Board OKs phased end of CEK partnership, allows current students to finish

The Pender County Schools board voted unanimously to let current district students enrolled at CEK finish their programs while instructing staff to draft language to terminate the district's collaboration with CEK going forward.

Miss Burns moved that students currently attending CEK be permitted to complete their education there through graduation and that staff present a revised action item for the board's June meeting. The motion was seconded and approved without dissent. The motion was presented after district academic leaders told the board that recent expansions in local programs (including a Spark Lab and a new college accelerator program) mean the district can offer the pathways CEK had been providing.

Dr. Brandy Sawyer, the district's chief academic officer, told the board that programs such as culinary and trade pathways and dual-enrollment relationships with local colleges have widened in-district access, and staff estimated about seven Pender County students currently remain enrolled at CEK. "We will allow those students to finish out their education at CEK if they wish," Miss Burns said, framing the change as a transition for current students rather than an immediate disruption.

The board directed staff to rewrite the item and place the revised language on the June agenda. The item will return with formal language for a final vote; in the meeting record the board specifically scheduled the rewritten item for the next monthly meeting.

Next steps: staff will prepare the revised action language for the June meeting packet and identify any details (enrollment numbers, transfer plans, transportation impacts) required for implementation.