Earlier in the month, Democratic school board member Dr. Tim Merrick was censured by his Republican colleagues for what they deemed as failure to follow protocols in his communications with a staff member and disregarding directives from Republican Chair Melissa Mason.
Mason said that she wasn’t singling out Merrick for partisan reasons and that she had reprimanded and meted out consequences to members of her own party. She did not respond to two requests to provide more information about those situations.
Merrick and his Democratic colleague, Judy Justice, also brought up a motion that had been drafted to censure Republican Vice Chair Josie Barnhart, regarding the way she had communicated with a parent. According to board policy, there is still time for Mason to add it to a meeting agenda, but so far, she has not done so.
Parent’s interaction with Barnhart
Shannon Playl is a former educator who spent 10 years teaching English and language arts at Noble Middle School before leaving in 2021. She’s the parent of a middle school student in the district.
On Wednesday, March 5, Playl wrote to all school board members about the sudden change to the middle school sex education curriculum they had approved the previous day. While staff had recommended waiting until the next academic year, the board voted to make the changes immediately.
This meant unexpected changes for parents who had opted into the Stepping Stones curriculum, which featured a more comprehensive sex education component, along with discussions of gender roles and identity. Playl was one of those parents, and she told the members that they had “taken away my choice.” She ended her email by asking them to reinstate the original curriculum.
Barnhart responded that day, writing to Playl, “After the recommended changes of lesson removal based on staff discussion there was very little differences in curriculum content,” adding, “You are welcome to encourage your child to have sexual activity [,] as a school we will not be doing that.”
Barnhart followed with “Happy to discuss further what lessons you do not agree with and I will bring your concerns to staff to review. Please let me know what lessons concerns you most.”
Playl then wrote back to Barnhart, pointing out that the line about encouraging her middle-school child to have sexual activity was “sick.” Playl wrote she, “want[ed] her [child] to have the information in a safe space with qualified educators, [which] is not the same as encouraging sexual activity.”
Later that day, Barnhart wrote: “I want to apologize for the email dialog being misconstrued to what I (poorly) attempted to discuss.”
Playl told WHQR she’s still not satisfied with the response from Barnhart.
“I want her to be held accountable for that, because it's on public record that she said that in writing, and that's just not an appropriate response to a parent who's concerned about their child's education,” she said. “I didn't come looking for a fight. I came looking for a change, and I got words that were hurtful and hard to hear as a parent.”
Censure motion not taken up yet
During Merrick’s censure hearing, Justice referenced a resolution to censure a different board member that had not been taken up. WHQR later confirmed it was about Barnhart’s communication with this parent.
On March 13, Justice submitted an item for agenda review, which Merrick seconded, requesting a hearing to censure Barnhart for violating Policy 2120. This policy has a provision that outlines how board members should “model civility and integrity to students, parents, employees, vendors, and the community.” It also included points about respectful dialogue.
Justice’s request included the email exchange with Playl and Barnhart, and it referenced that the written communication between the two of them was already in the public domain on social media because Playl had posted it.
Both Merrick and Justice said, over a month later, that Mason has not taken this up yet; Mason did not respond to a request for comment.
According to one of the board’s policies, the chair and the superintendent are responsible for placing items on the agenda. When two board members agree on the item, as Justice and Merrick did, they can “contact the chairperson or vice-chairperson to have that item added and the item will be added to an agenda within the next two Board meetings.”
Consequences for ‘usurping’ the chair
During the censure hearing for Merrick, Barnhart said the board was “here today because of the intentional usurping of the direction of the Chair” – and not because Merrick had reached out to an employee. Mason also said during the hearing that Merrick’s disregard for her directions was the prime reason for the censure.
However, an email exchange between Mason and Barnhart shows that Barnhart was willing to go toe-to-toe with the chair over the board vote that failed to approve a $3.2 million contract with Eviden for an artificial intelligence security pilot, which Republican Senator Michael Lee had helped broker.
After an intense debate, Mason ended up being the swing vote as the board voted down the pilot 4-3. Mason noted that the pilot was also being rolled out in Davidson County, where she claimed Eviden had resisted efforts by school officials to get the company to agree to a third-party risk audit.
After the vote, Barnhart emailed her fellow board members and Barnes that Mason “had lied about the [Eviden] audit not being implemented in Davidson [County Schools].”
Mason clapped back, “I shared the information I had from board members at Davidson County. To suggest that I was dishonest is false and reckless. The email from Eviden came almost a 1/2 hour AFTER the vote.”
WHQR has confirmed that Mason and others did receive an email from an Eviden representative after the vote had been taken; Mason also said that she had other reasons to consider Eviden “not trustworthy.”
Member Pat Bradford chimed in, “Open meeting laws peeps,” possibly a reference to the quorum in the email chain.
It’s unclear if Barnhart was disciplined in any way for her criticism of Mason.
Message to commissioners
On the Monday following the vote on the Eviden AI pilot, Barnhart wrote the New Hanover County Commissioners.
“New information has come to light after our vote on Tuesday to reject this pilot and I believe in the interest of transparency our board should reconsider,” adding that, “I am making you all aware as you [are] now asked to fund the local level asks that would have been able to be included in this pilot. There is a possibility to revisit this vote only if those opposed to it will be open to hearing and reevaluating the information,” Barnhart wrote.
She questioned why the school board rejected state funding while “simultaneously seeking local funds” for providing new safety initiatives. The implication seemed to be that the state money in the AI pilot, which the board had rejected, could have supported upgrades for which the board was requesting county funding.
While Barnhart didn’t explicitly make a budget request to the commissioners, Justice told WHQR that she thought this was Barnhart’s attempt to undermine the school’s budget process, and that it appeared she was speaking for the board, not herself.
Barnhart did not respond to questions about her interactions with Playl, the proposed censure motion from Justice and Merrick, or her email correspondences with Mason or county commissioners.
