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. Historically, annual student growth in CHCCS has outpaced OCS, leading to more <br />dollars for CHCCS <br />Methods for School Merger in North Carolina <br />North Carolina Statutes Provide Four Ways to Merge School Systems <br />Merger of Units in Same County <br />Initiated by boards of education <br />Requires approval of board of county commissioners <br />Merger of Units in Adjoining Counties <br />Involves merger of county school units in one or more adjoining or contiguous <br />counties with a city school administrative unit <br />Requires approval of the "tax-levying body for the school units" <br />Merger of units by local boards of education <br />City school unit notifies State Board of Education that it is voluntarily dissolving <br />itself <br />State Board required to adopt a merger plan for the administrative unit <br />County Commissioner Initiated Merger <br />Board of County Commissioners adopts plan for consolidation and merger of <br />local administrative units located wholly within the county into a single unit <br />Appendix F of report contains excerpts from North Carolina General Statutes <br />explaining the types of school mergers in further detail <br />County Commissioner Initiated Merger <br />Preparation and approval of this type of merger consistent with a school <br />administrative unit initiated consolidation and merger with three basic exceptions: <br />County Commissioners must provide local funding for all students at the <br />highest level of any local school administrative unit in the county during the <br />preceding five fiscal years before the merger <br />Boards of education "shall not participate in preparing, entering into, <br />submitting, or agreeing to the plan" <br />"The plan shall not be contingent upon approval of the voters" <br />North Carolina General Statute § 115C-67 provides that after the plan of <br />consolidation and merger is approved by the State Board of Education, it "shall be <br />deemed to have been made by authority of law and shall not be changed or <br />amended except by an act of the General Assembly." <br />Implementation and Elements of Merger Plan <br />Timetable <br />^ Individual merger plans detail their own timetable <br />^ State Board does not specify a schedule for implementation <br />^ For purposes of this analysis, the following hypothetical timeframe has been used: <br />^ Year 1 -Board of Commissioner decision regarding merger <br />^ Year 2 -Should the BOCC decide in favor of merger, Year 2 would be a year for <br />transition activities to occur <br />^ Year 3 -Merger would take effect July 1 <br />