By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

The Lee County Board of Education has tabled any further discussion on the idea of a possible joint maintenance facility with Lee County government until after the November election.

Commission Chairman Kirk Smith came to the school board’s meeting on October 8 to discuss the practicalities of appointing a joint working group that would be charged with crafting recommendations on how turn such an idea into reality. His appearance was a follow-up to a joint session between the two boards held on July 25, one with a broadly written goal of finding ways to collaborate after several recent years of animosity and distrust between the two.

The commissioners proposed earlier this year that the two work together on the garage facility, saying it could be a springboard to future cooperation. But any optimism for an early agreement slipped away when the commission’s desire to move quickly ran into a concrete wall, one apparently created by the school board’s mistrust of the commission’s motives.

Smith brought a draft resolution passed by the commissioners in mid-September to the school board’s meeting that would create a committee to work on a proposal to outline the details of how a partnership between the two governing bodies could work, but it was obvious almost from the time he finished reading it aloud that the school board was not impressed, making clear that relationships between the two had not improved, and that they were not interested in talking about the nuts and bolts of how to proceed with the project until those same relationships could be healed.

School board Vice Chair Sherry Womack asked for an amendment to the resolution that would place the joint maintenance facility as the second highest priority item in its current list of capital construction projects, leaving the new auditorium and classrooms for Southern Lee High School as the top priority in the county for new construction. Smith was unmoved by her plea, saying the commissioners have unanimously raised safety concerns about working conditions at the current school bus garage, and that the poor working conditions there could lead to substandard work on buses that potentially could lead to an accident that resulted in serious injuries. No vote was ever taken on Womack’s proposal, but its substance was included in the school board’s final vote later on.

“I believe that my board was quite clear that this is an issue that we need to take action on soon. Commissioner (Bill) Carver, who is here tonight, and I both visited that (existing) bus garage, and it is inadequate,” Smith said. “The safety of the employees, to include their attitudes, behaviors, and morale, would definitely improve and that would help ensure the safety of our students who ride those buses every day.”

School board member Alan Rummel also pushed for keeping the Southern Lee project as the top priority for new construction, allowing the committee Smith and the county were proposing a full year to consider all the issues and return with a proposal that had thoughtfully been developed.

Another school board member, Patrick Kelly, asked Smith whether the commissioners were recommending that the new maintenance facility be located at the Jonesboro School site. Smith’s response was curt.

“That would be ideal for the taxpayers, unless you want us to go out and buy more property and spend more money,” he said.

But Kelly came right back, saying “it’s valuable to us, too, because we could sell that property and use it toward acquiring land for a new school.”

School board member Sandra Bowen, who served as chair until December 2022, told Smith the school board’s focus is on educating children, raising test scores, creating opportunities, and preparing students for college. The bus garage, she said, was not even on their radar until the commissioners requested it be put on the school board’s list of needed capital projects just six months ago.

“And again, our priorities got pushed to the back burner, so that what you wanted went to the head of the line. Again,” she said. “And that’s the very same trust issue that was brought up at the joint meeting in July. Now, you want us to move forward and start designing something that we don’t even know what it needs to be.”

School board member Chris Gaster rounded out the conversation by speaking to the value of the Jonesboro School property.

“Everything is valuable,” he said, “and we don’t need to rush into anything. Our taxpayers need to be assured that they are getting the most bang for their buck.”

He proposed establishing a joint committee to refine the draft proposal Smith had brought to the meeting so the mechanics of how the design and financing of the joint facility could happen.

Gaster, like almost every member of the school board, believes the decision on moving forward with the proposed facility is one that would best be made after the election on November 5. Four seats on the school board will be decided by the voters that day, as well as three seats on the board of commissioners. The outcome of the election will decide which party controls leadership of the two governing bodies for the next two years.

How they got here

The Lee County Board of Education is the largest unit of county government to receive local funding from the county commissioners. Over the past four years, the Board of Education has gone to the commissioners as the annual budget was being developed to ask for priority funding for things the State of North Carolina will not pay for, like support for salary increases and local supplements for teachers and support staff. In each of those four years (2021 – 2024), the commissioners chose not to fund those requests, saying it didn’t have money to pay for them.

That left the school board scrambling to find other sources of funding for needs that they had told the commissioners were critical. They were able to do that by using ESSER funds, federal COVID relief dollars approved by the Trump and Biden administrations to provide emergency relief for schools during the pandemic. Since those funds sunset on September 30 of this year and are no longer available, new dollars have to be found.

Several commissioners and school board members, along with staff, visited the only facility known where this type of partnership arrangement has been done successfully, a jointly operated facility in neighboring Chatham County. Returning to Lee County and convinced that it could work here, informal discussions began among the groups before the end of the 2023-24 school year.

Here’s the rub

It was at this July 25 meeting that the county tried several times to pull the scab off a wound inflicted as far back at least as 2021. It was at this very same meeting that the school board cast aside its partisan leanings to stand with one voice, telling Smith and the six other commissioners that it doesn’t appreciate being told something on the one hand, while having something else entirely different done to them with the other.

The county has the money to build this facility that would service not only school buses but also the county’s fleet of vehicles. It is sitting in a fund balance – essentially a government savings account – with a balance today of $25 million or more. No cost estimates have been developed so far, but most expect they will not exceed a few million dollars. But what the county doesn’t have is available land upon which to build a new garage. A possible answer for that puzzle could lie in the abandoned Jonesboro Elementary School property on Cox Maddox Road, which was destroyed by fire in April of 2023.

Here’s the point of contention: The commissioners want the school board to make the Jonesboro School property available for the new maintenance facility in a joint endeavor with the county. But the school board’s view is that the commissioners are trying to take advantage of the Board of Education by getting it to transfer ownership of the property to the county so no purchase of land will be necessary.

School board members have tried to make it clear for the past several months to Smith, and by extension to the rest of county leadership, that this kind of treatment leaves them feeling used and manipulated when the commissioners only seem to show an interest in urgent school needs when the commissioners need something that the school board can provide.

Here’s an example from the July 25 meeting, where Bowen tried to make it clear once more to the commissioners that the real impediment to progress was not the proposed maintenance facility, its cost, or where it might be located. For her, it was about being used, and she was loud and clear when she gave 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.

The school board’s solidarity – and Smith’s comments about it on October 8 served as an enunciation that not much has changed since July.