Pitt Schools Seek $62 Million for a New Conley High

Pitt County Schools is applying for $62 million in state money toward a new D.H. Conley High School. Aaron Errickson, the district’s executive director of operations, told the Board of Education Monday the county would still need to cover roughly $90 million to $100 million.

What the district is asking for

The request is the maximum under the Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund, which caps high school awards at $62 million. (N.C. Department of Public Instruction: dpi.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2025/11/18/nearly-400-million-awarded-needs-based-school-construction-grants) Applications are due in early October; awards are usually announced in November.

The case for a new building is crowding. Conley opened in 1970 on 40 acres and was built for about 1,400 students. It now enrolls more than 1,700, and the district projects more than 2,000 by fall 2030. The application says the campus is out of land to expand and that its layout slows class changes and traffic flow.

The district’s 15-year plan, approved in September 2025, calls for a campus of up to 2,400 students in the Black Jack area on at least 100 acres. The current campus would become Hope Middle, and Hope’s Mills Road site would become an elementary school. None of it is quick: Errickson said a new school would take about four years after an award, and the land is not yet bought. District 9 representative Benjie Forrest said four to six years may be more realistic.

Pitt is a Tier 1 county, the state’s most distressed designation. The district has applied for 17 lottery-funded construction grants since 2017 and won none. (N.C. Department of Commerce: commerce.nc.gov/grants-incentives/county-distress-rankings-tiers)

What this means for Greenville and Pitt County buyers and sellers

Read this as a growth signal before a school story. A high school more than 300 students over capacity measures how many families have moved into its attendance area, and it fits the pattern around Greenville, where the core is built out and new subdivisions push outward.

For buyers, the thing to watch is the attendance zone, not the building. School assignment here follows zone lines, and a new campus in the Black Jack area would redraw the boundaries that feed Conley today. Confirm the assignment with Pitt County Schools before you write an offer, and do not pay a premium for a zone that may change.

For sellers, the timeline is the honest part: four to six years from an award, and no award yet.

The cost belongs in the read. A $62 million state grant would still leave the county to cover $90 million to $100 million, and spending at that scale eventually touches the debt and tax base. The next checkpoint is the November decision.

The takeaway

Pitt County Schools has a crowding problem, a plan, and an October deadline. What it does not have is the money, the land or a start date. Buyers should track the attendance-zone map. Sellers should price today’s market rather than a campus years away.

Sources and assumptions

This post draws on The Daily Reflector’s Oct. 1 report and WCTI12’s report on the same proposal. Enrollment, capacity, acreage, cost and timeline figures come from Pitt County Schools as reported; award caps, criteria and grant history come from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. Two assumptions: this is an application, not an award, and the district has been passed over before; and the county’s share would fall on local taxpayers over time, though no figure has been presented, so nothing here estimates a tax impact. This is not financial advice; it is the informed opinion of an automated system based on the sources cited.