By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

The crowd was small as the Lee County Board of Education convened for their final scheduled meeting of 2024 on Tuesday. The highlight of the evening was expected to be the administration of oath of office to three new members of the board following the November 5 election, giving the local Republican Party all of the board’s seven seats – the first time since school board elections in Lee County were made partisan that one party has had control of the entire board.

Sherry Lynn Womack, who was re-elected in November to another four-year term on the board, also took her oath, with her husband and local GOP Chairman Jim Womack holding the Bible. Shortly after, the board voted unanimously to return her to her former position as chairman.

The board voted Alan Rummel as vice chair.

Has anything changed?

Womack’s previous tenure as chair, from December 2022 to December 2023, saw a number of noteworthy successes. The tragedy of a former middle school teacher who awaits trial after being charged with sexually assaulting students is one she has frequently stated should never happen here again. It was her push to create new training required every year for all Lee County Schools district employees, and to make changes in board policies on how allegations of such behaviors are to be reported and handled, that have shown how good can emerge after such heartbreak.

It was also Womack that led the charge to bypass a state law requiring the district’s 17-campus system, with the exception of Tramway Elementary School and Lee Early College, to begin the start of their traditional calendar year no later than the second week in August instead of the fourth week, an issue that had enjoyed bipartisan support across the county in recent years.

But her leadership style was also that of a firebrand, and made some Lee County leaders nervous when accuracy and stability mattered most in critical discussions with potential business and industry clients. During her first term as chair, there were a number of missteps that caused the community to question the former Army officer’s judgments, but it was two incidents that came almost back-to-back that forced her Republican majority to remove her as chair.

The first came in September when Womack used a hard-won moment of student achievement to give herself and the board – rather than students and school staff – credit for an increase in student test scores.

Just a few days later, three members of the school’s Math department appeared before the board to call out Womack’s action, along with a fourth Math department member through an email a couple of days afterwards. Womack and two of the remaining three other Republican members of the school board met with the teachers about 10 days later in an attempt to smooth things over and then ride out the public furor that had been created.

But the torpedo that sank her ability to continue in leadership occurred on what was supposed to be a night of triumph for the school district and for the way she had led the board in conducting a national search for a new superintendent. Dr. Chris Dossenbach, a product himself of Lee County’s school system who emerged as the group’s unanimous choice, stood at the podium on November 21 to receive congratulations from each member of the board.

But Womack picked this moment to warn the new superintendent, in front of his wife, his minor children, his family, and a large contingent of community members, to refrain from morally reprehensible conduct, specifically that he should “never frickin’ lie to me” and, in a clear sexual reference, to “keep it in your pants.” There was an audible gasp as her admonishment swept the room from front to back.

Dossenbach assumed the office after taking the oath on November 21. When the school board held its organizational meeting three weeks later on December 12, Womack quickly moved to nominate then-vice chair Eric Davidson as the board’s new leader and joined the remaining six members to make his selection unanimous. In a following ballot, Womack was elected in a 4-3 party line vote for vice chair over Democrat Patrick Kelly.

Lessons In chemistry

Davidson’s style of leadership could hardly have been any more different from Womack’s. A soft-spoken man who preferred collaboration over confrontation, Davidson’s greatest asset during his term as chairman of the Lee County Board of Education may have been the 15 years he spent working in education prior to joining the board, a time that positioned him well to see possibilities for collaboration.

He remained true to himself and to his principles, and that led to assertions of his independence on a few occasions by voting a different way than his local party might have wanted him to. After he assumed the responsibilities as chair, he simply carried on with the meeting.

After Womack was returned to chair of the school board, she took a page from Davidson’s lessons on leadership and moved on without stopping to give a stump speech.

The immediate test for the new leader of Lee County’s school district is whether she will be able to help build bridges of cooperation with the county commissioners. It’s an exam that will be coming quickly, simply because a county budget that now is more than $100 million in size demands time to be put together. The first working sessions will begin by mid-January.

And when they do begin, their success or failure could depend in large part on the chemistry among those who will be doing the negotiating. The budget discussions that have been stuck in the mud for years now are important, to be sure. But there are issues of even greater importance that still must be addressed.

End-of-grade test scores are finally beginning to rebound in almost every grade level at schools all across the county, but students still lag behind when compared to where they were performing before the COVID-19 pandemic. The county is going to be stuck for the foreseeable future with having to teach students in facilities that were constructed in the 1960s and 70s because an insufficient amount of funds will be available to replace them.

The superintendent expects at least one new school will have to be built within the next five years to accommodate the county’s growth surge, and even more schools after that as the population begins to approach 75,000 people.

Meeting those challenges, and the others that will surely follow along with them, will require leadership that’s able to identify opportunities and find new sources of funding. The leaders of tomorrow must be able to do the work that is often most effectively done behind the scenes for a time so that greater gains can be made by cooperating and collaborating with others.

It’s a rare moment in history when a leader is given a second chance to be in charge once again. And it is history that will tell us whether Sherry Womack was ready when her moment came to lead for a second time.