Supt. reacts to Alamance News public records request
Alamance-Burlington school officials have postponed a presentation on a facility needs survey that had been scheduled to be presented during the school board’s latest work session.
The facility needs survey – though traditionally a paperwork drill that all public school systems are required to submit to the state Board of Education every five years – could shed light on how much money that ABSS officials believe will be needed for school construction and/or renovations in the near term.
The facility needs survey follows a school capacity study presented in mid-August that prompted ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming to conclude a new elementary school, and possibly a new middle school, could be needed soon to ease what has been described as overcrowding at Garrett Elementary and Southern Middle schools.
The superintendent subsequently told board members late last month that the facility needs survey would be presented at their upcoming work session on September 9.
Fleming, however, told The Alamance News prior to last week’s work session that a consultant who conducted the facility needs survey for ABSS was unavailable at that time due to a personal scheduling conflict.
The newspaper had filed a public records request with Fleming on August 28, requesting to examine any draft copies of the facility needs survey conducted by Building Asset Inventory Single Component Assessment (BAISCA) under a $27,425 contract that school board members approved on February 24, 2025.
Fleming sent an email to Alamance News publisher Tom Boney, Jr. on Wednesday, September 3, acknowledging that he had received the request, which he said he would forward to the ABSS chief communications officer to fulfill.
“There is no draft or final copy of the report, in either a digital or hard copy format, for the district to produce at this time,” ABSS chief communications officer Emily-Lynn Adkins said last week in a follow-up email to the publisher. “We anticipate there will be more information in the coming weeks, as there will be a presentation to the Board of Education.”
In a letter hand-delivered to him prior to the school board’s work session last Tuesday afternoon, Boney asked Fleming to clarify his comment to the board about the facility needs survey on August 25, when he said, “It will be a big one – I have seen a preview of it.”
“The ‘preview,’ as you called it – at whatever stage of development or completion – is what we sought to review, pursuant to our August 28 public records request, which we reiterate today,” Boney wrote in his September 9 follow-up letter to Fleming. “If your statement to the board was in error, we would appreciate some explanation of that seeming inconsistency.”
The superintendent had a visceral reaction to the letter, telling an Alamance News reporter that Boney was “basically calling [Fleming] a lying bastard. He repeated that characterization to school board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves after she took her seat at the dais.
“The ‘preview,’ as you called it – at whatever stage of development or completion – is what we sought to review, pursuant to our August 28 public records request, which we reiterate today. If your statement to the board [about having previewed the report] was in error, we would appreciate some explanation of that seeming inconsistency.” – Alamance News publisher Tom Boney, Jr.’s public records request to ABSS
“[Alamance News publisher Tom Boney, Jr. is] insinuating I’m a lying bastard.”
– ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming
“I didn’t see that in the letter.”
– ABSS chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves
Ellington-Graves skimmed the letter – copies of which were provided to the school board chairman and vice chairman – and said, “I didn’t see that in the letter.”
The superintendent leaned over to the school board chairman and reiterated, “He’s insinuating I’m a lying bastard.”
In lieu of the consultant’s presentation, the newspaper’s reporter again asked Fleming on Tuesday to clarify what he’d meant on August 25 in describing the facility needs survey as “a big one.” He said that preliminary calculations indicated that the cost for future school facility needs could be around $200 million.
The superintendent also scrolled through his emails, as the reporter looked over his shoulder, in an apparent effort to demonstrate that he had received no draft or copy of the facility needs survey from the consultant.
Meanwhile, neither Fleming nor any other ABSS official has responded to Boney’s second inquiry about the “seeming inconsistency” in Fleming’s earlier statement to the board.
The most recent facility needs survey to have been presented publicly – in January 2016 by then-assistant superintendent for operations Dr. Todd Thorpe – had estimated that ABSS would need $186 million to build a new high school and renovate existing schools within the next five years (by 2021), plus another $59 million in renovations and additions within the next 10 years (by 2026).
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There appears to have been no public presentation of the 2020-21 facilities needs survey. In addition to the disruption in the board’s meeting schedule and statewide school shutdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the $189.6 million in bond projects that voters had approved for ABSS in November 2018 were well underway.
The two earlier facility needs surveys for ABSS had been done in-house by the school system’s facilities (operations) department.
The contract with BAISCA that school board members approved earlier this year called for the consultant to meet with ABSS maintenance staff (either in-person or online) in early March and to interview school principals in mid-March of this year. A final report and “exit briefing” were to have been delivered by March 26.
A provision in state laws that govern K-12 public education have required all N.C. school systems to submit a facility needs plan to the State Board of Education every five years since 1988, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.
The state-mandated facility needs survey is developed using a statewide program that requires data such as school capacity, enrollment, square footage, and conditions of each facility to be entered. Costs per square foot for school construction and renovations, as well as DPI’s current schools facility guidelines, are built into the program, which then calculates future facility needs and costs as the data is entered, according to DPI’s school planning division.
BAISCA, the firm hired to conduct the facility needs survey for ABSS, previously conducted facility needs surveys for 22 N.C. public school systems in 2020-21 and for Harnett County schools, during Fleming’s tenure there as superintendent, according to the proposal that was presented to the school board earlier this year.
Andrew LaRowe is the founder and president of BAISCA and is also president of an energy consulting firm that specializes in K-12 school facilities, EduCon, according to his online resume.
