What I told the Charlotte school board

Let's bring competence back, starting with a simple promise to parents

I took my first turn at the public-comment mic this week. It was definitely not my comfort zone, but I’m a dad first, and I was tired of wondering where my children are and when they’re getting home off the school bus.

So I asked the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board to request a report on bus delays, and adopt communications standards for alerting parents to changes in arrival time or route.

You can watch my 2-minute presentation here.

My point at the school board meeting wasn’t that I wanted my specific situation fixed, it was to flag a districtwide problem. And my point in sharing this with you here is broader, too.

A decade ago, conservative candidates talked a lot about competence.

Go back to the 2012 era and you’ll hear it everywhere—“run government like a business,” “treat the public like customers,” etc. Leaders like Govs. Pat McCrory, Nikki Haley, and Scott Walker really leaned into that ethic.

I don’t see that really anywhere today. In the Trump era, that emphasis got crowded o…