Meet Lee County Board of Education Candidate Alan Rummel

Lee County School Board Candidate’s Interview Q & A

Each candidate was emailed the same questions, and responses are published individually.

Question 1. Read the following and explain your support for oversight committees and financial support from the county and the economic association.

School boards interact with city and county governments, developers, investors, and realtors, sometimes with relatives involved, creating concerns among some residents about potential conflicts of interest or inadequate transparency. For example, through legislation, the school superintendent is allowed to allocate up to $50,000 without a board vote.

Imagine the conflict of interest if a bonus was promised for finding cheap land and the public protested the location. Cheap land usually comes with concerns, including traffic, industry, distance, cascading students, which is moving them away from friends to different neighborhoods, and can include land with environmental concerns.

Read an example of how oversight committees can assist here.

Citizen oversight committees, especially in a county with many residents holding security clearances [military], could reduce concerns about confidentiality during land negotiations conducted in closed sessions, something the legislation allows.

Land negotiations are an upcoming reality for Lee County Schools because, according to Dr. Michael Cline, North Carolina’s state demographer, the county’s population is expected to climb from about 70,000 in 2025 to nearly 80,000 in 2035. That growth is expected to bring an additional 1,500 to 1,800 school-age children into the district.

At the Nov. 4, 2025, school board meeting,during the superintendent’s report, Superintendent Dossenbach updated the board on capital project needs. Within 10 years, five buildings will need extensive repairs at an estimated cost of $144,799,380.

JR Ingram Elementary School was built in 1987 and will be at 34.3% of its useful life in 10 years, according to the facility condition index.

The maintenance department, built in 1973, will be at 51.5%.

Southern Lee High School was built in 2005 and will be at 30.1%.

West Lee Middle School, built in 1978, will be at 34.9%.

The district has $637,800 in immediate needs, including roofing, HVAC, boilers, and flooring.

School planners with North Carolina State University’s Institute for Transportation Research and Education presented a full picture of growth and development in Lee County at the school board’s Sept. 9 meeting.

“Sanford has deliberately tried to encourage infield development within the city,” OREd’s land use planner Brian Godfrey said about Sanford’s higher than normal density.

Given the local economic development association’s promotion for industrial and residential growth, should the organization offer guidance through an oversight committee and collaborate with businesses to secure financial contributions for the growth they facilitate?

School board members have requested Lee County Government fund the school district with a 30% budget.

What is your stance on oversight committees for capital projects and other committees and on funding?

Before I begin, I need to clarify that my answers do NOT represent the opinions of the Lee County Board of Education, just my own.

Regarding oversight committees: This is a very in-depth question that I’d need to really think about and research fully to give a thorough answer. The oversight committee sounds like a reasonable consideration, but I’d have to understand how it’s selected and how confidentiality is legally controlled. There are current laws and codes of ethics that SHOULD prevent conflicts of interest and a well-run board should have the foresight to bring in proper analysis prior to any purchase being made. I understand that elected people, especially in modern history, haven’t seemed to care much about laws and ethics when it comes to personal gain.

Regarding capital planning: The leadership team at LCS has compiled all the data from the facilities and enrollment studies to create an updated PM (Preventative Maintenance) schedule and to plan for and prioritize larger repairs as well as facilities use to ensure we’re not requesting things from the county that we don’t truly need. The amount of supporting detail provided with school system requests is unprecedented by all accounts that I’ve heard and I intend to keep that open sharing of information a top priority as long as I’m on the BOE. I think the current level of transparency would satisfy any concerned citizen who watches meetings. We don’t do negotiations in secret and then quick votes in public…TONS of underlying information is shared by the existing school board and I have always pushed for that because it’s what I expect of elected officials.

Regarding funding: I’m not sure how I feel about the Board of Education directly soliciting funds from local businesses to support capital investment. The county has the statutory responsibility to fund school capital needs and provide “sufficient” funds for daily operations and that should include both tax policy as well as any up-front “impact” type costs when negotiating to bring in new businesses. Getting into funding directly from businesses for school system needs seems like it could invite its own conflicts of interest. We have a lot of local businesses that support school fundraisers and I’m sure several charities that support the local school system and I think that’s how a business is a good steward of their home town. Without additional discussion, I’d say I don’t support solicitation of local businesses to directly fund school system capital expenses.

Question 2. Lee County School’s grade comparisons from 2023-2024 into 2024-2025 revealed Southern Lee dropped from C to D.

Lee Early College maintained an A.

Tramway Elementary School maintained a B.

Bullock, Deep River, Edwards, Greenwoood, Ingram and SanLee maintained a C.

Broadway and Wicker maintained a D.

West Lee improved from F to D.

East Lee dropped from D to F.

The grades were based not solely on proficiency, but included growth, which cushioned the scores.

