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Distrust, poor communication, power plays — were this a marriage, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners and Board of Education would be in counseling by now.


The two elected boards have had their acrimonious moments over the years, but tensions have been higher lately. Members of both bodies talk about a lack of trust, of openness, of good faith.


"The level of cooperation between the Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education is very disappointing," said Frank Kendall, a Greensboro schools advocate. "Both groups should have the interest of our children in mind."


What does it matter? Plenty, as the county heads toward another vote on a major school construction bond referendum. If approved, the referendum, likely to top $440 million, would require commissioners to raise taxes to repay the debt.


A strong relationship between the two boards would be more likely to send positive signals to voters that the referendum is worth supporting.


But the finger-pointing that has characterized this union is likely to raise doubts and confirm some taxpayers' perceptions that few are looking out for the public's interests.


Dale Tonkins, a Dudley High School alumnus and frequent critic of the school system, sees little room for patching up the relationship.


"Our school board has so alienated our county commissioners with stuff they have done they are never going to agree," he said. "It's like oil and water."


Budget breakdown


It wasn't always like this, of course. It was once worse.


In 2000, the two boards deadlocked over a schools budget; the two were $7 million apart.


Unable to break the impasse, the school board sued the commissioners. Ultimately, the two settled for an extra $2.5 million for schools on the eve of a trial.


As part of that settlement, the two boards agreed to create a budget subcommittee made up of members from each side. The idea was to open up communication and talk about school needs ahead of time.


That worked for a little while. It helped voters — twice — say yes to $500 million in school construction bonds after 20 years of saying no.


But cooperation has waned in recent years. Talk about money has been particularly contentious this year. Commissioners have snubbed school board members three times this year at the bargaining table.


* Commissioners for five months have debated with the school board about how to pay for the reconstruction of Eastern Guilford High School, destroyed in a fire Nov. 1. There still is no consensus on how to pay for its rebuilding.


* In June, commissioners considered delaying the bond referendum — currently estimated to cost between $440 million and $460 million — from this November to May at the risk of adding inflation costs to construction projects.


* Commissioners approved giving the school system $162.5 million to finance the 2007-08 school year, about $9.6 million less than the district requested. School board members are still openly criticizing commissioners for that.


Commissioner Carolyn Coleman said she believes the boards' relationship has been hamstrung by a cloud of distrust that has hovered over their negotiations since that 2000 lawsuit.


But school board member Anita Sharpe said that one issue did not cause all the hard feelings.


"Relationships were in the gutter a long time before that," she said.


Sharpe attributed the friction to the county's constitutional authority to fund much of the district's expenses instead of letting a school system tax residents on its own.


Sharpe said this naturally pits the nonpartisan school board against partisan commissioners.


Commissioners Billy Yow, a Republican, and Skip Alston, a Democrat, have their own theory: Guilford County Schools hides too much "fluff" in its budget requests and has botched construction projects, they said.


For example, Jamestown residents are still waiting for the construction of a new middle school that was promised to them during a 2003 bond but was postponed because of construction cost increases on other projects.


Yow, who frequently rails against what he perceived as district excesses, compared the school board to a "drug addict that can't get enough."


"How do you assure the public you will do the right thing when you haven't done it before?" Yow said.


School officials have defended their actions by arguing that cost overruns have mostly resulted from price increases in materials and not their own mismanagement.


"By and large we have built schools on time," Superintendent Terry Grier said.


"We have stayed within budget and we have been good stewards of taxpayers' dollars."


More walk, less talk


Grier said he has regularly asked commissioners to participate in construction projects, a strategy he employed at his last job in Tennessee. Commissioners there toured schools and attended project team meetings, he said.


Grier said, "They could see firsthand so when their constituents said 'Oh they're building this Taj Mahal or they're building this' they'd say, 'No that's not true, I'm on the committee. I've been there, we're building very functional schools.'"


Commissioner Linda Shaw said it might take that kind of cooperation for this next school construction bond to pass.


"Right now I don't see the bond passing," she said. "There is so much distrust out there for the school board."


Commissioner Kay Cashion refused to point fingers at either board, seeing past scuffles as water under the bridge. But Cashion, who supported the school board's push for a November referendum, would like the boards to meet at least twice over the next six months to discuss construction.


"I have to depend on the education professionals and trust them to lead us in the right direction," Cashion said.


Leaders in other counties have managed to push differences aside to pass a bond. For example, commissioners and school board members in Wake County jointly developed a list of planning guidelines after a 1999 bond failed. Mike Burriss, assistant superintendent of facilities with Wake County Public Schools, believes that level of cooperation helped sell the county's 2006 bond totaling $970 million.


"There was a consensus that there needed to be a joint consensus by both boards about what they wanted to do," Burriss said.


Pulling together


But for all the war of words, members of both boards hope they can patch the relationship in time for a proposed school bond referendum in May.


"There definitely can be more working cooperatively between the two boards," said Coleman, a commissioner since 2002. "Whether that will happen, I don't know."


Coleman said some in the black community are frustrated about the lack of construction work going to minority businesses. School board member Deena Hayes, upset over minority participation rates, has said publicly she won't support another bond.


The main stumbling block will be politics, school board members say.


They say commissioners' own infighting over a possible bond referendum for a new jail is weighing down the school bond. And if it's not the jail, Sharpe said, it's some other squabble.


"Whenever we come to the table to work together," she said, "politics get in the way."


Ultimately, Sharpe shares a growing sentiment on the school board to obtain its own financial independence and win taxing authority from the state.


That, however could take years to accomplish, if ever.


What to do in the meantime? "Keep fighting," Sharpe said.





Contact Morgan Josey Glover at 373-7078 or mjosey@news-record.com