LEE COUNTY SCHOOLS’ CLASSIFIED EMPLOYEES SAY THEIR CURRENT PAY AND THE COUNTY’S PROPOSED RAISE IS A ‘SLAP IN THE FACE,’ CONSIDERING THEIR SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO LOCAL EDUCATION

By Gordon Anderson
Additional reporting by Richard Sullins

When April Stone went before the Lee County Board of Education in November to make known a demand for increased pay from the school district’s classified employees, she didn’t know what to expect — but she knew what she was doing was right. 

“I was always raised to stand up for what’s right, even if you’re the only one,” said Stone, an instructional assistant and bus driver at Lee County High School who also owns and operates a beauty salon.

Stone spoke to the board on Nov. 14, pointing out that the district’s classified employees — those like instructional assistants, library and office staff, maintenance and custodial workers (many of whom pull double duty as bus drivers, earning an additional $17.31 per hour on that gig) who don’t require a certification to hold their jobs — needed not just a raise but also a pay scale. She was backed by more than 100 of her fellow classified employees as well as a number of teachers present in support, and asked that the board provide an answer in 30 days.

Stone became involved with the issue last fall when she joined a group text thread with dozens of other classified employees, which led to strategy meetings at her beauty shop and places like Golden Corral. 

Stone soon found herself as the group’s unofficial spokesperson and has since attended more meetings of both the school board and the Lee County Board of Commissioners — responsible today in large part for funding the school district’s operations — to further the group’s case for the need to adequately compensate the group of crucial employees Stone counts herself among.

For its part, the school district’s leadership has proposed using $709,000 in the next fiscal year, funded by cost savings from a reorganization of the central office, to provide a salary increase — but a raise only about a quarter of the size the classified employees feel they deserve.

Stone in December called it both “a step in the right direction” and also “a slap in the face,” acknowledging the district staff’s efforts to do something, but also that it’s just not enough.

Two elected bodies at odds

The efforts of the group Stone represents don’t exist in a vacuum, and can be better understood as the manifestation of a political struggle between two locally elected bodies — the Lee County Board of Education and the Lee County Board of Commissioners. For nearly four years now, the school board has been asking the commissioners during budget season for more money to fund specific needs, and for four years now the commissioners have granted increases in funding — but at levels nowhere near what the school district says it needs to ensure all of its responsibilities are met (the school
 
board doesn’t have taxing authority and relies on a combination of funds from the county, state and federal governments).

This disagreement has crossed partisan lines, occurring when the school board was led by Democrats and the Board of Commissioners by Republicans, and also when both bodies were controlled by the GOP. And that disagreement is what led Stone and the group she speaks for to lobby not just the school board, but also the commissioners.

And the commissioners have consistently — if sympathetically — turned down the group’s requests, correctly saying it’s out of their hands how the school board chooses to spend the dollars they give.

“This board is not responsible for the school board’s failure to grant those raises,” Lee County Manager Lisa Minter said in December.

Commissioners, both as a body and individually, have encouraged Stone and the rest of the classified employees to take their case to Lee County’s delegation to the state legislature, which is bound by the North Carolina Constitution to provide funding for public education (Stone says commissioners’ Chairman Kirk Smith, a Republican, answered one email about the issue with the state’s general statute numbers pertaining to school funding). For many years, counties — an extension of state government — historically took responsibility for funding facilities, while funding what happened on campus and in the classroom was up to the legislature.

But in recent decades, state budget issues have led to state budget cuts with regards to schools, and in many cases boards of education ended up diverting money initially allocated for other purposes to cover the on-campus and in-classroom effect of those cuts. The result has been that in many cases, a significant portion of school funding has shifted downward from Raleigh to county seats, which also juggle costs for other essential services like law enforcement, fire protection, social services and more.

Further complicating the matter is the state’s “opportunity scholarship” program, which covers the cost of private school tuition for individuals by diverting funds from public schools to the private schools they attend — more than $600 million statewide over 2023-24 and 2024-25. Sanford’s Grace Christian School received more of this funding last year (over $1.5 million) than any other school in North Carolina. Before 2024, opportunity scholarships were available mainly to low income families; last year scholarship availability was extended to all income levels.

Stone said a number of classified employees have reached out to state Rep. John Sauls and state Sen. Jim Burgin, but haven’t received an answer. Emails from The Rant to Sauls and Burgin weren’t answered by press time.

