Appointment of Cabarrus GOP chairman’s wife to school board stirs controversy, complaints
A new appointment to the Cabarrus County Board of Education stirred complaints from residents who say the decision ignored what’s best for the district.
Shannon Lancaster, the wife of the Cabarrus County Republican Party chair, was sworn into office this week despite a formal complaint made against the appointment. The same evening of the swearing-in, residents in another building at the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners meeting also held signs reading “stop corrupt board appointments,” and “your cronyism is bad for Cabarrus,” as the board discussed a new recommendation Lancaster be appointed to the county’s Human Services Advisory Board.
Lancaster replaced Republican Laura Blackwell, now a county commissioner, on the board. Her term lasts until 2026.
County commissioners will decide later this month whether to accept the recommendation to appoint Lancaster to the board, despite concerns by some that the open seat wasn’t properly advertised to the public and the application process was mishandled.
“All this has happened, and now we’re putting (Lancaster), of all people, on a board with this controversy going on right now,” County Commissioner Kenny Wortman said in an interview with The Charlotte Observer. “It’s not a good look for Cabarrus County. It’s just not.”
Lancaster did not respond to multiple requests for comment via emails, calls and texts.
Formal complaint against Lancaster’s appointment
A Cabarrus County resident submitted a formal complaint to the district about Lancaster’s appointment to the Board of Education with a petition that has garnered over 200 signatures.
The complaint alleged the appointment process violated the district’s code of ethics for school board members and called for Lancaster to be removed as the appointee, a new selection process and for members who voted for Lancaster to be disciplined. The petitioner states the complaint has been escalated to the North Carolina State Board of Education and they are obtaining legal counsel.
“Despite five excellent finalist candidates —four Republicans and one Democrat— running for an open Cabarrus County school board seat, the board chose to select a candidate with a conflict of interest,” the petition states. “This candidate also did not disclose their conflict of interest and nepotism involved when giving her public remarks at the board meeting.”
Lancaster did not state her husband was the Cabarrus GOP chair when she presented in front of the board, despite being recommended by the party, which petitioners say is a conflict of interest.
The petition also references a recess taken by the board members in the middle of the voting process. At the meeting, a first vote left Lancaster tied with another candidate. After a brief break, the board members voted again, this time with Lancaster winning four of the six votes. The situation led some residents to believe board members spoke during the recess about the vote, violating North Carolina open meeting laws, according to the complaint.
At a Board of Education work session Monday, board attorney William Isenhour addressed some of the petition’s concerns.
A quorum of board members did not meet during the recess, he said, but some board members did speak to each other during the break. Moving forward, the board will commit to taking formal votes for recesses and will schedule a training session to review the board’s goals and the code of ethics, Isenhour said.
Board member Pamela Escobar, who did not vote for Lancaster, thanked petitioners for sharing their concerns at the meeting.
“It does not fall on deaf ears,” she said.
Despite the complaint, Lancaster was sworn into office Monday evening. Her husband, Cabarrus GOP chair Lanny Lancaster, made a post on Facebook celebrating the appointment and the party’s efforts to get Republicans on the board.
“Tonight it is actually official. We have filled every seat with a Republican,” he wrote. “The Cabarrus County sweep is now official. Thank you Cabarrus County Republicans. We made history.”
How did Lancaster snag the seat?
Lancaster was unofficially nominated by the Cabarrus GOP after it reviewed six conservative applicants, party vice chair Jim Quick said at the Jan. 13 meeting. At the time, some school board members and public speakers said they worried about the optics of appointing Lancaster to the seat, especially at the recommendation of the Republican party, because the board seat is nonpartisan until the next election.
Escobar and people speaking during public comment emphasized the board seat up for grabs was a nonpartisan seat, since former Board of Education member Blackwell took office in 2018 after winning a nonpartisan election. Since then, the Republican-led North Carolina legislature passed a law in 2023 making more than 50 school board elections partisan across the state. Republicans Melanie Freeman, Greg Mills, Rob Walter and Catherine Moore won the 2024 election, defeating all four Democrats in the race including the incumbent Keshia Sandidge.
With the new law came new protocols for filling board vacancies.
In the event of a vacant partisan seat, the board is required to appoint the candidate recommended by the corresponding party executive committee. Quick, who spoke on behalf of the Cabarrus County Republican Party at the Jan. 13 meeting, said the party’s evaluation of six candidates and recommendation of Lancaster was practice for filling any future vacancies despite the seat being nonpartisan.
Another petition-cited issue was comments made by board chair Walter during the voting process. Walter said at the January meeting his biggest priority was ensuring county commissioners and elected officials provide funding to the district, and Lancaster was the best choice to ensure that happened.
“The school board chair even said that he was given the impression that the county commissioners may not be cooperative or provide funding if Shannon Lancaster was not chosen,” Wortman told the Observer. “I’d like to know when that conversation happened, because it was never discussed with me. So that brings up even more questions. Are there meetings happening behind closed doors?”
Wortman, former board member Sandidge, and Rob Cerulo, a Democrat who ran for school board in November, worry about the board’s ability to represent the county’s changing population, which is 22% Black, according to recent Census data. Sandidge spoke in support of candidate Mishell Williams at the Jan 13. meeting, encouraging the board to consider the concerns and comfortability of Black families with an all-white board.
Human Services Advisory board
At a county commission work session the same evening of Lancaster’s swearing-in ceremony Monday, Wortman questioned an upcoming consent agenda item that recommended Lancaster be appointed to the county’s Human Services Advisory Board.
Wortman said 21 people submitted applications for the position that had been open for less than a month, though some standing applications were submitted up to two years ago. Wortman told the Observer commissioners received applications to review just hours before the meeting, not giving him enough time to review them all. He also said the open seat was not properly advertised on the county’s website.
It’s unclear, he said, why Lancaster was selected by the members of the advisory board to be the nominee amid the pool of applicants.
“(Lancaster) was just put on the school board in a very controversial move,” Wortman said. “You’re now going to take that same person and put her on a board when we already had 20 other applications on file? To me that’s not transparent”
The commission agreed to pull the item off the consent agenda and will discuss the appointment at the county’s Feb. 18 meeting.
