NEW HANOVER COUNTY — A recent round of New Hanover Community Endowment grants included funding for New Hanover County Schools to receive about a third of the 42 specialists it requested. That comes with a new vision for the positions.
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On Sept. 30, The Endowment awarded the district $2.7 million for a staffing initiative to “close achievement gaps, support positive behavior, increase student engagement, improve graduation rates, and create positive learning environments.”
The funding will cover up to 14 specialists tasked with identifying “master” teachers within their assigned school and help replicate their skillset through embedded teacher support. The specialists would also collect data on student scores, attendance and other factors to identify areas to target resources, more tutoring or professional development for example.
However, New Hanover County School’s original intent was not to have to choose which schools would receive a specialist; it requested 42, one for each of its traditional schools. The plan was for each school to choose how to use its specialist, intended to target an area that campus struggles with, including attendance, behavior, and specific scores. According to the NHCS administrators, the number was whittled down to 14 through subsequent iterations decided in collaboration with The Endowment staff, particularly David Stegall, The Endowment’s director of education.
Varnam explained the new plan allows NHCS to affect more of its community; instead of the specialists focusing on individual students struggling in a school, they specialists will now have their sights set on improving student engagement through teacher efficacy. Hamilton described it as something “grander than originally maybe thought.”
“There have been really good discussions about clarifying the vision of The Endowment in this kind of project, and us being responsive to their interests and kind of what they were seeing,” Hamilton said.
What schools the specialists will be deployed to remains undetermined currently. Chief Academic Officer Robin Hamilton, Assistant Superintendent of Support Services Julie Varnam and Chief Financial Officer Ashley Sutton said they were in the process of developing a points-based rubric to decide where the specialists were placed.
The three administrators sat down with Port City Daily last week to discuss the grant; they had just come from a principals meeting, which included discussions about the rubric.
Some of the factors points are based on include:
- The school’s letter grade, as determined by the state
- Percentage of students with chronic absenteeism
- Percentage of students with Individualized Education Plans
- Percentage of beginning teachers
- Percentage of economically disadvantaged students
- Percentage of multi-lingual learners, whether or not you have a full time social worker
Hamilton explained whichever school has the most points — an F school would get four points compared to an A school getting zero, for example — would qualify for the specialist.
“Our schools with the greatest needs deserve every opportunity to deliver the highest quality instructional practices,” Varnam said.
The Endowment agreed the grant award was a collaborative effort.
“These highly effective instructional leaders will utilize an evidence-based Multi-Tiered System of Support to problem solve areas of need in academic retention, classroom behavioral support, and post-secondary readiness,” Tyler Newman, vice president of external affairs, wrote in an email to PCD.
The new program builds on training the district has used from Safe & Civil Schools. Last year, NHCS launched a new professional development under Safe & Civil Schools at five schools — to address behavior. For the last several years, the district has been under a federal sanction for its disproportionate discipline of Black students; this is determined when Black students are suspended at a significantly higher rate than their white peers.
Safe & Civil Schools is aimed at proactive intervention, preventing more students from getting to the point of severe consequences by determining intervention based on tiered levels of support. To do so, it aims to improve individual school climate, which in turn will boost the safety and interconnectedness of schools, which could affect attendance and academic performance.
Varnam described The Endowment program as moving beyond professional development NHCS has done in the past because of how the specialists will be embedded within the school and able to observe and give feedback in a continuous cycle.
In fact, the specialist positions will be open to those currently in the school system, as well as outsiders. Varnam said they weren’t opposed to “stealing” highly qualified people from other districts.
The grant will cover the specialists for 30 months — though the district advocated for two years worth of funding — to be deployed into schools in August 2026. The extra time will give NHCS more opportunity to plan. If successful, the administrators would like the model to be picked up by the North Carolina General Assembly and used across the state.
Recently, some members of the board of education lamented that The Endowment did not award the grant with enough time for it to be used this school year. The specialist program was originally a request to the county commissioners, yet by May the county had communicated it wouldn’t be including it in NHCS’s budget allocation but would instead become an Endowment ask.
In conversation with Port City Daily on Wednesday, board member Josie Barnhart said she would like to see The Endowment align its educational grantmaking with the school year to ensure ideas can be put in motion sooner rather than later. She also said it would be helpful if The Endowment would proffer a more narrow focus for the proposals it solicits.
“In education, there’s lots of things that can be responsive, that can be transformational, that can be effective, that we can do with students,” Barnhart said. “So I feel like where there’s an opportunity for more collaboration is understanding what it is that we’d like to hone in on, or that The Endowment would like to hone in on, so that we can, that we can submit an ask that would address that desire.”
Barnhart is working on a potential Endowment request of her own, previously reported by Port City Daily. Forest Hills Global Elementary and Rachel Freeman Elementary are moving into the third and final year of a grant that gives incentive pay to different levels of staff. Pointing out Forest Hills has improved its state performance score from an F to C in recent years, Barnhart said she would like to see that expanded to all schools that are continually designated low-performing by the state.
Board member Tim Merrick argued The Endowment should have a more hands-off approach. He also pointed out The Endowment will be mandated to ramp up its grant awards to 5% of its assets million annually (more than $80 million) by 2028, and by his logic The Endowment’s four pillars would get a quarter of that allocation.
“If they would simply say, OK, $15 million of the $60 million is going to go to public education’ — I think the district, the professionals, along with the school board, are probably better at deciding where that money should be spent, perhaps, than The Endowment,” Merrick said.
In the past, New Hanover County Schools has been the recipient of several Endowment grants, including an $8.7-million grant in 2024 to fund a literacy coordinator at every middle school and pre-K center. NHCS also benefits from a $900,000 grant through Communities In Schools of Cape Fear for filling gaps in classroom needs. In 2018, NHCS, along with Cape Fear Community College, UNCW, and the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, were granted $22.3 million for a healthcare talent pipeline.
“Is that for our students? Partially, but mostly it’s there to help Novant,” Merrick said, noting the levers of power over The Endowment has prevented public education from getting what it serves, while government purse strings continue to get tighter.
Board member Pat Bradford agreed, telling Port City Daily earlier this month “the school district can best oversee materials in its classrooms,” referring to the $900,000 Endowment grant to Communities in Schools.
Bradford and board member Pete Wildeboer both expressed their disappointment in the abbreviated amount NHCS received for the specialists, but there is also immense gratitude for any additional money.
For board members and administrators alike, the latest tranche of funding is evidence that gratitude can coexist with a push for expanded funding in the future.
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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