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Hanes Middle School sits on top of a pool of toxic waste

I judged their science fair in December. #probablygonnadie
 
In all seriousness I wonder if this explains the fallout of going to Hanes. From the kids in my grade and a couple around them, it usually resulted in this:

1/3 high achievers who went to Ivys and shit
1/3 underachievers (like me) who got burnt out on school and did just enough to get by in HS and went to state schools
1/3 kids who got into drugs in HS and never left town or spent 6-7 years at Asheville

I thought it was the nauseating amount of school work and general dick/cuntness of the teachers that led to this. But maybe it was the POISON coursing through our veins
 
BillBrasky said:
In all seriousness I wonder if this explains the fallout of going to Hanes. From the kids in my grade and a couple around them, it usually resulted in this:

1/3 high achievers who went to Ivys and shit
1/3 underachievers (like me) who got burnt out on school and did just enough to get by in HS and went to state schools
1/3 kids who got into drugs in HS and never left town or spent 6-7 years at Asheville

I thought it was the nauseating amount of school work and general dick/cuntness of the teachers that led to this. But maybe it was the POISON coursing through our veins
Click to expand...

Sounds about like most great public schools
 
I learned some new things tonight:

1) Our school board, in 2015, among a collection of adults, still starts every public session with the Pledge of Allegiance.

2) There were parents at the board meeting who think this whole drama was cooked up by upper class white parents who wanted the HAG program moved away from the lower class neighborhood where the school resides.

3) There are parents of special needs children (the kids who attend Lowrance) who are hurting tonight. Their kids will suffer from this move, and they are having a hard time accepting that the decision to close the school down is very sound and that the board could not carry out it's responsibility to protect the students and teachers without closing the campus down. It's unfortunate that those families will be disproportionately inconvenienced by this move.
 
One of the key issues that drove this decision is that the school district was looking at massive costs for testing and mitigation of the issue on the current site. Testing alone was going to cost nearly a million dollars for the next year, and that number would be added to with continuous testing. Modifications to the existing site and structure would have been substantial expenditures, and given the age of the building(65 years old) there would have been serious engineering issues with any remediation plan. When weighed against the costs of relocation, it seems that relocation is the cheaper solution.

There was already 41 million dollars budgeted for a new school for the Lowrance special needs population, with part of that funding slated to renovate Konnoak Elementary. Now that money can be put to use constructing a new building elsewhere in town on a safe site.
 
I never thought the risk was that great, but politically I think they did the right thing. It would have split the program if it stayed at hanes because many parents would have balked at the idea of sending their kids to a toxic site. They might have gotten a better response if they had simply marketed it from the beginning as "Hanes-On-The-Plume." Sounds kinda Ritzy.
 
WinkinDeac said:
I never thought the risk was that great, but politically I think they did the right thing. It would have split the program if it stayed at hanes because many parents would have balked at the idea of sending their kids to a toxic site. They might have gotten a better response if they had simply marketed it from the beginning as "Hanes-On-The-Plume." Sounds kinda Ritzy.
Click to expand...

Regarding risk, the problem many had (and this was driven by the scientists and engineers among the parents) is that there were too many unknowns. We kept hearing about "based on the data we have" when the data was a few isolated data samples over a 20 year period. There simply wasn't a large enough data set for anyone to draw meaningful scientific conclusions on, and for many of us that was enough of a risk to keep our kids home and advocate for a change. Once word got out about the site being toxic, I really don't think there was ever any turning back.

Once the county commissioners pulled the funding for the new Lowrance building last week, today's events were a foregone conclusion. This whole story ends with the Lowrance students getting a new building in a couple years as they already would, and with the HAG program being permanently relocated. The people who will be hurt long term are the neighborhood residents who lose a school that their kids could walk to every day, plus they have the dagger of a chemical plume that is migrating westward toward the homes as time passes by.
 
JManslow said:
Townie, are we rich yet?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty certain my 4th grade battles with homeless drug-addicts in the Brunson creek as Safety Patrol put me at more risk than the poisonous chemicals at Hanes.
 
wakephan09 said:
I'm pretty certain my 4th grade battles with homeless drug-addicts in the Brunson creek as Safety Patrol put me at more risk than the poisonous chemicals at Hanes.
Click to expand...

LOL. Our 6th grader begged us to let him do safety patrol at Brunson the last 2 years and we wouldn't let him. He missed out on the fun
 
“I’m really bothered by this,” Motsinger said. “By the time this move goes into place we will have gotten an enormous amount of good data. I feel the public has really been harmed with inaccurate reporting of science and an inaccurate understanding of what these levels are and the toxicity.
“In years to come, we will look back at this decision and will be a little bit surprised we made it.”
Click to expand...
In years to come, we will look back at Motsinger and will be a little bit surprised we elected her.
 
at9eZPW.jpg

Quite a few hazardous waste sites in town, one was bound to be under a school...

http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/wm/gis/maps/ihs
 
Liquid Karma said:
I learned some new things tonight:

1) Our school board, in 2015, among a collection of adults, still starts every public session with the Pledge of Allegiance.

2) There were parents at the board meeting who think this whole drama was cooked up by upper class white parents who wanted the HAG program moved away from the lower class neighborhood where the school resides.

3) There are parents of special needs children (the kids who attend Lowrance) who are hurting tonight. Their kids will suffer from this move, and they are having a hard time accepting that the decision to close the school down is very sound and that the board could not carry out it's responsibility to protect the students and teachers without closing the campus down. It's unfortunate that those families will be disproportionately inconvenienced by this move.
Click to expand...

#1 is fairly common among local government elected bodies from my experience
 
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