Over the last two months, the New Hanover County Schools district has been grappling with millions of dollars in budget shortfalls, with limited options on how to bridge those gaps.
On Tuesday, Dr. Chris Barnes offered the school board some good news — $1.6 million in federal funding, for Title II, III, and IV, is now unfrozen. (Barnes said the money has been dispersed to the state but not yet individual school districts, so while optimistic, he said he wanted to “trust but verify,” citing the Soviet proverb made popular by Ronald Reagan.)
He also noted that the county had increased the school budget by $4 million to support raises and benefits, and another million dollars to fund safety improvements at high school campuses.
But there are still serious holes in the budget, including $2.3 million in state funding for teacher supplements. There are also significant cuts from New Hanover County as part of the budget passed on party lines in June — including $1.6 million less for school nurses (meaning 14 fewer positions) and $975,000 that had been slated to pick up six pre-K classes previously funded by federal Covid-relief funds. The district found ways to fund pre-K for the upcoming year, but still hasn’t secured a long-term recurring funding solution.
Related: Triple Whammy: A deep dive into New Hanover County Schools' funding predicament (The Newsroom)
There’s also uncertainty around the state budget, which is being negotiated at molasses speed by the Republican-controlled state House and Senate (which are currently planning on meeting monthly).
Barnes notes the General Assembly has passed a mini-budget, which includes a 1% raise for state-funded staff. The school district is currently planning on a 3% in the final budget, whenever it passes, which will impact local funding for non-state-funded positions. (If the higher 5% raise suggested by some Republican lawmakers passes, the district will have to find additional matching funds.)
And, while Barnes said enrollment figures are looking good, the district won’t know for sure until the 10th day of school (when per-student funding gets calculated).
Barnes told the board that he was initially set on returning for additional funding requests from New Hanover County and The Endowment, the $1.6-billion foundation formed from the sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center to Novant Health. However, he said he now wanted to wait to figure out exactly what the district’s financial need was — and how much they could handle internally without additional outside funding.
“I think the right thing to do is to ask you guys for the latitude to wait before going back to our county commissioners or The Endowment. You know, my daddy taught me that it's important to mow your lawn before you start judging somebody else's lawn being mowed. I don't want to go back to the county commissioners to ask for funding that we then figure out a way to handle on our own. I don't think that's good fiscal responsibility,” Barnes said.
Barnes said there were several options for making pre-K more financially viable, including focusing on 4-year-olds (because the state doesn’t reimburse for 3-year-old pre-K students) and increasing class sizes. He also suggested the state could expedite approval of additional pre-K locations that aren’t currently state-certified.
Barnes suggested he could come back to the school board once a month with updates, and board members agreed.
Driving Dr. Barnes
Board members debated how they should approach the budget shortfall.
Republican board member Pete Wildeboer addressed concerns that he’d ‘liked’ a post from Republican Commissioner Dane Scalise about the county’s budget cuts on Facebook, saying he’d done so in error — and clarifying he wasn’t happy about the budget.
“I'm not happy – I'm gonna say, Pete Wildeboer is not happy about losing nurses. Pete Wildeboer is not happy about losing pre-K,” he said, noting that he’d spoken with an unnamed county commissioner and pushed the issue.
“You can't say on one hand, ‘if you need something else, come on back to us,’ and then say, ‘oh no, you know, we can't do that,” he said.
Wildeboer went so far as to offer to drive Barnes to the county to make an ask.
“I was gonna say, ‘Hey, let me drive you over there,’” Wildeboer said.
Democratic board member Judy Justice said she understood increasing class sizes but hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
“These are little kids. They need those small numbers. I know that you're doing it because we need it so bad, but my heart as an educator says this is not the best way to do it, because, once more, we're harming our kids because of the financial situation,” Justice said, urging Wildeboer to talk to commissioners.
Fellow Democrat Tim Merrick urged going to the county for nurses, even if funding for pre-K couldn’t be resolved until later.
“I really think we have to go and I'll, if he won't drive you, I will, and I'll be there with you,” Merrick said.
In a brief moment of levity, Barnes interjected, “I have a car!”
But the rideshare offers continued, as Republican David Perry suggested a different destination.
“I'd rather drive you to The Endowment committee — that hospital was sold on the basis that it was supposed to help our schools, and now we're talking about nurses not being out of schools. You would be right down their alley as far as something they should be funding. Let's go there,” he said.
There has been considerable debate over how far The Endowment’s founding documents permit it to go in supplementing government funding before it crosses over into substituting for core government services; those documents permit the former but prohibit the latter. It’s worth noting that the original sale document between New Hanover County and Novant, which includes the founding charter of the Endowment, includes as list of “illustrations of possible initiatives” that The Endowment could fund. That list doesn’t include school nurses (although that doesn’t rule them out), but it does include “High-quality universal pre-kindergarten with wrap-around services.” (You can find that section of the sale document, on pages 162-163, here).
“Come back and bite us”
Republican Pat Bradford said she was happy to go to the county and trusted Barnes' sense of timing. But she said she would not criticize the county.
“I’m not going to criticize the funding sources that I’m then on my knees with my hand out, begging to give me money,” Bradford said.
She referenced the upcoming buyouts and layoffs at the county as part of budget cuts and the additional $4 million in funding from the county as presenting an inopportune time to ask for criticism or a short term ask.
“I think that we can't criticize them, and I don't think we can go back like real quick and say, ‘pause in the firing of your people and give us more money, even though you gave us $4 million more and then another million dollars more.’ It doesn't compute to me right now,” she said, reiterating that she would be ready to go back when Barnes was sure it was the right time.
While Bradford has voiced support for the Republican-led county commission and their recent attempts to cut spending, last month she did offer a modest critique of the budget process. Bradford acknowledged the public would be upset about cuts, specially to nurses, and said she didn’t think commissioners understood what they were cutting — adding she felt there was still time for the county to help find funding solutions.
“It's not a good way to run the school district by winging it. And right now, that feels like what we're doing. We don't know if, in a matter of months, if we can sustain what we're starting with,” Bradford told WHQR last month.
Republican vice-chair Josie Barnhart said it was important for the district to work through the appropriate channels — and alluded to displeasure on the board of commissioners with the school board, both at some of the district’s past financial decisions and criticism of the county’s recent budget voiced by some board members.
Barnhart noted that, while under state law the county’s only funding requirement is facility needs, they’ve provided additional money.
“And so where I've had conversations, county commissioners are frustrated with members of our board for openly berating them when they did indeed give us 4 million more dollars,” Barnhart said.
Barnhart suggested the county’s fiduciary priority should be paying down their debt to increase the potential capacity of a school bond in 2026 — something the district has all but formally decided on to help fund much-needed upgrades to New Hanover High School and other facility needs. (Currently, the county’s borrowing capacity is lagging significantly behind capital needs.)
Like Wildeboer, Barnhart had also ‘liked’ Commissioner Scalise’s social media post about reducing the county budget (with two different accounts). But unlike Wildeboer, she advised against criticizing the county — and like Bradford said that rushing a follow-up ask wasn’t the best idea.
“[If] we can put pause on this until we need to, then I'm going to wait until we need to. But I'm just saying the frustrations that have been expressed, I don't want to come back and bite us. And I'm just saying this out loud, because the county commissioners, these are the conversations that they've had with me when I've asked about it,” Barnhart said.
