The Duplin County Board of Education meeting has been moved to Kenan Auditorium tonight at 7:30 p.m. to accommodate what is expected to be a large crowd of parents, students and educators.

A crowd, much like the one which attended Monday night’s Duplin Board of Commissioners meeting, is expected to show up for the school board meeting to seek answers to questions surrounding the 2009-10 budget.

Monday night, hundreds of people flocked to Duplin Commons for the commissioners meeting, and only 300 were actually allowed into the building where the meeting was being held.

The remainder of the overflow crowd spilled out of the building and onto the grounds.

Before any presentations or discussions were given, board chairman Cary Turner came down to address the gathered group and the board. Turner stated that many that had gathered had come armed with misinformation and had been given false stories that school programs were being cut.

The chairman was referring to information provided to Duplin educators last week by school officials, saying that next year, the JROTC programs would be eliminated, coaches would not get paid and teachers would lose their supplements, all because of a change commissioners had made in how they would be allocating funds to the school system in the upcoming fiscal year.

Commissioners Monday night, reallocated funds for two programs that were cut — $300,000 for athletics and another $250,000 for the JROTC.

A total of $7 million is proposed for the school system in the fiscal plan, however, commissioners have placed it all in a line item entitled Operational Support Services, which can only be used for building maintenance, fuel, utilities and some custodial and maintenance staff. By state law, the board is allowed to make this type of financial move.

But it is that move that school officials are saying forced their hand in eliminating teacher supplements and other portions of the system’s budget for next year.

The move by commissioners seems to be in response to their continued dissatisfaction with moves made by school officials two years ago, when the county board allocated an additional $1 million to the system at the request of superintendent Dr. Wiley Doby. That money was then distributed, in the form of supplements, to school system administrators, a move which displeased commissioners.