Lee County Government provided The Rant with a statement regarding the situation, clarifying its role.

“While we understand the concerns of the Lee County Schools employees, they are the employees of the Lee County School System and, per the General Assembly, are considered State employees and participate in the State Retirement System and the State Health Plan. The Board of County Commissioners does not play a role in setting the pay scales for any of the Lee County Schools employees,” it read. 

“The County is one of three major funding sources for the school district, with the other two being the State and Federal governments. Both the State and Federal governments can restrict how their funding may be used while the County has no such authority. The Board of Commissioners has very limited control of how its contribution is used. It is up to the Board of Commissioners to review the school district’s requests and determine an amount each year that it believes meets the district’s needs amongst other budget requests received. It is then up to the Board of Education and its Administrative team to determine how to spend that money, which they also do for the State and Federal unrestricted allocations.”

The statement continued by delineating possible uses for funds it appropriates to Lee County Schools, as well as its other responsibilities.

“The County provides two different types of funding to the LCS, current expense and capital outlay. The current expense monies are funds that can be used for salaries and other operational expenses. Our current expense funding in FY 2007-2008 was $13,502,134 and has increased to $21,507,824 for FY 2024-2025. Our contribution of $20,134,024 in FY 2023-24 placed us 35th in current expense funding compared to counties across the State, and we rank 19th for teacher supplements, per North Carolina Association of County Commissioners 2024 County Map Book. 

“In addition to the current expense and capital funds provided to the schools each year, the County spends approximately $2,000,000 annually on school resource officers employed by the Lee County Sheriff and approximately $6,000,000 on debt service for school facilities. Lee County Board of Commissioners and staff will strive to work with the Board of Education and its staff to determine an appropriate funding level year over year for the school district.”

Will 2025-26 be ANY different?

As winter turns to spring and budget season heats up, Stone and her group are hoping to have a bigger impact than they already have through continued advocacy. State law requires cities and counties across North Carolina to adopt budgets by June 30, and that means the county is already busy looking at their financial forecast for the next fiscal year, and the school board and central office staff are busy preparing their request for additional money that would cover a pay increase for classified staff as well as the countless other initiatives that require funding.

Stone acknowledged the complex nature of the issue, explaining that she’s had to learn a lot about the various funding streams that allow schools to operate, as well as the multitude of competing factors at both the state and local level that make the question far from one that has a simple answer. But she also noted that Lee County’s problem seems unique, at least to the region, and that there’s got to be a solution.

“Whether you’re a school board member or a commissioner, you’re elected in good faith that you’ll represent your county the way it’s supposed to be represented,” she said. “We’re being bounced between (the boards), and there has to be a better way. Things aren’t going to change when you’ve got one pointing the finger at the other. I love my job, but I don’t know why you’d expect anybody to stay.”

The Board of Commissioners lowered the property tax rate between 2021-22 and 2023-24 from 77.5 cents per $100 of valuation to 65 cents (although a revaluation in 2023 resulted in increased overall tax bills for many if not most Lee County property owners), and it’s unclear whether the board intends for the 2025-26 budget to hold the line or include another rate cut or increase. Those decisions are obviously sure to play a role in the level at which the county’s public school system is funded and the elected commissioners will have to weigh whether they think citizens in Lee County are willing to pay more to fund public education by paying classified staff higher wages.

That final point underscores a troubling reality — that without mutual buy-in from both the Lee County Board of Education and the Lee County Board of Commissioners, as well as the possibility of help from Raleigh, neither body has much incentive to solve the problem on its own. 

The schools could conceivably find money in their budget by cutting something essential elsewhere and undermining their goal of providing the best public education system possible. And the county could unilaterally dig into its fund balance (a fancy word for savings account) to fund an increase in the short term, but doing so could lead to a property tax increase the public may not have an appetite for, particularly so soon after a revaluation that proved so costly to property owners in Lee County.

For now, Stone said she and the group she represents plans to continue their efforts through budget season.

“We’re going to be hitting (the meetings) pretty hard,” she said. “I feel like we’ve made progress, but do I feel like we’ve gotten what we deserve? No. At this rate it could take us four years to get what we should get right now.”

The two boards are communicating, which is a good sign. The next few months will prove to the school district’s classified employees — and anyone in Lee County with an interest in a strong system of public education — just how serious they are about righting the ship.