Chair and Vice-Chair elected
Republican Pete Wildeboer was unanimously elected chairman of the New Hanover County Board of Education, taking over for Republican Melissa Mason, who has served as chair for the last year. No other members were nominated for the position.
Republicans Josie Barnhart and Mason were both nominated for vice-chair. The board’s two Democratic members, Tim Merrick and Judy Justice, joined Republican David Perry to elect Mason to the position in a 4-3 vote (Mason voted for herself).
Members serve as chair and vice-chair for one year.
Public participation at meetings
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The board discussed updates to the public participation policy, which include allowing law enforcement to independently remove people, giving the chair authority to remove specific individuals who are being disruptive, and clarifying that no set number of warnings is necessary before someone is removed.
Merrick said that the proposed changes read as “a threat.” Barnhart interjected that it aligns with state law on audience members disrupting government proceedings.
Bradford said she believed the changes, in concert with the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, were “not punitive. It’s transparent.” She added that she couldn’t shake the meeting where “law enforcement and the superintendent and the chair were trying to figure out what the rules of engagement were with what was happening in the room. It was personally frightening.”
She’s referring to the crowded room of constituents who came in support of Merrick during his censure hearing in April.
Merrick said that there is “no way of watching human behavior and fitting it into a box. Those decisions will always have to be made at the time and by those people in charge. [...] This new language doesn't do anything to change those rights and responsibilities. That's my only concern.”
The members agreed to revisit the language at their next policy meeting on December 9.
Advanced delivery of meeting materials
Board members considered changes to policy 2335, which establishes a timeline for delivering documents to the board and the public before meetings.
Over the last several years, documents being reviewed during agenda meetings have not been made public before or during those meetings – often leaving the press and the public in the dark if they’re trying to follow along.
Merrick said he wanted all agenda review documents to be publicly visible while they’re being discussed. Perry agreed with him.
However, Superintendent Dr. Christopher Barnes, Bradford, and Barnhart were skeptical as they felt like this would place an additional burden on staff.
Barnes said if they proceeded with this, then it would “really limit the changes that we make once we have that agenda review meeting, and I just want to make sure these folks are able to hit those timelines that this would create.”
Barnes didn’t elaborate on how it would limit the ability to make changes. Government boards routinely review preliminary or draft documents during agenda meetings and finalize them later. And while some board members have claimed otherwise in the past, those unfinalized documents remain public records.
Barnhart said she saw the agenda review meetings mainly as for the board members.
“That is the opportunity that we have to ask questions of our staff,” she said.
While agenda meetings are often treated as information, boards – including the current and past school boards – have taken policy votes during them instead of waiting for regular meetings.
The members agreed to discuss the policy again at their next committee meeting.
Resolution calls for changing the state funding formula for exceptional children
Barnhart said she wanted to bring forward an EC funding resolution first initiated by Lee County. The resolution would ask the state legislature to lift the 13% cap on funding for exceptional children.
Currently, the district has 24,560 students, of whom 3,293 are identified as EC. Those EC students constitute 13.9% of the district’s student population, so the county is on the hook for an additional $564,927 in funding.
The resolution states that, “this unfunded gap places a disproportionate burden on local resources, limits the district’s ability to provide essential services, and compromises our efforts to meet both state and federal requirements for EC programming.”
The board is asking the legislature to fund EC enrollment based on actual enrollment, not an “arbitrary percentage gap.”
Bradford said she had met with three state representatives and one of their wives, although she didn’t offer names.
“Believe it or not, a good portion of them did not know that there was a cap on what they fund for EC,” she said.
While all the members agreed that this resolution was an important step, Merrick and Barnhart disagreed over the timing of the proposal. He wanted to give it more time so that the district’s Advisory Council for Exceptional Children could review it and give feedback. Barnhart thought it was a “backhanded attempt” to bring it forward now.
The board also voted to approve Poyner Spruill LLP to provide legal services for exceptional children until June 2027.
The district will pay $310 per hour for partners, $275 per hour for associates, and $105 per hour for paralegals billed in increments of a tenth of an hour.
They’re also paying a flat rate of $1,000 plus mileage reimbursement for attorney travel. They’ll also pay the attorneys for $10.75 per billed hour for telephone charges, photocopying, postage, and other typical administrative expenses.
