By Miles Layton

COLUMBIA — During Tuesday’s Tyrrell County Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Brianna Williams turned to a subject that has hung over the district for months: a stalled, $62 million new school project, and a widening rift with the county commission over where it will be built. See our previous story here.

“At ten o’clock, there is going to be an opening meeting,” Williams told the crowd, laying out the schedule for a joint session with the county commission set for July 27. That morning will open with a public presentation from the district’s architect and design-build contractor team, meant to walk both boards through exactly what the $62 million grant can and can’t cover. “We have chosen a design-build model because we know that $62 million … that’s the ceiling of what we have to spend,” Williams said, confirming that the opening presentation is “open to the public” and will also touch on roughly 19.09 acres the district is separately trying to purchase behind the old Family Dollar property.

After that public session, Williams said, the two boards will split apart for the part of the day that has drawn the most attention: closed-door mediation, overseen by a retired judge. 

“Once we go into mediation and that will be in closed session with attorney-client privilege, there is going to be a retired judge who’s going to be overseeing the mediation,” she said. “And retired judges are known for impartiality, and they’re also known for getting boards to come to a compromise. So we will be in separate locations or in closed session, and the judge will go to us and they’ll go to the board of commissioners.”

The mediation is the product of a disagreement that has consumed months of the district’s time since it received a $62 million state capital needs grant last November to consolidate its aging schools into a single modern PreK-13 campus serving students countywide. The grant came with a 24-month window to begin construction; eight months in, no ground has been broken.

According to the Board of Education, the holdup traces back to a funding gap that emerged after the district submitted its project budget. The board says it needed roughly $500,000 in additional money to purchase land for the new campus and submitted a budget amendment to the county commission requesting it. The commission rejected the amendment, according to the district, offering two alternatives instead: fund a three-story school on the site of an existing county-owned facility, or provide the requested land-purchase funds only if the property was located somewhere else in the county.

Neither option reflects what the board considers the right site. The district wants the county to purchase land contiguous to the current school property — a flat, multi-acre cornfield directly across the street from existing school grounds, owned by GSM Properties — arguing it’s elevated enough to avoid the floodplain concerns the county has raised about other locations. The board says it has already invested significant time and money planning around that site, including hiring an architecture firm and touring comparable school projects built by its chosen construction firm. The county, meanwhile, has not moved to acquire the land; with no bulldozers on the property, the commission’s hesitation is unmistakable.

Williams, speaking Tuesday, framed the mediation less as a legal proceeding than as a chance to repair a relationship strained by the standoff. 

“If any one of us passed away tomorrow, we’d be going to each other’s funeral, whether we like each other or not, because that’s what people do in small communities,” she told the board and the audience. “But I say all that because there is a lot of chatter and rhetoric and feelings, but this school build is not just for the next five to ten years. This is for the next century when none of us will be here anymore.” She said she’s hoping for a resolution in a single sitting. “We’re hoping we wrap all this up in one day mediation, and it does not go to litigation because that’s very costly to taxpayers, and it’s not fair to our community who’s already economically stressed.”

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From the Audience, a Sharper Warning

Williams passed the ball to Nelson Smith, a longtime former superintendent in the audience, who voiced a different concern he wants raised in the mediation room: whether the county has been sitting on money it owes the schools that has nothing to do with the disputed $500,000.

“I hope when you have this mediation that your attorneys are aware of additional money that the county’s been getting that has not been coming to the school system,” Smith said. “In my research, you should be getting a lot more than what you were getting. And not only are we trying to get the half a million dollars, but we need them to provide you with additional funds that they got to support our school system. It’s just not the half a million dollars which they pay in.”

See Smith’s commentary here.

Smith said the money in question flows from a state sales-tax distribution, not local property taxes. 

“It comes from the asset sales tax. It comes from Tyrrell County to the state, and then they have a certain part by law that’s given back to it goes to the county,” he said. “But three of those four parts have to go to the school system. There’s one part that’s at the discretion of the commissioners where they want it into school system or some project they have. But this is in law that when we receive this, it must be used either for construction or land purchase.”

His frustration built as he spoke, rooted in his own years running the district. 

“I am saying this and that because I am getting fired up because I didn’t have that relationship with the commissioners when I was superintendent. I mean, we worked together; we never had this,” Smith said. “I couldn’t imagine sitting on this amount of money and making y’all have to go through what you are going through. You should have had this resolved two or three months ago, so the architects could go in start here. They can’t do it till this is resolved, people.” He caught himself and apologized for the outburst. “Well, I’m sorry. I put 35 years of my life in this school system. And I love it.”

Board Chair Joni Liverman answered him directly, waving off the apology. “Honestly, no need to apologize because we need everybody in this room because it takes all of us together, whether you’re in the school system or not, our kids matter,” Liverman said. “And when you show up to meetings like this, our kids know that you know that they matter.” She tied his willingness to speak up to something larger she sees eroding. “I think as a society, when we have cell phones and we’re like this, we’re missing the face-to-face conversations or what is important. And to know that we have people here, new faces, some I haven’t seen before, that they’re interested in what’s going on in Tyrrell County Schools is important.”

Liverman then returned to the project’s stakes. 

“This $62 million project is greatly important that we get it right,” she said. “I think honestly, the way things are going, it might be more than one hundred years, right? And so this is a big opportunity.” And she pushed back on the idea that the county’s rural character should mean less for its students. “I say this time and time again, but our zip code 27925 should not dictate that. I say it over and over; it’s not right; it’s not fair. You should still have the same resources as somebody in Wake County. And this time for us to step up as a community and row together in the right direction.”

The Board of Education says all five of its members plan to attend the July 27 session, along with the superintendent and the district’s chief financial officer. The Board of Commissioners is expected to send Chairman Jordan Davis and County Manager/Attorney David Clegg, along with any other commissioners who choose to attend.

To reiterate Davis’ quote from my past story — “We hope to have discussions that result in benefit to all the citizens of Tyrrell County.”  

The Rest of Wednesday’s Meeting

In other business, Tyrrell County Clerk of Court Angie Sexton administered the oath of office individually to incumbent members Karen Clough and Joni Liverman, and to newly elected member Dr. Jana Rawls, who is set to be sworn in ahead of the mediation session. With the oaths complete, Liverman was reelected board chair as was Clough as vice chair.

The district introduced two new administrators: Angela Tyler, arriving from Wilson City Schools as the new principal of Tyrrell Elementary School, and Clarence Pointe II, welcomed from Martin County Schools. The board also recognized Rebecca Swain, accepted into the Pirate Leadership Program and now serving as an instructional specialist and PE teacher, and Amy Halsey, who moved from assistant principal to interim principal last year and is now also an instructional specialist.

In one of the evening’s most emotional moments, the board honored the families of a student and two staff members who died during the past year, describing student Isaiah Spencer as someone “whose life was filled with hope, dreams, friendships and so much potential,” and remembering bus drivers LA White and Henry Bosley for loving “driving the bus … because it gave them an opportunity to connect with the students every single day.” Columbia Middle School and Columbia Early College dedicated this year’s yearbook to the three, with every middle and high school student signing copies for the families.

The board also voted to shift its regular meeting schedule for 2026-2027 to a first-and-third-Tuesday format, tabled a memorandum of understanding with the county recreation department pending further review of shared costs, and heard an update from instructional leader Sheila Klimiski on summer programming, curriculum planning and a new state-mandated K-12 ELA curriculum arriving next year.

Members reinstated a $10 student fee for all students, plus a $10 parking fee, on top of the existing $20 Chromebook fee, after resolving concerns about enforcement and transparency.