CMS Promises To Hire More Staff To Investigate Sexual Assaults

CHARLOTTE, NC — Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Earnest Winston held a news briefing Friday morning to detail new policies for handling reported sexual assaults in CMS schools.

This comes on the heels of the suspension of a Hawthorne Academy student who reported a sexual assault, telling her she lied. Subsequently, police found enough evidence to charge another minor at the school. The principal and vice-principal were suspended on paid leave.

"As you all know, we've launched a student-driven title IX task force. That task force is wrapping up its work, as I expect by the end of this month to receive a report with their recommendations, outlining how we can better improve our processes to provide better support for our students," said Winston.

"So I am here today in the meantime to announce that we will be beefing up, increasing support in our Title IX office to better support our students in CMS schools."

Winston announced there will be additional hires in the school system to deal only with sexual assault allegations.

"The responsibility of the personnel that we will be adding to our Title IX team, their responsibility, their sole responsibility will be to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct at the school level. Our goal, my goal is to take the responsibility of investigations of sexual misconduct allegations off, out of the hands of our school level staff and put that with the additional staff that we will hire," said Winston.

When asked what he would say to students and families, Winston said "I hear you, and we are committed to the well-being and safety of all of our students and staff in CMS Schools."

Those additional hires would have to be allotted for in the CMS budget.

Laura Dunn, attorney for the family of the student suspended for reporting her assault, responded to Winston's comments moments after the news briefing.

"Superintendent Winston's failure to ensure this basic civil rights-based commitment begs the question of whether he is qualified to continue to lead as the CMS Board faces growing outrage about the failure of district officials to properly handle reports of sexual violence by minor students.

Parents entrust their children to CMS every day. CMS must do much more than what it announced today to be worthy of that ongoing trust," said Dunn in a statement in part.

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