ALBEMARLE — At the Stanly County Board of Education’s Oct. 1 meeting, members of the board signaled their frustration regarding four need-based grant applications for the school system that were recently denied by the county commissioners.
One grant was for a new Oakboro Elementary School, while another was for an addition to West Stanly Middle School and two others were for high schools.
Board Member Glenda Gibson described her perspective of the grant application process’ timeline, revealing that Stanly County Schools Superintendent Dr. Jarrod Dennis initially emailed Stanly County Manager Andy Lucas on Aug. 19 with the information that was needed for the grant application.
“Mr. Lucas denied pursuing that grant in his email,” Gibson said. “There was a correspondence.”
A joint facilities and commissioner meeting was then scheduled for Sept. 6 to discuss the matter, with Chairman Bill Lawhon, Vice Chairman Mike Barbee, and Commissioner Peter Asciutto each representing their board.
“During that meeting, there was a great, enormous discussion about the grant information — the details and the deadline for the need-based grant that had to be turned in by Sept. 13 — and we discussed in that meeting the priority ranking with DPI (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction) if Stanly County Schools did not submit an application,” Gibson added.
Board Member Robin Whittaker mentioned that the commissioners had originally approved the $12.5 million West Stanly Middle School addition on a need-based application in 2022 but has since denied it.
Chairperson Carla Poplin reiterated that the commissioners weren’t forced to pursue all four grants at hand: “They could have à la carte pick and chose, or accepted it all.”
At the recent joint meeting, the commissioners requested a comprehensive facilities study but stopped short of providing an assurance of action post-study.
They also cited a reluctance to commit to matching funds for large capital projects without the completion of a strategic and comprehensive capital improvement plan similar to one that was done for Cleveland County.
School Board Member Dustin Lisk said that this particular type of study was unneeded and did not line up well with the current timeline.
“By ordering a full-blown ‘let’s look at every building again’ study when there’s been no action taken on these buildings, and going across the entire county to come up with several $100 million dollars — that they aren’t going to pay for now — they’re only going to kick it up to a vote in 10 more years when they’ve not done anything,” Lisk said. “It’s going to be drastically higher and a real waste of taxpayer resources.”
Although the commissioners offered to pay for 50% of the study, the school board countered that previous studies were sufficient and that the commissioners would have to pay in full if they wanted a new large-scale study done.
The commissioners also brought up that the school board had announced it wanted to spend around $900,000 for a new central office building and property, which is a funding amount that could have covered the estimated $650,000 West Stanly Middle School application without the county commissioners’ involvement at all.
The Stanly County Board of Education is scheduled to hold its next regular meeting on Nov. 5 at 6:15 p.m. inside the Gene McIntyre Meeting Room at Stanly County Commons.