From Discord to Accord? County and Schools Near “Huge” Deal to Resolve Differences

The proposed agreement would fulfill several previous requests from the School Board, including the creation of a joint committee to discuss and monitor bond projects.

Sign outside Brevard High School, which is due for extensive upgrades that would be monitored under the terms of the proposed agreement

BREVARD — Could it all be over?

The long delays? The accusations of “double dipping” from one side and bullying and misleading presentations from the other? The general acrimony between the Transylvania County School Board and County Commission that has prevailed since voters approved a $68 million school bond sale six years ago?

That is the hope after County Manager Jaime Laughter announced the terms of a proposed interlocal agreement between the two parties on Tuesday.

The deal would resolve several long-standing disputes, provide funding to Transylvania County Schools the Commission had previously denied and set up a joint committee that will publicly discuss about $50 million worth of school upgrades targeted by the recent bond sale.

“Pretty much everything we asked for is in that agreement,” said outgoing Board Chair Kimsey Jackson.

Outgoing Board member Bryan O’Neill called the accord a sign of “enormous progress” and “huge cooperation between the School Board and the County Commission.”

Incoming Board member Ruth Harris said that she sees promise that the agreement will allow the new Board to tighten its focus on education issues.

Of course facility improvements will remain an important issue, but hopefully, she said, “we can spend more of our School Board meeting time looking at academic achievement and bringing kids back up to grade level.”

The two bodies previously authorized Laughter and Schools Superintendent Lisa Fletcher to negotiate the accord, which is expected to be finalized after review by attorneys.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Laughter said she was “excited to share” the proposal, which is intended to “provide a bridge for the two boards around project management.”

Among its highlights are the fulfillment of two requests the Board made months ago but that have since received little public discussion.

One of these is the formation of the committee, which will include Laughter, Fletcher and two members from each board. This group will meet quarterly to monitor and discuss the progress of bond projects.

“This would be a problem-solving group,” Laughter said, “but would also make sure these projects are moving forward as expected.”

“I felt like it was ignored but apparently it made some sort of impact,” Jackson said of the request for the joint committee, which was included in a letter a frustrated Board sent to the Commission in August.

With the committee in place, O’Neill said, “there’s going to be total transparency for everyone to see what’s going on, which is a remarkable change from the way the County Commission has done business in the past.”

One of the committee’s first tasks relates to the second main request from the Board, the hiring of a dedicated project manager to supervise school construction projects.

When the committee begins meeting early next year, it will interview candidates for the job, which, according to the terms of the proposal, the county will fund for at least two years.

The agreement also calls for staffers on both sides to review documents to answer questions about sales tax revenue raised by Schools’ former finance director, Gabi Juba. 

 To resolve other funding disputes, the agreement included financial commitments from the county that, unlike the deal’s other elements, needed a Commission vote on Tuesday. It passed unanimously.

 The biggest of these addresses the expense that was previously the subject of the sharpest disagreement: Which party would cover the “overcommitted” cost of HVAC improvements at Brevard Middle and Brevard Elementary schools?

In June, the Commission agreed to pay $412,000 of the $912,000 bill and leave the remainder for Schools to cover from its fund balance, which district officials said could have crippling consequences to its operations.

Commissioner Teresa McCall introduced the motion to approve this approach in June and Commission Chair Jason Chappell then framed the county’s share as “above and beyond” the county’s commitment to school funding.

Neither of them returned emails seeking comment about their changed positions, but neither of them objected to approving $500,000 for the HVAC projects on Tuesday or earmarking $220,000 for routine repairs — a requested line item previously left out of the county’s budget.

Chappell, McCall and Laughter also did not respond to questions about whether the proposal could represent a major shift in the two sides’ relationship.

That’s the way Jackson sees it, saying he was pleasantly surprised by the terms of the proposal and calling it a “a big change”

But he also said he had “no idea why” the county was amenable to the terms.

Fletcher, in a brief interview after the meeting, offered one perspective. Laughter, she said, appreciated that the district had owned up to errors in some of the invoices it had sent to the county.

In recent months, school officials have also acknowledged the validity of another long-standing complaint from the county, saying that, at least in the past, the district failed to complete county-funded projects in a timely manner.  

O’Neill, the lone Democrat on either board, attributed the favorable agreement to political pressure applied by him and other unsuccessful County Commission candidates from his party.

“You know, we lost,” he said. “But the fact that we ran against them and . . .  basically pulled back the curtain on everything that was going on, I think we brought about a lot of change just by making that challenge.”

Also, just as Commissioners applauded Laughter for hammering out the deal, Jackson and O’Neill praised Fletcher for her part in the negotiations.

“I give full credit to Lisa Fletcher,” O’Neill said. “Going into this, both parties had agreed to give Lisa and Jamie authority to negotiate this agreement and the two of them sat down and worked very, very hard.”

One sign of their cordial relationship came during a recess after Laughter’s presentation about the agreement at Tuesday’s meeting. She and Fletcher talked for several minutes and ended the conversation with a quick hug.

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