News

Speakers implore commissioners to fully fund K-12 schools

By Bill Moss, Published: June 19, 2024

Henderson County public schools are underfunded, teachers, a high school student, School Board candidates and other supporters of public education said Wednesday as they implored the county Board of Commissioners to grant the school system its full funding request.

“Public education, like most human endeavors, is not perfect or easy but there are ways to improve it,” Jack Gillette said. The rise of private and charter schools is taking more money away from traditional public schools, he said, adding, “The state of North Carolina wants to use even more of our tax money to support private schools.”

Legislators are “turning their backs on public schools and are now actively supporting legislation that is financially crippling our kids’ opportunities,” Joe Elliott said. Buncombe County’s teacher supplement is 53 percent higher than Henderson County’s and “starting salaries here are the lowest among eight Southeastern states.”

School Board candidate Mary Ellen Kustin urged commissioners to fund more social workers in the schools — as school employees and not Department of Social Services employees.

League of Women Voters President Ernest Mowell said: “The League recognizes that strong schools mean strong communities. The League believes Henderson County schools should be fully funded at the requested level.” If it is not, schools will have “fewer teachers, less staff and a diminished education experience. Public schools have a more direct and profound impact than any other single project that we have," he said. "Only your strong leadership can keep Henderson County public schools strong and you can do that by approving their funding request.”

School Board candidate Rhonda Mountain is the mother of three children in the public schools, including a special needs daughter. “Without the support of her teachers and support staff she would not have graduated from Henderson County schools,” she said. The county has 14,033 students in public schools, compared with 1,016 in 13 private schools. “You are greatly underfunding our public schools,” she said. “They have a right to a fair and quality education. I’m here to ask you to please fund our public  schools.”

Chris Walters said, “When it comes to funding the school budget, most of the problems come from Raleigh.” The current Legislature has adopted tax policy that favors the wealthy and corporations, he said, at the expense of K-12 schools.

Melinda Lowrance, president of the county NAACP chapter, spoke in favor of cost-of-living pay raises for all county employees. “We support maintaining social workers” in the schools, she said. “We do not support the school vouchers” for private school tuition. “This is a ploy used to segregate our public schools not only racially but economically as well — the haves and the have-nots.”

Dorothy Callaway thanked the board for drafting a budget that keeps taxes level and cautioned against adding $5 million to it for public schools. “I applaud the county manager and commissioners for looking at the entire county and recognizing that it is not just about one squeaky wheel,” she said.

Later, during discussion of the FY25 budget, Commissioner Bill Lapsley said there was no support for the implication by some speakers that low pay was causing a “mass exodus” of teachers from Henderson County. Schools Superintendent Mark Garrett said the chief competitor for schoolteachers is Buncombe County and, increasingly, Greenville County, South Carolina.

“What I’m hearing you say is you have normal attrition, retirements, and you’re filling those positions,” Lapsley said. “Ten vacancies out of 900 is not a huge movement of people from our county. I just don’t agree with the position that that’s a serious problem.”

Garrett agreed.

“When we look at the region, we’re one of the better districts in turnover rate,” he said.

The county’s 5.7 percent attrition rate ranks 23^rd in the state while the Henderson County teacher supplement is 25^th highest, Commissioner Michael Edney said.