By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

It started as a rare meeting when Lee County’s two most influential governing boards came together to build trust between themselves and explore their differences.

But in just a few minutes, that goodwill seemed to disappear like an early morning fog, and the Lee County Board of Commissioners and the county’s Board of Education retreated back to the same positions that brought them to the table on July 25. The meeting showed how deeply the two boards were at loggerheads, and it became clear that the divisions are more stark and deeply rooted than many people might have thought.

Each group was missing a member for the meeting. Democrat Robert Reives of the commissioners and Democrat Patrick Kelly from the school board were unable to attend. But the remaining six from each board had gathered in what seemed to be a spirit of camaraderie and friendship, enjoying a 30-minute reception before Sanford Area Growth Alliance CEO Jimmy Randolph took charge of the meeting as a neutral third party.

Randolph began by saying how much he talks about Lee County Schools with every potential industrial client that he meets with, saying “I am a huge and passionate advocate for our public schools, and I do that energetically when I talk with companies who are considering coming here.”

School board Chairman Eric Davidson, a Republican, noted the history of an “us versus them” mentality when it comes to relations between the school board and the commissioners.

“It’s long past time for that hatchet to be buried, and I hope we can start that process here tonight,” he said.

Davidson said as he was mentally preparing himself for the meeting, he was reminded of the biblical edict to “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger,” and that he hoped that precept would guide the discussion for this joint session of both boards.

Attendance metrics = funding

The commissioners and the school board had agreed to discuss three topics so they might come to better understand how they impact funding for public schools. Much of the state’s allocation of financial resources to LCS is based on the metric of Average Daily Membership, which is essentially a snapshot of how many students were in attendance in all county schools on any given day.

It’s a very important number, not only because the state uses it to determine how many dollars the county has earned for operating its schools in the coming years, but also because the county uses it as well when it looks at requests for funding new construction, repairs, and renovations, as well as the costs of utilities, insurance, and legal services.

The county makes particular use of ADM as a means of mapping out the trends of school attendance in order to determine whether the county’s schools are growing or shrinking, giving them a way to see whether and what size of new schools might be needed in coming years.

The ADM for the county has been stuck at around 9,000 for the past three years, down from the 10,000-plus average seen about ten years ago – which has made the commissioners skeptical when the topic of new schools comes up. The COVID pandemic didn’t help those numbers, but the school board believes the numbers have bottomed out and are starting to trend up again as the county continues to grow and higher costs have made charter and private schools less attractive options for many families.

As the meeting went on and the question of why the commissioners have consistently refused to provide funding for priorities that the school board has seen as critical needs, the commissioners deflected those questions and instead asked the school board several times whether it had made its case to local legislators. Democratic Commissioner Cameron Sharpe asked twice whether the school board had written letters to its representatives in Raleigh about critical needs for funding.

Republican School Board Vice Chair Sherry Lynn Womack responded that “a letter is just another piece of paper just like the others that pile up on their desks and don’t get read. What you do is to call them. You go visit them. You sit in on their committee meetings.”

Davidson reminded everyone that the meeting had been called to discuss local support and that ended any talk of help from Raleigh.

The wheel comes off the wagon

Nothing was agreed upon or decided during the discussion about membership numbers, but storm clouds started to form as the group moved on to talk about prospects for a new joint maintenance facility that would be utilized by both the county and the school board.

Some commissioners and school board members had recently visited a facility of this type in neighboring Chatham County, but the county presently has no available space for such a capability. That seemed to change when the abandoned Jonesboro Elementary School – owned by the school board – on Cox Maddox Road caught fire in April of 2023.

County Manager Lisa Minter took the lead in this conversation, saying if the two groups could come to an agreement on co-locating a facility there soon, it might be a way of creating an initial success that others could be built upon in the future.

Republican Commissioner Kirk Smith, the board’s chairman, believed doing something about both garages is critical, but especially so for the school bus garage.

“The fact that our employees are still working there with conditions as they exist now is a tribute to them, and they continue to keep our fleet of school buses safe and on the road every morning and every afternoon,” he said.

