By Gordon Anderson | gordon@rantnc.com

Lee County Board of Education Chairman Sherry Womack has asked the Lee County Board of Commissioners to more than triple her own pay and that of the six other members of the school board.

In a letter to the Lee County Board of Commissioners, Womack asks that school board member compensation “be adjusted to match that of the Lee County Board of Commissioners,” calling the request a “reasonable adjustment” elsewhere in the letter.

School board members currently earn $4,200 per year, while the chair earns $4,800 per year. Board of Commissioners members, by contrast, are paid $12,739 per year, while the chairman makes $14,662.

The request from Womack, a Republican, comes as the public gets its first look at the proposed county budget for fiscal year 2025-26. The Board of Commissioners will hear the budget proposal at a meeting Monday evening; Commissioners Chairman Kirk Smith, also a Republican, asked after receiving Womack’s letter that the item be added to the board’s agenda.

It’s unclear how much wiggle room the commissioners will have to accommodate the request, which County Manager Lisa Minter noted in a summary of the request would cost an additional $55,443 per year. The commissioners, however, are expecting a budget that holds the line on property taxes after signaling for much of the prior year that they’d hoped to cut the current rate of 65 cents per $100 of valuation.

Further, the request comes as the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education – both under Republican control, by a margin of 4-3 for the commissioners and 7-0 for the school board – remain at odds over the issue of pay for hundreds of the school district’s classified employees (instructional assistants, library and office staff, maintenance and custodial workers bus drivers, and more). Those employees have been lobbying both boards for a substantial increase since at least November, but have been consistently rebuffed.

Still, Womack argued that the school board’s workload should draw higher pay, citing a statutory requirement that members complete 12 hours of training every two years and writing that the positions “often require a time commitment exceeding 40 hours per month—much of which must be fulfilled using personal vacation time from primary employment.”

Womack claimed that the board’s monthly stipend hasn’t been increased in more than 23 years, which is at odds with Minter’s assessment in the commissioners’ agenda packet that the last increase came in 2014, and also noted that “Lee County’s School Board compensation ranks among the lowest” when compared to “similarly sized districts both regionally and statewide.”

Minter doesn’t recommend the commissioners approve or deny the request – her memo on the issue recommends the board simply “consider” the request.