The $116-million grant represents the single largest commitment of funding from The Endowment since its inception.
At a press conference on Thursday morning, New Hanover County Schools Superintendent Dr. Chris Barnes said, “this partnership will help ensure that every child across this county, regardless of the community they come from, regardless of their zip code, can thrive in a safe and supportive learning environment.”
The grant does not alter the current plan to put a $320 million school bond on the ballot in November, and does not represent additional funding above and beyond that amount.
According to The Endowment CEO Sophie Dagenais, The Endowment will issue $11.6 million dollars annually over the ten years of the grant, “helping to contain the cost of this ambitious initiative, and mitigating the pressures on our taxpayers.” The first annual payment is slated for February 18, 2028.
A county spokesperson confirmed that the grant is predicted to reduce the original estimated tax increase associated with the school bond from 1.75 cents per $100 to a half penny. For a $500,000 house, that would reduce the annual tax increase from $87.50 to $25.
According to an MOU between New Hanover County and The Endowment, the ballot language for the school bond will list a half-cent tax rate impact, although it will not mention The Endowment’s grant.
County Manager Chris Coudriet noted that the grant does not include any directive on how the school bond funding is spent.
“The Endowment did not say to the county or to the school district, you will use Endowment dollars on x, y, and z. Instead, they took the perspective and the position that this is a community-wide endeavor,” he said.
A county spokesperson noted that “the MOU allows the County to apply the grant to debt service, direct project costs, or project administration, as long as the funds are spent on the School Initiative.” The final spending decisions rest with the county, but regardless, the impact on the tax rate remains the same.
Collaboration and conditions
The grant MOU also includes an agreement between The Endowment and the county (and by extension NHCS), to collaborate on a “set of educational system initiatives” that aren’t strictly limited or related to capital funding for facilities.
Those include an evaluation by NHCS of student distribution, “considering both overcrowding and under-enrollment with attention to the relationship between utilization and academic performance,” which will be shared with The Endowment.
It also includes a kindergarten readiness assessment, beginning this fall, utilizing the North Carolina Early Learning Inventory, as well as a parent-guardian questionnaire to identify where incoming kindergarten students had previously received childcare (i.e., from a family member or friend or a specific licensed childcare facility). The MOU requires the county to share that data with The Endowment, and notes it may inform future Endowment investment decisions.
Other initiatives concern school safety enhancements and technology. In the MOU, The Endowment “invites a proposal from the District to help address current safety conditions across all schools and to recommend targeted investments.” The MOU also includes an invitation from The Endowment for NHCS to submit a grant proposal of up to $10 million for “demonstrable technology improvements designed to improve academic outcomes.” The MOU notes that any proposal would have to “explicitly demonstrate” that Endowment funding would not replace or diminish existing or planned funding from the county.
The MOU notes several conditions. In addition to the passage of the bond, the MOU also notes the grant requires the kindergarten readiness and childcare history assessment, as well as a “plan of accountability,” including semi-annual reports with information on contractors, project schedules, and progress updates.
Other questions
In December, during The Endowment’s winter public meeting, an audience member asked leadership if they could take on the cost of the $320-million school bond. Board Chair Shannon Winslow said they could not, because that wasn’t allowed by its bylaws, which encourage “supplementing” but prohibit “supplanting” government funding.
Asked ‘what had changed,’ since then, Winslow said “nothing.”
“My interpretation of that question was that the audience member and citizen was asking about the endowment taking down the $320 million, the full amount, and as I indicated, our governing documents and bylaws state that we cannot do that in its entirety, and because that would be supplanting, which would violate our APA. So, nothing has changed. What we are doing is we are supplementing what the county is doing, and we are coming alongside them. So, to answer your question, in summary, again, nothing has changed. It's the semantics of the question, and how I answered it, which was factual,” Winslow said.
Notably, the MOU repeatedly echoes the point about ‘supplementing’ rather than ‘supplanting.’
The school bond was the result of an intricate process of ranking the most important projects in the school district. That was necessary, in part, because the county simply lacked the debt capacity to fund the nearly half-billion dollars in needs for the school district; so, officials picked the most immediate needs.
Asked why The Endowment was not involved earlier in the school bond process, which might have changed that conversation with the knowledge that there was additional funding support available.
Dagenais said there was “not a simple answer,” adding, “we were involved when we needed to be involved.”
While it appears some conversation about The Endowment grant had been underway for some time, other officials only recently found out. Apparently, the New Hanover County school board was briefed in closed session on Tuesday.
The press was only notified of the 9 a.m. Thursday morning press conference at around 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday night. WHQR was not notified alongside other media outlets, although a spokesperson for The Endowment later apologized for the omission.
Below: Signed MOU between New Hanover County and The Endowment
