By Emily Weaver
Daily Record of Dunn
HARNETT COUNTY – Harnett County Schools will be looking for a new superintendent after the Alamance-Burlington School System’s Board of Education voted Dr. Aaron Fleming in as its new superintendent Monday.
The seven-member board passed the measure 6-1 with Board Member Donna Westbrooks saying she couldn’t give Fleming her vote because he had never been a school administrator in his 24-year career. He never served as principal, but he spent the last seven years leading Harnett County Schools.
“I just first want to welcome Dr. Fleming to Alamance County. Today, we’re hitting the reset button,” Ryan Bowden told his fellow board members at the special called meeting to appoint Fleming on Monday.
Bowden made the motion to appoint. Dr. Charles Parker seconded the motion. It passed 6-1 with Westbrooks the only one in opposition.
Fleming is set to start with the district on Sept. 18. Alamance-Burlington Schools sits west of Orange and north of Chatham counties. It oversees 37 schools that served 21,988 students in 2023 — a little more than Harnett’s 28 schools that served 19,529 students that year.
The district’s previous Superintendent Dain Butler left the role in March, “amid a year of huge budgetary issues for the district,” reported MyFox8.com. “Butler’s removal came as ABSS contended with financial and legal troubles throughout the 2023-2024 school year.”
Harnett County Schools has faced its own hardships in funding limits and staff losses in recent years.
The district lost a total of 394 certified staff members (namely teachers, counselors, librarians and principals) between July 1, 2022 and Dec. 31, 2023; 271 classified employees (like custodians, nutrition workers and bus drivers) also left the fold. The loss equaled a reduction in staff of almost 29%.
“Dr. Fleming comes to us highly respected in his county of seven-and-a-half years as a superintendent and he’s got a lot of principals, folks, that have been there a lot of years so they didn’t throw him out,” said ABS Board of Education member Dan Ingle. “And he’s got a background in education although he hasn’t been, as Donna said, a principal or assistant principal. He’s also got a business background and as you know what we’ve been here through recently that’s a helpful thing, too. I’m excited about it.”
Fleming thanked his new board members for their support.
“Thank you for allowing me the honor of joining the Alamance-Burlington family. I know searching for a good match in a superintendent takes many hours of thankless work and I want to tell you your time and service is appreciated,” Fleming told the board.
In a message directed to Harnett County Schools, he thanked “the current and past members of the Harnett County Board of Education and the 2,300 staff members of Harnett County Shools. I was fortunate to serve as their leader and know they will continue the achievements and greatness that we’ve all earned together. I know there’s a lot of work waiting here at ABSS,” he said, noting that the work already started months earlier.
“I’m ready to work,” he said.
Fleming started his career in education as an agricultural teacher at Central Cabarrus High School in Concord in 2000. He moved to teach at Clayton High School two years later. He took a job as director of career and technical education at Wilkes County Schools in 2003. In 2006, Fleming became the state agricultural education curriculum coordinator at N.C. State University. A year later, he accepted a position as the director of career and technical education at Lee County Schools before donning the education policy adviser hat for the speaker of the state house in 2015.
He joined Harnett County Schools as interim superintendent in February 2017 and was officially offered the job in June of that year.
