NEW HANOVER COUNTY — One New Hanover County Schools board member is facing an impending censure vote, yet the reasoning behind it has remained under wraps. He is now considering litigation over improper procedure and defamation.
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Tim Merrick found out Saturday night that his colleague, chair of New Hanover County Board of Education Melissa Mason, was trying to schedule a special board meeting to vote on censuring, or formally reprimanding, him. Censures are intended as criticism or denouncements of an elected official’s conduct, though without significant consequences.
Mason’s email to the entire board indicated Merrick violated policy 2125/7315 and North Carolina law, both referring to the disclosure of confidential information. In a follow-up email, Mason also added policy 2122 on how board members should handle complaints.
Merrick told Port City Daily on Tuesday Mason hasn’t given him specific reasons she is bringing forth the vote, despite attempts to discuss it with her. Because of the lack of information, Merrick believes Mason is not following proper procedure and also defaming him through her emails regarding it.
Mason has suggested a special meeting be held Thursday or Friday this week, but nothing has been officially scheduled.
Having hired an attorney, Merrick is now threatening legal action if Mason does not admit she is out of order. Mason wrote in an email to Port City Daily on Tuesday she was not out of order and refuted posting anything on the censure to a public forum.
“Throughout the process, I consulted with legal counsel and am confident that I have followed the appropriate procedures,” Mason wrote. “I will not be calling myself out of order.
PCD asked Mason why she was holding a censure vote on Merrick. She said simply because he violated policy and would not elaborate further details of his actions.
However, Merrick said he can “presume” what put him in the hot seat, also noting “there are some missing pieces to this story that I’m not at liberty to share.”
On Feb. 5, Student Voice, a group of high school student advocates that speak at each school board meeting, shared results from a survey they did on the district’s policy on classroom and school displays. The survey illuminated dissatisfaction among students and teachers over the policy, put in place last summer to ban all displays from classrooms that aren’t representative of government, New Hanover County Schools and secondary education content, student art and family photos.
The students reported teachers had to remove displays that went against policy. According to Merrick, board member Josie Barnhart sent an email to the board following the Student Voice presentation asking whether the policy was being followed. Her inquiry prompted the superintendent to ensure compliance across the schools thereafter.
Then came an educator’s complaint.
“I spoke with a teacher that was facing potential persecution for having a small inch-by 3-inch Pride flag in their classroom, on their bookshelf,” Merrick said.
The staff member reached out to Merrick requesting the policy be changed. NHCS policy indicates staff should go through proper channels — the school principal, then the superintendent — before reaching the board.
“They were afraid of incrimination, retaliation,” Merrick said, adding the employee was considering quitting. “They knew the proper order… the principal was the one who came to them to complain about the flag and that the superintendent already knew. So it wasn’t being changed.”
The employee also reached out to board member Judy Justice — censured on the board in 2022 over an accidental personnel information leak — but she told PCD she advised the employee how to handle her complaint properly.
Merrick said the teacher ultimately agreed to comply with the policy and take down a Pride display.
That Merrick had this conversation somehow got around to Mason; Merrick didn’t share how she found out or what actions she deemed were policy violations when Port City Daily asked.
“Honestly, I do not know why supporting this teacher is referred to this way,” Merrick said.
PCD learned from Mason that she spoke with Merrick several times about policy violations — though didn’t name all the policies he was accused of breaking when asked. She did say these violations led her to suspend Merrick from board committee participation; he serves on Title IX and finance committees, among others.
Mason’s committee assignments came under fire from the New Hanover County GOP earlier this year because she put Democrats in chair positions on some committees, though notably not the most influential, like the policy committee.
According to WHQR, Merrick attended a committee meeting on suspension as a constituent. People asked him why he wasn’t serving on the committee, and Merrick apparently said he had been helping a teacher. WHQR states that Mason appears to be arguing that Merrick sharing why he was suspended was a breach of confidentiality of the educator’s personnel file “which suggests there may be a document reprimanding the teacher for their actions.”
PCD followed up with Merrick on this event, asking if this is Mason’s reason for bringing forth the censure and if he shared the name or identifying information at said committee meeting; he said he did not.
“I also disagreed with the policy and encouraged the teacher to stay,” Merrick responded. “I didn’t say anything about whether the teacher was guilty or innocent. I didn’t interfere with the judicial process in any way. I did let them know polite ways they could show disfavor for the policy.”
On Wednesday, the teacher released a letter — signed as “An Anonymous Educator” — on the NHC Educational Justice Facebook page defending Merrick:
“In a time of uncertainty in NHCS, while Barnes was still only an interim superintendent, how was I to know where to turn? Faced with a board of faces who have only worked to make my life harder, two new members I voted for, one I did not know, and a largely untested superintendent whose greatest public challenge by that point was the weather, why wouldn’t I reach out to someone who I thought could help?”
The educator said they thought they would lose their job if they spoke to Barnes about their issues with the display policy.
Merrick told PCD his two-month suspension should be nearing an end and he understood his time to be figuratively served after the prohibition was up. Now he’s preparing for a censure vote and defending his actions in sharing the teachers’ display concerns.
“I think it’s appropriate that the public knows what’s going on in our school district and how our teachers are being treated,” Merrick said. “They’re being treated this way because of necessary and prejudicial policies approved by this Board of Education.”
With his claims against Mason, it is unclear how successful he will be. He is saying she violated multiple tenets of Roberts Rules of Order regarding censure procedure, namely that board members must be notified of the reason behind their censure and must be given adequate time to prepare a defense.
However neither Roberts Rules of Order nor North Carolina law lay out explicit rules for local governing board censures because they don’t carry legal consequences. According to the official Roberts Rules of Order forum, censures do not even require full disciplinary hearings.
Merrick has also accused Mason of libel, the written form of defamation, by discussing the censure vote in a public forum — the forum being the board’s emails, which are public records.
The First Amendment’s public forum doctrine usually refers to forums as physical places set aside by governing entities for free speech, such as amphitheaters on college campuses. In the case of NHCS, the Board of Education Center becomes a public forum during its call to the audience.
In the Perry Education Association v. Perry Local Educators’ Association case, the Supreme Court ruled that a school district’s internal mail system was a nonpublic forum. According to the Free Speech Center, this case supports the argument that email servers, especially those used by government entities, are likely to be considered nonpublic forums.
Still, Merrick argues the censure discussion should have been held in private.
“This will likely end up in court,” he said.
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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