Charlotte School system
The city's public school system, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, is the second largest in North Carolina and 20th largest in the nation. In 2009 it won the NAEP Awards, the Nation's Report Card for urban school systems with top honors among 18 city systems for 4th grade math, 2nd place among 8th graders. About 132,000 students are taught in 161 separate elementary, middle and high schools.
The west side of UNC Charlotte's main campus
Facade of the Main Library in Uptown Charlotte
Colleges and universities
Charlotte is home to a number of notable universities and colleges such as Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte School of Law, Johnson C. Smith University, Johnson & Wales University, Queens University of Charlotte, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Several notable colleges are located in the metropolitan suburbs. In Davidson, Davidson College is ranked in the top 10 nationally among liberal arts colleges according to U.S. News & World Report. Additional colleges in the area include Belmont Abbey College in the suburb of Belmont, North Carolina, Winthrop University, Clinton Junior College and York Technical College in nearby Rock Hill, South Carolina.
UNC Charlotte is the city's largest university. It is located in University City, the northeastern portion of Charlotte, which is also home to University Research Park, a 3,200 acre (13 km²) research and corporate park. With over 25,000 students, UNC Charlotte is the fastest-growing university in the state system and the fourth largest.
Central Piedmont Community College is the largest community college in the Carolinas, with over 70,000 students each year and 6 campuses through-out the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region.[36] CPCC is part of the statewide North Carolina Community College System.
Pfeiffer University has a satellite campus in Charlotte.
Wake Forest University, with its main campus in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, also operates a satellite campus of its Babcock Graduate School of Management in the SouthPark area. Wake Forest is currently looking to move the campus to Uptown Charlotte.
Libraries
The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County serves the Charlotte area with a large collection (over 1.5 million) of books, CDs and DVDs at 15 locations in the city of Charlotte, with branches in the surrounding towns of Matthews, Mint Hill, Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson. All locations provide free access to Internet-enabled computers and WiFi, and a library card from one location is accepted at all 20 locations.
Although the Library's roots go back to the Charlotte Literary and Library Association, founded on January 16, 1891, the state-chartered Carnegie Library which opened on the current North Tryon site of the Main Library was the first non-subscription library opened to members of the public in the city of Charlotte. The philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $25,000 dollars for a library building on the condition that the city of Charlotte donate a site, and $2500 per year for books and salaries, and that the state grant a charter for the library. All conditions were met, and the Charlotte Carnegie Library opened in a imposing classical building on July 2, 1903.
The 1903 state charter also required a library be opened for the disenfranchised African-American population of Charlotte. This was completed in 1905, with opening of the Brevard Street Library for Negroes, an independent library in Brooklyn, a historically black area of Charlotte, on the corner of Brevard and East Second Street (now Martin Luther King Blvd.) The Brevard Street Library was the first library for free blacks in the state of North Carolina, some sources say in the southeast.This library was closed in 1961 when the Brooklyn neighborhood in Second Ward was redeveloped, but its role as a cultural center for African-Americans in Charlotte is continued by the Beatties Ford branch, and the West branch of the current library system, as well as by Charlotte's African-American Cultural Center.
