Education funding concerns discussed

Questions and concerns rising across the county over the Trump administration’s national funding freezes has trickled into Sampson County leaving educational leadership in both the city and county schools questioning the impacts this could have locally.

While there are many Sampson County government departments that use or need federal funds, there are, perhaps, none with as many projects and programs that require federal funds than the two local school systems.

In talks with superintendents Dr. Wesley Johnson (Clinton City) and Dr. Jamie King (Sampson County), the pair said the potential issues are basically “an unknown,” because it was “too early” to tell each based on current information available.

“It’s very difficult to know right now,” Johnson stressed. “Of course, we’ve got new leadership in the White House, and there’s been a lot of executive orders, in regard to federal funding, but we’ve not really seen any residual fallout to that right now.”

King said the situation for Sampson County was similar, however, one instance of a funding freeze has affected Sampson County Schools. He said more information would be known later this week, that knowledge comes following an appeal SCS has on a grant that was hit by one of the president’s executive orders.

“I think that I could probably answer this much better next week, but I’ll kind of give the context,” King said, this past Friday. “Sampson County Schools has one federal grant called the TSL grant. We have received notification from the federal government that those funds are frozen, and we have an appeal next week regarding the freeze. From what we understand, it’ll be 24 to 48 hours after the hearing, on if the appeal is granted or not.”

The TSL (Teacher and School Leader Incentive) program, according to The Innovation Project, who the TSL grant is provided through, “Supports performance-based compensation for teachers and principals, which ties their compensation to measurable, academic student outcomes. This change in how we pay teachers is exactly what we should be prioritizing to retain effective teachers and leaders.”

King said the freeze, which comes via funding cuts from the executive order, affects stipends the county schools use to pay teachers that are performing well and even touches a few staff members.

“So again, I’ll give that context,” King said. “To make it known, what could be affected is three of our staff members that are paid fully out of that grant. We also provide teacher stipends for teachers that are successful in their classroom so that they’ll stay in the teaching profession. Last year, we gave out over $30,000 in stipends to teachers whose students performed well. With the freeze, we won’t have ability to do that.

“We have a large amount of professionals that are being paid from that grant” he added. “A grant which is helping us build instructional leadership teams at each of our high schools and each of our middle schools. That’s real world local jobs right here in Sampson County that could, by the end of next week, be affected by these executive orders.”

For Sampson County Schools, King noted, that would be over $250,000 in direct funding for positions. Also, for anyone worried about a freeze causing hiccups with the construction of the new Hobbton High School, King reassured there were no concerns.

“No, the new school is state and local funds, there’s nothing from that grant out of federal funds,” he stated.

While Johnson did say the city schools haven’t seen any signs of issues stemming from the current executive orders, he did mention there are potential areas that should be monitored.

“For now, we’ve continuing to watch the information and just being mindful. Federal dollars account for a lot of money in our budget,” he said. “For instance, they pay for CTE (Career Technical Education) programs. They also cover our EC programs for our exceptional children students, and they provide funding for our EL students, our students that are second learners.

“So again, for right now, I don’t know that we’re expecting any major cuts,” Johnson added. “But that said, it’s just something that we need to be ever mindful of and keep our eyes on as we continue to move forward. Specially because we are kind of in the planning processes for the 2025-26 school year. So we’re just watching that information and staying mindful of it before we make any major decisions.”