This article was originally published by Port City Daily here, and is being shared with permission.
“We have to have a full year of fully staffing … I have 12 kids with profound disabilities and one TA because that’s all we have to do by law,” Jordan Rowland, a special education teacher, said at the meeting.
Rowland was among roughly 40 participants at Wednesday night’s town hall, hosted by Superintendent Chris Barnes as part of his ongoing “listening tour” aimed at improving the district’s culture and getting direct feedback from staff and the community. Though community member participation doubled the amount of employees present, indicating staff may still fear voicing opinions in front of leadership.
“People are very excited about the events like this, it presents transparency, but I still think we’re under shadow law,” school counselor Lisa Espy said. “They still worry about retaliation.”
Barnes said he discussed his goal of mending district leadership’s relationship with staff at a conference with the Big 12 — the state’s biggest school districts, including Wake and Mecklenburg counties. The response he got was that it takes time; he said he hopes tensions will ease over the next couple years.
Those who did attend Wednesday night were overall candid in their remarks.
“There’s not enough time in the day to do what’s fair for my kids,” Rowland said, referring to the many planning and administrative tasks outside of instruction that is placed on teachers. Plus, she said they often lack teacher assistants in classrooms.
Much of Wednesday’s discussion on more support positions revolved around teacher assistants, with speakers explaining how instrumental they are in minimizing disruptions to classroom learning and easing the burden on teachers, especially those with larger class sizes.
“What you guys, all of you, have said sort of over and over again, is the class size really isn’t the issue, it’s support for your class,” Barnes said.
The superintendent said he would look to dedicate any additional funding made available over the school year to hiring more support staff. After facing a $20 million shortfall in the 2024-2025 budget cycle, Barnes was able to identify $1.13 million in savings last October, bringing back 20 positions — 13 were for teacher assistants. Doing the same may be more unlikely this year, however, as Barnes has said the district’s operating budget is down to subsistence levels, even before recent shifts at the local, state and federal levels threatened funding.
“I keep asking myself: Have we hit the bottom yet?” Barnes told the crowd Wednesday.
The superintendent outlined three ways the district could bring on more staff permanently: convince governing bodies to provide more funding per student; claw back more students from charter and private schools, so the government is forced to provide more money per their funding models; or take a serious look at redistricting and consolidating schools.
“[It’s] something that helps us reduce our overhead,” Barnes said, referring to consolidating buildings.
On the funding front, board member Pat Bradford essentially said the district was fighting a losing battle.
“We have been saying what you’ve been saying, and it generally falls on deaf ears. We haven’t been able to get through that barrier to people understanding what we’re saying — so we need help with that,” Bradford said.
She encouraged people to contact their legislators and also The New Hanover Community Endowment. The district has applied for $4 million in funding from The Endowment to fund 42 specialists for each school to deploy to an issue they see fit. Barnes said this grant remains under review, though The Endowment did dish out a grant on Thursday “to support New Hanover County teachers.”
The $900,000 grant went to Communities In Schools of Cape Fear to launch a three-year pilot initiative to support educators in 10 New Hanover County schools where additional classroom resources are limited. Targeted to fill in gaps not covered by district funding nor traditional school-based parent organizations, the initiative is supposed to provide a structured process for teachers to access materials and support activities.
“The goal is to enhance classroom instruction, foster more personalized and engaging learning environments, and promote a culture of support that contributes to teacher satisfaction and retention,” The Endowment wrote in a press release.
The Endowment was established with more than a billion dollars from New Hanover County commissioners’ sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center to Novant in 2021. Commissioners, particularly Dane Scalise and LeAnn Pierce, have often pointed to The Endowment for the school district’s funding requests.
Scalise, Pierce and chair Bill Rivenbark voted to approve a county budget this year that necessitated $ 30.6 million in permanent reductions, including more than 100 county positions, 70 of them filled. While school funding maintained its planned increase, commissioners have not indicated a willingness to raise their per-pupil allotment above $3,703. Still, members of the school board have pointed to the county’s ranking among the top 10 wealthiest counties in the state as evidence it can do more.
Complaints against statewide funding has been lobbed at North Carolina as well. According to 2019-2022 data from the Education Law Center, North Carolina’s per-pupil funding level was $10,791, which is $4,695 below the national average and ranks the state 48th in funding level. The report also found that North Carolina dedicated 2.32% of its GDP to support the public K-12 school system — the lowest percentage in the country.
One way around that is to bring in more students, forcing the state formula to dole out more funding. Barnes said, for example, bringing 100 kids back into the district would represent $1.5 million the district would receive for them.
“But those 100 kids don’t all show up at second grade at Aldermen [Elementary],” he said. “They’re going to sprinkle across 42 schools. So I have $1.5 million that I can spend on things like social workers, EC, teacher assistants because no one kid overloaded a certain school.”
Wednesday’s cohort said attracting more students would need improving each school’s environment and district culture as a whole — essentially, making the schools a place both students and parents want to be in.
In the parents’ favor, many in the group said increased communication about district happenings and ways to get involved, especially in ways to help fundraise or advocate for funding at all levels of government, is crucial. Barnes put in motion a monthly newsletter he will send out updating parents on the funding and legislative landscape.
Regarding increasing a student’s desire to attend school, a couple teachers at Murrayville Elementary mentioned an initiative the school put in place last year to keep tabs on students and families. Each member of a school-based team had five children they were responsible for looking for every day. If not, they would call home to address any problems and encourage attendance. Aside from boosting culture, ensuring the students’ attendance is also an action item for the district’s plan to improve third-grade literacy.
Katie Gates, the parent that challenged and successfully banned the book “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You” from curricula, suggested classrooms needed to have more fun.
“When I remember back to school, I remember more storytelling, I remember more discussion, I remember more sharing and reading biographies and different ways to captivate students that would make it fun, giving them the freedom to choose within an assignment, something applied to them … how do we make it more fun?
How do we give teachers the freedom to teach?” Gates asked.
The same sentiment was levied against Gates during her crusade to remove “Stamped” from curriculum, saying it was “rooted in untruths about our nation and from a twisted and biased perspective on American History.” The purpose of the AP English class it was included in is to analyze arguments made in text for efficacy, including the validity of sources and presentation of information. The board of education ultimately agreed with Gates and temporarily banned the book in 2023; the permanent ban was approved this year despite the curriculum committee’s recommendation the book be reinstated.
Rowland noted it has been hard for teachers to keep up with policy changes made by the board, also ones at the state level, and teachers are often left out of the conversation.
“It has now become this battle between the community and the board,” Rowland said. “That’s all I hear about.”
Though one of the biggest takeaways from the meeting was the desire to leverage more volunteers in schools, an immediate boost to schools while the district looks to find more funding. Parents pushed for clearer direction on how to become a volunteer while also tying the need for volunteers to funding issues so people may be more inclined to contribute their time.
“Volunteers can be a mixed bag,” Barnes said. “I think people with the right heart and the right rationality in schools can come on, and they need to be able to interact in the environment that we have.” Though, the superintendent agreed to explore the issue further.
