A months-long saga has unfolded surrounding the Cleveland County Board of Education’s decision not only about selling a shuttered school building but also about the buyer.
The board has opted to forgo traditional bidding processes in order for the building to land in the hands of a local religious nonprofit, drawing attention from residents and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Some Cleveland County residents who think the board is showing preferential treatment have rallied against the potential sale of the former Marion Elementary School to the nonprofit One More One Less, which partners with local churches to involve them in adoption, foster care and reunification efforts in the community.
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These residents say they think the sale to this group would result in the county making substantially less than what the building has been valued at.
Though an official vote has been delayed several times as the community pushes back and the board disagrees internally, if completed, OMOL will acquire the building through a legal technicality.
Potential deal for old Cleveland Co. school
Chair of the school board Joel Shores told Carolina Public Press that OMOL approached the board about buying the property and provided a presentation at a committee meeting in September 2025 and again at a full board meeting in early October. At another meeting in late October, the board decided to move forward with selling to OMOL — sort of.
Crista Cuccaro, an assistant professor of law and government with a speciality in procurement, contracting and property disposal at UNC-Chapel Hill, told CPP that when seeking to dispose of property, public entities can engage in either competitive methods, like auctions or bidding wars intended to elicit the highest price possible, or noncompetitive ones, like exchanges or private negotiations.
Public school property must first be offered to the local board of commissioners for fair market value or a negotiated price. Under statute NCGS 160A-266(b), if the county decides not to purchase and the property is significant for its architectural, archaeological, artistic, cultural or historical associations, it can be sold to a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to preserve properties with those qualities.
The law is not very definitive as to how and what property is classified as having architectural, archaeological, artistic, cultural or historical associations, Cuccaro said. The Marion School is about 75 years old.
Cleveland County commissioners expressed no interest in Marion after it was declared surplus property in 2023, Shores said. The board also offered it to the city of Shelby as a courtesy but the city did not express interest, leading to an eventual October agreement between the board, OMOL and historical structure group, Preservation North Carolina.
“During the Oct. 21, 2025, meeting, the board adopted a resolution indicating that it wishes to dispose of the property pursuant to NCGS 160A-266(b), and authorized the superintendent, board chairman, and board attorney to enter into negotiations with Preservation North Carolina and One More One Less to negotiate the terms of the sale and bring to the board for final approval within 180 days,” Shores wrote in a statement.
On Dec. 1, 2025, the board’s attorney shared the terms of a proposed agreement in which Preservation North Carolina would purchase the building for $140,000 to maintain compliance with the statutes and would then sell to OMOL for $150,000 with the guarantee that OMOL will invest at least $850,000 over the next 24 months, Shores said.
Fair market value requirement
A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it subsection in Article 9 of North Carolina’s Constitution outlines that there must be a consideration of fair market value when disposing of public school property. Cuccaro said it has been interpreted to mean that schools don’t have quite as much bandwidth as other public entities when utilizing noncompetitive methods of disposal.
“… all moneys, stocks, bonds, and other property belonging to a county school fund, and the clear proceeds of all penalties and forfeitures and of all fines collected in the several counties for any breach of the penal laws of the State, shall belong to and remain in the several counties, and shall be faithfully appropriated and used exclusively for maintaining free public schools,” the article reads.
“It’s a very brief sentence, but the way that’s been interpreted is that schools have to get the fair market value for property, that they can’t donate or use the methods outlined in the statute, like other public entities, cities and counties can,” Cuccaro said.
Well, what’s the fair market value then? No one really knows. It’s common practice to get an appraisal to understand the potential value and what one might offer for it, Cuccaro said, but that isn’t required.
“There’s not really a set way to go about that, legally speaking,” Cuccaro said. “There’s kind of a saying that the fair market value is what people will pay for it.”
While exact offers haven’t been made public, Gaston Christian School in neighboring Gaston County made repeated attempts to discuss buying the property years before OMOL.
Reporting by The Shelby Star in December included messages between Gaston Christian’s Head of School Marc Stout and Cleveland County Superintendent Stephan Fisher from several years ago in which Stout expressed a desire to bid on the school, said they “might be willing to pay more for the building than you would get for an inner governmental transfer” and offered to rent the property triple net, meaning Gaston Christian would be responsible for operating costs and maintenance.