Democratic school board member Jamey Laudate, one of those who had visited the Chatham County facility, asked one of the employees there about their secret for making it all work together, and he was told that it’s all about having trust between both groups – the sort of trust that comes with believing there are no hidden agendas and that every employee wants their coworkers to succeed.

Crash and burn

From that point, the meeting went off the rails. Sharpe asked whether the school board had considered providing a one-time $1,000 bonus to the approximately 600 locally paid employees in the LCS district. Superintendent Dr. Chris Dossenbach said there had been some discussions but nothing more at this point. Sharpe responded that he thought it would be a good idea and a way to improve morale. But when Womack asked whether the commissioners would be willing to fund the $600,000 cost of such a program, Minter said that the county has no funds available to pay for such a bonus program.

The school board has asked the commissioners to fund increases in teacher supplements in three of the past four years, as well as the costs for transitioning to a new salary schedule for locally paid employees. None of those requests ever got any traction with the commissioners.

Womack asked twice during the meeting whether the commissioners would also be willing to consider the possibility of building one library instead of two, an apparent reference to the new Lee County Public Library and coming renovations to the library on the campus at Central Carolina Community College.

The commissioners approved construction of a new public library almost two years ago and there were multiple opportunities before then for the public to speak about it. Womack continued to broach the subject of consolidating the college library with the county’s public library, and it eventually forced Smith to reply “that’s not the subject now, Sherry.”

Minter again sought to move the discussion forward.

“The joint garage could be a way to solve the problems of improving working conditions and reducing operating costs if the trust issue can be resolved,” she said. “We are ready to put a group together to work with a companion group at the school board to start working toward a joint solution to the garage and transportation problem if you think that might be helpful.”

Republican school board member Chris Gaster jumped into the fray.

“I’ve always heard that two boards can’t get along, but I’ve never understood that. I would love for there to be a joint facility and have employees who were qualified that could work on either one, and have everyone come to Lee County to see how it can be done,” he said. “But tell me this: What was your original plan before the idea of this joint garage suddenly came up?”

Smith quickly polled his board and determined that all of the commissioners present were in favor of pursuing a joint maintenance facility, but by that point, the school board had already hit the brakes.

Unaffiliated Sandra Bowen was the first member of the school board to give voice to what some of her colleagues have expressed privately for months.

“We suddenly have something the county needs – the Jonesboro property – and yet our priorities keep getting pushed down? We are the school board of students, not of garages, and how is this going to help the students that we serve? Are we really going to serve students or are we at the beck and call of the commissioners when they want something?” she said

Republican school board member Alan Rummel was quick to agree, saying “If I am being asked tonight to go along with this, I’m not going to nod my head.”

Smith sought to regain control of the discussion by claiming he had not heard any discussion of the issues at the school garage for years.

But Bowen pushed back.

“No, no, that’s wrong,” she said. “We told you about it more than once and that it might need to be declared as a brownfields contamination site. We are in the business of education, not in the business of transportation.”

And when school board chair Davidson expressed his feelings, Smith and the other commissioners realized there was no way that night to put some quick points up on the scoreboard.

“I’ve kept saying this, that our board has not heard an explanation about how all this is going to work,” Davidson said. “I think we still have some concerns, so why the rush? Why does this have to be done tonight?”

The time allotted for the meeting – 90 minutes – had already been stretched to two hours and it was agreed that Smith would attend the next meeting of the school board, set for August 13.

After the meeting was over, Davidson told The Rant “we had to start somewhere, and this meeting shows us just how much work has to be done if we are ever to attain the kind of trust that will be needed to move us forward in constructive ways. Tonight showed us there won’t be any quick fixes, but it also showed us that we share a common goal – having the sort of resources that allow our students to thrive, and our teachers to do even more of the excellent work they are capable of without worrying about having enough resources to do that work – then I’m convinced that together, that common goal can be reached.”

It was a sentiment Democratic Commissioner Mark Lovick agreed with.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day and trust isn’t built in one night,” he said. “It’s like an elephant – we keep taking bites out of it and chopping away at it, and over time, the job gets done.”

Smith is set to attend and speak at the August 13 session of the school board, but no other joint meetings of the two boards have been scheduled.