Months of stormy relations did little to dampen the spirit this week when Alamance County’s commissioners joined the Alamance-Burlington school board for an annual meeting with the county’s delegation to the General Assembly.
Heading into this confab, the commissioners had repeatedly clashed with the school system’s leaders over issues like student performance, transparency, and the county’s financial priorities. Yet, these contretemps were largely consigned to the background on Monday when the two groups sat down with their local legislative contingent to discuss various matters of mutual interest.
For all intents and purposes, this four-hour powwow was an opportunity for the school board to promote its institutional prerogatives to the county and state. It also allowed ABSS to show off some of its finer assets. To this end, its administrators had moved this year’s meeting from the usual venue at the school system’s central office to the much-ballyhooed Career and Technical Education Center in Burlington. The school system’s leaders went on to salt this venue with byproducts of student ingenuity, which included a breakfast buffet catered by culinary arts classes and customized name plates crafted by carpentry students for all of the meeting’s participants.
ABSS also seems to have maintained a tight grip over the agenda for Monday’s joint meeting – so much so that they had neglected to share copies with the county’s representatives. Yet, this ominous oversight was quickly forgotten as the school system’s administrators got down to the business at hand.
Aaron Fleming, the school system’s superintendent, set the overall tone for Monday’s proceedings with an account of the biggest developments from the previous year. Fleming assured the meeting’s participants that this period has seen ABSS make substantial strides in its financial management as well as its brick and mortar facilities. He also alluded to recent gains in academic performance, which he confessed had been a problem area for the school system last year.
“Quite frankly, we knew we would not end the year in a strong standing,” he went on to explain during the four-hour-long powwow. “It ended up worse than we thought. But that said, we’re now headed down the right road.”
An era of rude feelings
Fleming and his colleagues had first tumbled to the dire state of academics at ABSS in early September when officials in Raleigh released the results from the state’s latest round of standardized tests. Although quite flattering to the state as a whole, these numbers came as a gut punch to ABSS, which found itself among the state’s 20 worst performing school systems based on these scores.
This stinging indictment of the school system’s instructional performance had come at a time when with the school system’s rapport with the county had already been strained to the breaking point by a particularly bitter struggle over the county’s annual budget.
In the years leading up to this fiscal fracas, the county’s leaders had poured millions of dollars into the county’s maintenance needs in order to avoid the repeat of a massive mold outbreak that had shut the school system down for several weeks in 2023. At the same time, there was a growing sense of unease about the county’s property tax burden, which prompted a majority of the commissioners to sign off on a budget in 2025 that gutted the county’s annual set-aside for the school system’s non-capital needs.
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In response to these operational cuts, the school board resorted to an obscure state law that enables school systems to haul their local government benefactors into mediation to resolve budgetary disputes. Under this statutory provision, the school system was guaranteed a significant boost in its funds even if its negotiations with the county broke down. The commissioners consequently struck a compromise with the school board that allowed them to avoid this eventuality.
Having been outmaneuvered by the school system’s leaders, the county’s top brass were left to slink off and nurse their wounded pride. Yet, their moment of vindication arrived soon enough with the release of the state’s unexpectedly dismal test scores for ABSS.
Among the most vociferous critics of these results were county commissioner Ed Priola and John Paisley, Jr., who at the time served as the chairman of the county’s governing board.
Paisley, who remains on the board of commissioners despite having retired the gavel for health reasons, had invited the school system’s leaders to address the commissioners in the wake of the state’s report in September. His counterpart on the school board initially accepted his overture, only to reverse course, leading to denunciations from Paisley about the school system’s apparent bad faith.
Although Paisley was absent from Monday’s proceedings, the case against the school system was assiduously pursued by Priola, who demanded to know what, precisely, the school system is doing to repair its tattered academic repute.
“A lot of kids who are graduating appear to be functionally illiterate,” the first-term commissioner argued that morning. “We have 17 failing or near failing schools…I’d like to know what we’d do to improve the academic performance of the schools…I’d like to see the school system perform for the money they’re getting to perform.”
Teaching moment
In an attempt to placate the naysayers, Fleming called on Sean McWherter, the school system’s assistant superintendent over academics, to explain precisely what he and his colleagues have done to bring up the academic performance of students.
McWherter went on to describe some of the specific initiatives that have been floated to improve academic achievement. These measures include the reintroduction of “instructional coordinators,” which had been eliminated for budgetary reasons, at the school system’s eight worst performing schools. McWherter also touched on some changes in the way that the school system measures and tracks student performance. He said, for example, that his office recently debuted an “early warning” dashboard that allows teachers to monitor everything from discipline and attendance to poor academic performance.
“One of our jobs at the central office is making sure our teachers have what they need to be successful,” he said. “We’re trying to ensure that our time, our energy, and our efforts are all going to align to things that are going to improve that performance.”
In addition to McWherter’s briefing on academic performance, the audience at Monday’s joint meeting also heard updates on the school system’s finances and its facilities.
Greg Hook, ABSS’ chief operating officer, gave the meeting’s participants a rundown of the school system’s structural assets, including the specific schools that are at currently deemed at, or over, capacity. Hook said that the number of schools in the latter category is expected to jump from two to 14 over the next nine years, which has prompted the school board to make preparations to adjust existing school zones.
