At a Sept. 13 emergency meeting of the Stanly County Board of Commissioners, the board unanimously voted to deny potential matches for grant applications to be made by Stanly County Schools.
The commissioners voted 6-0 to deny the 5% match requests for four needs-based state grant applications for funds to build new schools.
Board chair Bill Lawhon said the Stanly County Board of Education “continues to say that we do not give them the funds, and they make a statement that we don’t get them sufficient funds for certain classes.”
Lawhon said the board’s responsibilities to SCS are to “provide school buildings” and “provide dollars for maintenance of school buildings.”
He said County Manager Andy Lucas was notified Sept. 10 about a SCS board meeting at which the school system was deciding to apply for need-based grants. Lawhon said the county’s 5% match on the funds would come close to $8.93 million.
Lawhon said the SCS meeting “came as a shock” because three county commissioners met with three school board members and SCS Superintendent Dr. Jarrod Dennis regarding the grants. He said the county would still have to have another $40 million to $60 million from taxpayers for the current SCS plans to move forward.
SCS recently stated its intention to consolidate Albemarle, North Stanly and South Stanly high schools into one eastern Stanly high school, and construct a new building for Oakboro STEM Elementary.
The grants had to be submitted by the end of business Sept. 13, the day of the commissioners’ meeting.
Lawhon said the paperwork of the grant submissions had different plans stated. In the paperwork, he added, SCS would build two new high schools. One would still be in the eastern part of Stanly but would consist of Albemarle and North students, while South and West students would go to a new western Stanly high school.
The chairman said he did not believe a high school could be built for $95.7 million, adding he believed voters needed to be asked if they “were willing to pass a bond for these improvements.”
“Sometimes I feel like they think we are Santa Claus,” Lawhon said. “Our bag of money is not as great as people think it is.”
Commissioner Peter Asciutto responded to comments made publicly by school board member Dustin Lisk about a sample facilities plan using Cleveland County, which the commissioner shared with both boards.
“(He said) the consultant for Cleveland County Schools did not have any recommendations. There are recommendations in here for the system all over this,” Asciutto said.
Asciutto said the Board of Commissioners has asked to go 50-50 on the cost of a comprehensive plan, saying SCS “said they had no money.”
“We don’t want to just build a school, we want a comprehensive plan,” Asciutto said.
Commissioner Brandon King asked where the supporting documents for the grant applications were, noting the school board “has said that everything we didn’t know is in these grant packages right here.”
King likened the grants to a recent proposal commissioners received in a board work session about a new county jail, saying the county hired an architect “to come in and show us options.”
Regarding the grants, he said, “I haven’t seen any plans for any high schools.”
King said some redistricting could be done “to fix a lot of this, but the school board says we can’t redistrict our way out of this. (They) won’t even talk about it.”
Commissioner Patty Crump said looking at enrollment numbers West Stanly Middle will need an addition soon. She said she believes “the work of identifying exactly how it needs to be done” is a question she wanted to ask.
“My thoughts are, when you put together a grant (application), if they were here, they could answer questions,” Crump said.
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