By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com
Work on what will become Lee County’s ninth elementary school is moving forward — quietly, slowly, and mostly out of public view. It is still far too early to know what the new school will look like or where it will be built, but Superintendent Dr. Chris Dossenbach and his team have been steadily assembling the pieces behind the scenes.
It’s been six months since the Lee County Board of Education began working in earnest with county commissioners on the project. Neither board has said much publicly, but enough information is available to sketch a picture of where things stand.
Large capital projects like this one tend to move at a crawl in the early stages. Before any groundbreaking ceremony can be imagined, the district must identify and secure a site, hire an architect, develop and approve plans, obtain full funding, secure permits, select a contractor, and negotiate a performance contract. Between each major milestone are dozens of smaller steps that must be completed in sequence.
The search for a site
Last September, the school board authorized Dossenbach to begin searching for suitable land and to hire a real estate agent to assist. A broker has since been engaged, and several potential sites have been identified. The school board’s Operations Committee, chaired by Republican board member Alan Rummel, has already met with the realtor in closed session to review the list of possibilities.
One option under consideration is a two acre tract the school board already owns — the former Jonesboro Elementary School site at 400 Cox Maddox Road. The building, vacant since 1991 and used only for storage, was destroyed by fire in April 2023 and later demolished. The land has sat empty ever since.
In the spring of 2024, county commissioners proposed building a joint maintenance facility on the site, but the offer came during a period of deep mistrust and poor communication between the two boards. The school board viewed the proposal skeptically, and the idea went nowhere.
By the summer of 2025, however, relations had thawed. The school board resumed discussions with commissioners about critical capital needs just as word arrived from Raleigh of a potential funding opportunity: up to $44 million from the state’s Education Lottery proceeds, covering as much as 85 percent of land acquisition and construction costs. Suddenly, both boards had reason to work together.
A funding plan — and a setback
North Carolina law divides responsibility for school property. Counties must purchase or condemn land for new school sites at the request of school boards, but once acquired, the property belongs to the school board. Counties also bear the financial responsibility for school construction, while school boards retain operational control.
With an estimated $56 million price tag for a new elementary school, the two boards met just after Labor Day 2025 to assemble a funding package. Commissioners pledged up to $14 million, contingent on state approval, with the remainder expected from the Needs Based Public School Capital Fund of the North Carolina Education Lottery.
The application was submitted, and optimism was high.
Until it wasn’t.
Just before the 2025 Christmas break, Lee County Schools learned that its application for $44 million in lottery funds had been declined. What had seemed like a near certain win became a reminder of how competitive and unforgiving the grant process can be.
The setback came amid growing concern that Lee County’s school infrastructure might soon struggle to keep pace with rapid residential and commercial development. Representatives from N.C. State’s Institute for Transportation Research and Education warned the school board last October that delaying the project further could mean missing out on millions in state funding.
The loss of lottery funding was a blow, but not the end of the road. The state will open another application window this fall, and districts like Lee County will have only a few weeks to submit revised proposals. Reviewing last year’s application — and understanding what the state liked and didn’t — will be critical.
Why a new school, and not an expansion
A separate study presented to the school board last October made clear that expanding existing elementary schools is not a viable solution. A new school serving about 800 students is projected to cost $56 million, or roughly $66,000 per student. Expanding existing campuses would cost about $25 million per site but add only 300 seats — a far higher cost of $83,000 per student.
If the district fails to secure lottery funding a second time, another option would be a bond referendum. But state law allows such referenda only in presidential election years, meaning 2028 at the earliest. That would delay construction by at least two years and significantly increase costs.
Growth pressures and the road ahead
The last new school built in Lee County was W.B. Wicker Elementary, which opened in 2019 as Sanford’s economic development efforts began to accelerate. Since then, the region has seen steady growth in industry and housing. More than 75 new housing developments are awaiting approval, representing nearly 16,000 new dwellings — most of which are expected to be sold as quickly as they are built.
Demographic data now being collected will play a major role in determining where the new school should be located. That analysis is under way, and district officials say they are actively engaged in the process, even if they can’t yet share details publicly.
An announcement of the chosen site could come soon — or it could take months. Heavy equipment may not appear on any selected property for some time. But the work is happening, and the pieces are slowly falling into place for Lee County’s next elementary school.
Basically, this article gives very little information. What’s the point?
New schools were needed years ago when the first of these developments was approved. They knew this was coming but nothing was ever done to prepare for it. Two acres is NOT enough land for an elementary school. Imagine the size of the playground and parking lot. It’s also surrounded by the new apartment complex retail properties, which in my opinion, makes our kids easy pickin’s. But hey, we have a new sports complex.