What strategies would you support to improve D and F-rated schools?

Answer: My time on the BOE has given me a lot of insight into the method used to provide these school scores. The state formula weights achievement (passing the test) at 80% and growth (did the student gain a grade level or more of learning in 1 school year) at 20% but, when so many students enter the system >1 grade level behind, growth is the most important focus and the state formula penalizes districts that have that challenge.  I think the district strategic plan, rolled out in summer 2025, does a good job of presenting the strategy to improve student success which will increase school rankings. Some pieces that I had a hand in creating and support are:

Data analysis: LCS now has a data analysis package (Branching Minds) that allows the district to track attendance and progress (achievement and growth) of each individual student. The software can help flag when a student might require intervention (targeted assistance) and then track exactly what intervention steps were taken and how effective those actions were. This allows us to identify interventions that are most effective for the most students and utilize those tools for more students. The BOE currently receives monthly accountability updates using this very data analysis.

Focus on growth: When a student is behind grade-level, focussing on achievement (passing the next required test) isn’t the best solution for the student. Focusing on maximizing student growth to help them catch up should be the focus. Explaining that fully would require an extensive piece of writing, but that’s the short story and the reason the district strategic plan focuses more heavily on growth. The goal is to become a top district in the state, but the path to that is to maximize growth. 

Commonized curriculum materials: The BOE supported an administrative review of curriculum materials and identified dozens of different tools being used throughout the district.  In short, if a child moved from one elementary school to another (for example), the child likely would NOT be learning from the same materials. This issue has been addressed and will help improve the district in many ways.  The most important to me is that teachers of the same content across the district can now collaborate to identify best practices and replicate.

Question 3. At the Dec. 9 school board meeting, Member Megan Parsons (Megan Garner) announced her departure from the district to care for aging parents and used the moment to clarify her perspective on several topics.

Parsons called on county commissioners to embrace the Five-on-Five Committee invitation to improve communication, collaboration and transparency and to address capital needs in coordinated action.

The group has not met even once.

“Step up, honor the agreement they made and engage with the Five-on-Five Committee,” Parsons said when addressing the county commissioners, “Adopt a thirty percent funding budget,” she added about the county’s chronically under-funded school district.

The committee includes three county commissioners, three board of education members, the county manager, the superintendent and both county and school finance officers.

At the Nov. 4 meeting, Womack shared her perspective on the committee.

“We owe this to the people,” Womack said about there not being a first meeting and no progress in its commitment to the public to work together for the children. “The number one reason you wouldn’t want to do it [meet] is because you don’t want transparency.”

What measures do you recommend for facilitating collaboration between boards?

Answer: The Boards simply have to meet. The BOE began presenting the annual budget request to the BOC in my first year on the board and that was a step in the right direction. Sadly, when pressure really began building to make a significant investment in the school system, discussions basically ended.

I stand ready and willing to have formal and frank discussions, as I have throughout my tenure as a BOE member on our own board. Tough conversations make some people uncomfortable, but are necessary to come to decisions that truly benefit the most people in the county.

Question 4: Explain your stance on using sheriff’s deputies as school resource officers.

Answer: I love the collaboration. Sheriff’s deputies are properly trained for the role of SRO and it’s also an opportunity to allow kids to see that LEOs are people too. The current political climate in America sees a lot of demonization of LEOs and having them present in our schools provides both safety and real world experience for our students to see what LEOs do.

Question 5: What do you see as the most important tasks for the school board at present and in the next four years, and what is your plan to assist?

Answer: 2 things:

Student growth: I laid out my direction on this in a previous question so I won’t restate it, but students remain my top focus because that’s what the school system is for…to teach kids.

Funding: LCS has really fallen behind in 2 key funding areas:

1. Local funding: The BOE has really pushed hard to get additional funding to support local supplement increases as Lee County falls further and further behind our neighbors. We commissioned a Pay and Classification study to quantify where we stand while correcting for local cost of living and presented a plan to be competitive and got no traction. We also identified a massive gap in classified staff pay that we presented to the BOC but haven’t got anywhere with that either. As noted in this interview, the BOE has also commissioned an enrollment and facilities study to advise a long-term facilities plan that has also been mostly ignored up to now. I intend to continue bringing facts and data to support the request for additional local funding.
2. State funding: our state funding formula is jam packed with unfunded and underfunded mandates, arbitrary caps on special funding (EC, AIG, and ESL to name a few), and funding models that put counties in competition for staff using tax payer dollars. As a current member of the BOE I’ve put in a ton of work pushing on members of the NCGA to address these issues and will continue to do so. I’ve brought several resolutions to the BOE that passed unanimously aimed at these and other topics to try to affect change not just in Lee County, but statewide.

Dec. 22, 2025

Alan Rummel

Stephanie M. Sellers

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