charlotte as “academic genocide”.

Why aren’t inner-city kids learning? It certainly isn’t for lack of money.

I contend then (and now) that the reason high-numbers of inner-city children aren’t learning  and have discipline problems is that they are raised in environments that make it almost impossible to do so.

A place where the cultural environment is so toxic that it robs children of their innate desire to learn, and instills in them hostility towards authority figures.

As we approach this Christmas season Julie and I pray that all children have the opportunity to be raised in a safe, secure, loving environment.

Sadly, many children are raised in exactly the opposite. Government professes to care about these children but does little to really help them. We have lots of “programs” and we spend a ton of your money to make Charlotte more “livable” but the evidence shows we accomplish little. Why?

Government programs by and large don’t work because government refuses to challenge the underlying behavior that creates this toxic cultural environment ruining children’s lives.

Until Charlotte’s political and civic leaders are willing to address what is going on in the homes of these children little will change.