Hook also addressed some of the most pressing needs that the school system’s buildings currently face. Hook paid particular attention to security features like surveillance cameras and weapons detection systems, which can spot potential dangers remotely. He went on to bemoan that, for the past three years in a row, he has been stymied in his efforts to obtain funds for this surveillance equipment. Hook nevertheless assured his audience that he hopes to foot the bill for these items in the near future with $5.9 million in unspent proceeds from various projects that have been subsidized by voter approved bonds.
As for the school system’s monetary resources, the school system’s CFO Tony Messer assured his audience that ABSS is on a much surer financial footing than it was before he took over the proverbial piggybank some 14 months ago.
Although the school system had been eyeing a budgetary deficit this past spring, Messer observed ABSS has instead, increased its financial reserve of about $3.9 million. He attributed much of this surplus to the use of $5.4 million in “low wealth” funds from the state to pay for items that were originally slated to be covered by the county’s appropriations.
Messer went on to extol the school system for getting a clean bill of health on its most recent annual audit. He also sung the praises of an online “dashboard” that aims to provide the general public with readily-accessible financial information, including a full inventory of all of the checks that the school system has paid out this year.
Priola, for one, was distinctly unimpressed by this gesture by ABSS to be more transparent. He complained about the cumbersome nature of these records, which he said are difficult to search and couched in an arcane budgetary code. Fleming assured him that he, too, has gripes with the current state of the dashboard, although he pointed to potential software upgrades that Messer said would cost something on the order of $2.5 million. The school system’s CFO went on to suggest that the county could provide this revenue in the absence of an allocation from the General Assembly.
“Good luck,” Priola laconically replied.
The temperature of the room
Priola was more voluble, however, as he laid out his sundry complaints about the school system’s exchange of information with the commissioners.
“We were supposed to have had a visit or two from the board of education or superintendent about academics,” he bemoaned recalling the vacillating response to Paisley’s invitation last fall. “This was supposed to have been a new chapter of openness and transparency for ABSS and the county commissioners. But I haven’t seen it yet.”
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The Republican commissioner was equally quick to dismiss the school system’s claims that its finances are now on an even keel. He argued, for instance, that a $3 million surplus is just as indicative of poor management as the seven-figure deficit that ABSS was initially eyeing last year. He also dredged up the school system’s prior track record of unseemly annual audits as well as a perennial refrain of his own that the school system’s central office is “bloated” with unnecessary staff.
This recitation of Priola’s old grievances received an icy reception from several members of the Alamance-Burlington school board.
Dan Ingle, a former county commissioner who now serves on the school board, called Priola’s attention to the sterling audit report that the school system received this past fall. Meanwhile, school board member Avery Wagoner echoed the pledges of school system’s administrators that they’ve begun to rectify problems with academic performance.
“I can promise you that we have a new system in place,” he said. “We have a new team in place, and we’re focusing on academics.”
Priola’s apparent tendency to reflect on previous years drew a particularly passionate riposte from school board member Tameka Harvey.
“Can we please focus this year on moving forward,” she pleaded with the county commissioner. “Let’s focus on having a great relationship between the county commissioners and the school board so we can lead on a positive note, doing what’s best for our students…Be on our team, not off of our team.”
At the same time, members of the school board weren’t the only ones who were optimistic about the latest developments within the Alamance-Burlington school system.
Kelly Allen, the current chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, expressed much the same view about the current efforts of Fleming and his associates to overhaul what’s wrong with the schools.
“You can’t live in the past,” she declared, “and you can’t just turn something around with the snap of a finger…You have to move forward.”
The school system’s superintendent also came in for some conspicuous praise from members of the county’s legislative contingent.
“I think his leadership has seen ABSS go in a fresh direction,” effused state senator Amy Scott Galey, whose district covers Alamance County and a portion of Randoph.
“From the very first day, I knew we were on the right track,” agreed Steve Ross, the outgoing state representative for North Carolina’s 63rd house district. “He’s an upfront guy, and when he told me that he was going to be transparent, I knew that he meant it.”
State of agreement
The county’s legislative delegation also tended to find common ground with many of the school system’s positions on specific policies.
Galey, for one, commended ABSS for its paucity of “diversity, equity, and inclusiveness” ventures that she and other senate Republican have been trying to staunch. She also hailed the school system for anticipating a state-level ban on cell phones in classrooms. This stance was later reiterated by Ross as well as fellow state representative Dennis Riddell of North Carolina’s 64th house district.
Meanwhile, Galey was keen to assure the school system’s leaders that she had put up a valiant, but ultimately futile, fight for the continuation of “low wealth” funds to the school systems in her senatorial district.
Among the few bones of contention between the school board and the legislators was the delegation’s willingness to use public school funds to bankroll so-called “opportunity scholarships” to private schools. Some members of the school board also disputed Galey’s support for an adjustable school calendar that they felt still falls short on local control.
Meanwhile, Fleming gave both the state legislators and the county’s elected leaders some suggestions to mull over when they returned to their respective bailiwicks.
In the case of the commissioners, the superintendent called for a continued commitment to local salary supplements and adequate revenue for the school system’s capital needs. He also urged both county- and state-level leaders to back a proposed ballot initiative on a 1/4-cent hike in the local sales tax in order to generate additional revenue for public education.
“So, let’s get our school buildings in a condition that’s conducive to learning,” he went on to sum up, “a supplement that recruits and retains the best teachers, school leaders, and support staff, and we promise to have academics at a level that the state and maybe even the nation notices.”
