Trouble looms for N.C. textile center.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler - North Carolina Center for Applied Textile Technology

The North Carolina Center for Applied Textile Technology in Belmont celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. Rep. Debbie Clary, a Republican who represents Gaston and Cleveland counties, is considering a special gift: a cutoff of state funding.

Somebody, it seems, snitched on the center, resulting in a couple of state audits and a string of news stories about its nearly empty classrooms and its moonlighting president. James Lemons boosts his $104,000 salary by as much as $40,000 teaching at other schools, including nearby UNC Charlotte.

Clary is so steamed that she wants to divert the $1.4 million to $1.5 million the school gets from the state each year to other community colleges. The textile center is part of the N.C. Community College System, though it is treated differently. Instead of receiving funds based on enrollment, as do the other 58 campuses, it receives a flat appropriation from the General Assembly.

With nearly 106,000 textile jobs lost since 1990, a school aimed at training workers for that industry may have outlived its usefulness, Clary says. "There are no students. You can't find them in the parking lot or the classrooms." She's not the only one who has noticed. Television and print journalists have exposed the eerily quiet campus of a school that reports an enrollment of 3,873.

Clary has it all wrong, Lemons says. He says he never puts in less than 40 hours a week at the textile center, though he operates on a flexible schedule--approved by his board--that allows him to teach outside classes...