NHCS superintendent contract extended, FY 2026 year-end budget
When the board members emerged from closed session, they announced that Superintendent Dr. Christopher Barnes received a one-year contract extension. The vote was unanimous, except for Democratic member Dr. Tim Merrick, who was absent for the meeting.
During the agenda meeting, the members did not discuss the decision, but the district later sent out a statement from NHCS Executive Director of Communications Anita Baggie.
In the press release, Republican board chair Pete Wildeboer wrote that this year’s results on NCDPI’s Teaching Working Conditions survey showed Barnes’ commitment to improving the district’s culture overall.
“Combined with stronger engagement with our employees and community and a renewed commitment to accountability, these results give the Board great confidence in the direction of the district,” Wildeboer wrote, adding that both the board and Barnes are looking forward to “continuing our work together on behalf of the more than 25,000 students and approximately 3,300 employees we proudly serve."
On Monday, WHQR put in a public records request for Barnes’ new contract – and his personnel file subject to inspection. This would show whether Barnes received a salary increase and/or bonus along with his one-year contract extension.
WHQR will update this article or post a new story when that request is completed.
In addition to the superintendent’s contract extension, Chief Financial Officer Ashley Sutton gave an overview of how the district’s budget ended up at the closure of the 2026 fiscal year.
The district saw a decrease of over half a million dollars ($550,491) in state legislative funding.
“After we have those June expenditures hit, we just make our budget match the actual expenditures for the year,” Sutton said.
There was no change in the overall funds from the New Hanover County Commission; however, they did see an increase in money ($60,746) from the federal government from reallocations from NCDPI.
For child nutrition, which is an enterprise fund, Sutton said their reimbursement from USDA was “a little less than what we had anticipated, [...] so they did end up having to use $328,000 of their fund balance to balance their budget.”
As for Medicaid reimbursements, it was one of the larger allocations the district received at $1.8 million. Sutton said the district would carry over those funds to help support the exceptional children program this fiscal year. She added they also received the last distribution of The Endowment funds for the Health Collaborative grant. The last allocation was for $30,000 of the $1.7 million they received overall to support the nursing pipeline in New Hanover County. She didn’t specify how the remaining funds would be used.
During the discussion, Libertarian member David Perry also questioned why the district was spending $623,287 on 743 laptops for elementary schools. Staff responded that those funds were to replace all the teachers’ aging computers.
Upcoming town halls, public hearing on LifeWise Academy rescinded
The members voted 5-1, with Perry dissenting, to rescind the public hearing on the during-school-hours Biblical LifeWise Academy program.
Instead, the board voted unanimously to direct the superintendent to schedule an August public input session for parents, community members, and teachers, and an October session on how the public views the $320.5 million school bond, which is slated to be on the November 3 ballot for New Hanover County voters.
Before Perry voted down the LifeWise Academy hearing, he said, “This has been a major concern of many people in our community, and I think if we shut them up now, I think we're going to hear about it badly. I think we need to give them some input.”
Other members, like Republicans Pat Bradford and Josie Barnhart, said the state legislature has now mandated that the district excuse absences for up to 4 hours of religious instruction.
Senator Michael Lee, who represents most of New Hanover County, was a primary co-sponsor of SB 1006 that introduced this legislation; however, it ended up in the 634-page state budget bill passed on July 7.
Board attorney Norwood Blanchard said he and the board were awaiting guidance from the North Carolina School Boards Association on how best to draft a policy regarding excused absences for students who attend religious instruction during school hours.
Barnes added to the discussion that the new state statute “doesn't really require the district to do anything more than ensure that the child is given work that they miss, and that they are released as an excused absence for religious instruction. It does not say that we have to implement it. Does not say we have to create admirable times for it. It's really an attendance thing. It's not a religious instruction thing.”
On deck for the August 4 meeting
As for the policy changes set to come before the board on August 4 for a vote, members may amend the board ethics policy to include background checks and fingerprinting for current and future members. It also includes 10 points outlining what “unethical/inappropriate acts” are for the board.
They will also review their current policy regarding charging for public records requests (PRR). The proposal is to charge the public for work beyond two hours; however, the law stipulates that public entities may charge only for the substantial IT work required to procure the records and, most notably, cannot charge for time spent redacting confidential information from those records.
Perry said that he had talked to Blanchard about this policy and said there are possibly “AI software packages” that can do PRRs in a matter of “minutes instead of days.” Barnhart responded by calling out Perry for consulting Blanchard without informing the other members, which goes against policy.
However, Barnhart said, “I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea to explore – to look at that, if it's a way for us to save money and be able to [have] a quicker turnaround time, it's definitely worth a conversation, in my opinion.”
The board also unanimously decided to move their November regular meeting to Thursday, November 5. At their next regular meeting on Tuesday, August 4, members also voted to give up to 5-minutes for a remembrance of Love Our Children public education advocate Loretta Stackhouse.
