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The Southampton County School Board reached a consensus at its Sept. 9 meeting to move forward with establishing a Southampton County School Board-Board of Supervisors Liaison Committee that will be an ad hoc committee of the school board.

The consensus was born out of a discussion centered around board members’ feedback to a charter that School Board Member Brandon Rodgers had advocated for and created that would shape and facilitate committee meetings between school board and Board of Supervisors members. 

The purpose of the meetings would be to improve the relationship and communication between the boards, which has been strained in recent years.

School Board Chair Dr. Deborah Goodwyn introduced the topic of the liaison committee at the Sept. 9 school board meeting by noting that it was previously discussed by the school board in August and that Rodgers had been working on the charter. 

“What we talked about last month was making sure that we clarify the role that the board plays and make sure that whatever we propose would clearly delineate the role of the school board,” she said. “So Mr. Rodgers went back and did some revision, taking into account the feedback that we gave him last month.”

She then offered her further thoughts on the proposed committee.

“My thinking is that we need to handle this as a subcommittee,” she said. “We do have a protocol in our policy that gives the board the authority to establish subcommittees, so instead of calling this a charter, we probably just need to call it an ad hoc committee. So we’ll call it, like, the ad hoc Southampton County School Board-Board of Supervisors Liaison Committee, so it will be an ad hoc committee of the school board.”

Addressing a part of the charter that references the scope of the committee’s meetings, Goodwyn said, “I think we need to leave out that phrase about including stewardship of public funds, because we haven’t spelled out anything else or anything else that we would do jointly.

“I think we need to keep it general, so ensuring proactive dialogue and idea-sharing on major projects and mutual interests — just need to leave it there,” she said. “I would say we should phrase it as just another ad hoc committee of the board. What’s your thinking about that?

Rodgers said, “I think title or how we phrase it, don’t know that that’s a huge deal, as long as that works for the Board of Supervisors, because they would also be agreeing to it, right? It would be an ad hoc committee for us, but it would also be an ad hoc committee for them, I believe.”

“Right,” Goodwyn said. “So once we establish our ad hoc committee, then our committee could reach out to them to say, ‘We’ve established this committee that has the superintendent or the superintendent’s designee, as well as two board members. We would appreciate your assigning two people to participate,’ or something to that nature.”

She noted that she thinks the committee’s meetings should not be significantly formal but rather have a getting-to-know-each-other kind of tone, facilitating the participation in dialogue.

She asked for other board members’ thinking on the matter.

Board Member Cassandra Hobbs said, “I like it less formal because of the fact that we said that we were going to try to open the lines of communication. … And I do like the fact that we’re leaving it open, because we don’t know what’s going to come up.”

Goodwyn added, “I do think that the superintendent or the superintendent’s designee should be a member of that committee.”

School Board Vice Chair Denise Bunn said, “I think what I said last meeting was something to the effect of it’s really about building relationships and building trust, and so making the concept of the ad hoc committee approaches it more in that spirit and in that light. 

“We have had a liaison committee in the past, we used to do them during budget season, and it’s a time that people can come together, have a little dinner, break bread and feel comfortable and build relationships,” she added, “and I think maybe that would be the better place to start as opposed to a very formalized, locked-in charter.”

After Goodwyn confirmed the school board’s consensus on the matter, she said it would come back to the school board on its meeting agenda in October in the format the board uses for establishing ad hoc committees.