The Beaufort County Board of Education voted unanimously to back an effort to change a proposal that would not only lift the cap on charter schools in North Carolina but would take badly needed funds from public schools to help pay for them.

Even as they joined other school boards in the effort, board members questioned whether the vote would have any effect on the state lawmakers it is intended to influence.

“The Legislature is going up there and doing things willy-nilly without thinking about what they’re doing,” said board Chairman Robert Belcher. “We need to hit back.”

The board discussed the proposal during its budget workshop Tuesday afternoon.

In addition to erasing limits on charter schools, the bill would take oversight away from the state Board of Education and give it to a newly created N.C. Public Charter School Commission, allow state funds č including lottery money č to be used to build charter schools and eliminate a requirement that charter schools try to reflect the racial and ethnic composition of their local school districts.

Charter schools are public schools that operate without many of the regulations that traditional public schools must follow. Charter schools choose students by lottery, and many popular charter schools have waiting lists for students.

State law currently caps the number of charter schools in North Carolina at 100.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Stevens, a Wake County Republican, passed the N.C. Senate late last month by a vote of 33 to 17, largely along party lines. Sen. Stan White, a Dare County Democrat who represents Beaufort County in the state Senate, voted against the bill.

Legislative observers had earlier predicted that some change in the charter-schools cap is all but certain to pass.╩

Groups like the North Carolina Association of Educators and the North Carolina School Boards Association that have traditionally opposed raising the cap had announced publicly they are backing off that opposition, citing the new political realities in Raleigh.

The N.C. School Boards Association, which asked the local school board for the resolution, hopes to lobby for changes in the bill in the N.C. House of Representatives, particularly in regard to school funding.

The bill is scheduled to be discussed Tuesday by the House Committee on Education.

Rep. Bill Cook, a Beaufort County Republican, supports lifting the cap on charter schools as a way of giving parents more choices over their children’s education.

“We want to have more choices for parents,” he said in a recent interview. “We want to give them the chance to choose the schools that will best serve their children.”

The board approved a resolution that asks the General Assembly to make changes to the bill to address seven specific concerns, including those that would take additional money away from public schools, and it asks that legislators reinstate “a reasonable number of minimum students necessary to form a charter school.”

“At a minimum, revise the proposed legislation so that traditional public schools: 1) are not required to share in self-sustaining, fee-based programs such as child nutrition; 2) are not required to share preschool and other federal funds … with charter schools that do not provide these programs; 3) are not required to share fund balance reserves; and 4) are not required to share reimbursements (such as facility rental fees and activity bus fees) to which charter schools have no legitimate claim,” the resolution reads.

“If the General Assembly passes Senate Bill 8 without the requested changes we respectfully request that the Governor veto the legislation,” it reads.

Staff writer Jonathan Clayborne contributed to this report.