Stout said Gaston Christian eventually gave up on Marion and purchased the former Central School building in Kings Mountain for $1.3 million in December 2023.
Cleveland County Schools’ attorney Leigha Sink told The Star when Gaston Christian inquired about the building, the board was still in the process of waiting to hear from the county about whether there was interest in the property and was not ready to proceed with any action.
Co-founder of OMOL Jeff Marburger told CPP they were in the planning stages of building their own counseling center and office space in 2025 when an economic developer for the City of Shelby heard about the organization and suggested they look into purchasing the school, which had been sitting empty for about three years at that point.
“We didn’t necessarily pursue Marion School, but then once it was brought to our attention, we had the conversation with Dr. Fisher back in the summer of last year, and that’s when the wheels kind of started,” Marburger said.
“And so we thought, well, why not take an older building that was a representation of what foster kids are — sometimes overlooked, sometimes abandoned — and see if something beautiful could come from that.”
Question of favoring one group
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national organization that advocates for the rights of atheists and agnostics and in favor of the separation of church and state, sent a letter to Shores and the rest of the board Nov. 21, 2025, a week before the board’s attorney presented the proposed agreement between Preservation North Carolina and OMOL, asking the board to ensure it does not “unconstitutionally favor this religious organization.” It also questioned the validity of the school building’s historical importance.
“Here, the board is reportedly planning to sell public property to (OMOL) in a process that appears to deviate from the law,” the foundation’s letter read. “While the board is permitted to enter direct negotiations with a nonprofit fitting the description in the statutes, the board has failed to explain how (OMOL’s) mission is connected to preservation or conservation, and it has not explained whether or how the closed Marion Elementary School building is a property of historical or other significance justifying preservation.
“It also appears that (OMOL) would not be able to afford to purchase the building for a price at or around fair market value, meaning the board will likely be selling the property for far less than it could if it goes through with this sale. Transferring this public property to a religious organization in a closed process for a price far below market value raises concerns that the board is unconstitutionally favoring this religious organization over secular organizations and other religious institutions.”
Jenni Hassler is a Cleveland County parent and one of those rallying against the sale. She said the building is sentimental to the community in some ways, but she also questions what other significant value it possesses under the law being used to justify the sale to Preservation North Carolina.
Hassler worries that by selling through private negotiation, the county will not make nearly as much money as it could if it went through a bidding process and thus won’t be able to address persistent issues in the school system. Shelby schools currently struggle with overcrowding, Hassler said, and more than half of Cleveland County schools are classified as Title I.
Marburger understands why people think the building should be sold to the highest bidder to bring in the most amount of money, but he finds that thinking to be short-sighted. The agreement between Preservation North Carolina and OMOL would not only ensure the building doesn’t get torn down in the future, but it will continue the building’s original purpose in a way and create even more avenues for vulnerable children to be served, he said.
“The idea for me and our organization is how cool it would be for this to continue to serve kids in Cleveland County and really have an impact and a footprint here in Cleveland County that can be a model to bring people from across the state to learn about foster care and adoption,” Marburger said.
Should OMOL be able to purchase the building, Marburger hopes the involvement of Preservation North Carolina in the sale will establish trust between the nonprofit and the community as there would be a number of requirements in place to maintain the building’s preservation.
As for OMOL’s relationship with local government, Marburger said he thinks of the nonprofit as a conduit between local churches and the Department of Health and Human Services and Division of Social Services, which oversees foster care and adoption in the state. He sees churches as having the people and the power to make an impact on the foster care system.
“The state is meant to refrain evil and the church is meant to instill good, and I think those two worlds work well together,” Marburger said.
“But often, I think we create this idea of what separation of church and state is, and it creates a little bit more of a competitiveness or ‘steer clear from’ than a collaboration. I think that’s kind of where I land on that and where our organization’s heart really lies.”
The board’s last official action on the resolution to sell to OMOL through Preservation North Carolina was Dec. 8, 2025, in which it was initially set to be voted on but members moved to remove it from the agenda to “allow additional time for the board to consider the general terms of the proposed agreement,” Shores said.
The resolution will expire April 19 if there’s no action taken, meaning the board will likely revisit it before then, Shores said. The board is scheduled to meet March 9 and April 13.
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