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Duplin Co. schools may take budget to the courts

26 June 2008 – By Barry Merrill, publisher

The Duplin County School Board for the first time has sent their budget back to the county commissioners, invoking state statutes and saying the budget is inadequate to provide a free public education in Duplin County.

The school board took the historic vote last Wednesday night in a special called meeting. They began an arbitration process in a meeting this past Monday night during a joint meeting of the two boards in Kenansville at Duplin Commons.

The two boards had agreed to hire Andy Little of Chapel Hill to serve as mediator between themselves. He facilitated Monday night’s session. Mr. Little is reportedly one of the top mediators in the state, having conducted 4,000 mediations.

According to school board attorney David Phillips, after preliminaries, the school board made a 45-minute presentation to make their case for the $13.2 million budget request they had laid before county commissioners.
The commissioners responded with a presentation on their $6.9 million budgeted funding for the schools.

The two boards then went to separate meetings to discuss the presentations. The session broke at 10:30 p.m.

The two boards appointed representative groups to meet with the mediator on Monday at 9 a.m. According to Mr. Phillips, the two groups will meet in their respective board rooms establishing common ground, and the mediator will go back and forth between the two board rooms, identifying those areas of agreement and trying to work through differences.

Mr. Phillips said there is no time limit set for Monday’s meeting, and conceivably the two groups may try to meet again Tuesday or later in the week if they feel they can reach an agreement. Once they reach an agreement, the two representative groups will go back to their boards and ask the full boards to ratify their agreement on the budget.

If the two boards reach an impasse, the schools have five days in which to decide whether to serve papers against the county. Such a suit would be put on the “rocket docket”, taking precedent over other cases, and would be heard before a judge or a jury.

During last Tuesday night’s meeting, Superintendent Dr. Wiley Doby and Chief Financial Officer Carolyn Olivarez told the school board members they were not optimistic that there was a lot of give from commissioners.

One of the school board members said they heard that another $787,000 would be made available to the schools when justified by the schools.

Board member Willie Gillespie asked if there was an indication from the county why the budget was cut $400,000 from last year. Dr. Doby said they suggested that what the county presented was the way it was going to be.

School Board Chairman Emily Manning said that she had received some indication that the county wanted a joint meeting with the school board.
Mrs. Olivarez concluded her remarks on the budget saying, “I think it is going to take the taxpayers putting on pressure for things to change.”

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