Probably not hard to imagine that a “normally sedate” (an understatement) Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education meeting got quite testy as parents demanded answers regarding hazardous waste near Hanes and Lowrance middle schools, as reported by the Winston-Salem Journal on Sunday.
Emotions ran high:
“Don’t be afraid to shut this school down,” said Vishal Khanna, who has a student at Hanes. Afterward, he said his child would no longer attend the school.
….Sarah Gillett, said she’s had two children go to Hanes and has one son who is an eighth-grader there now. She asked him if he wanted to stay home on Tuesday, but said there was a class he couldn’t miss.
“He went in late and I cried when I left the parking lot,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to send him back.”
WSFCS spokesman Theo Helm tells WFDD:
(P)arents have been informed of the issue in the past, and that the only reason this comes up now is that there is a proposal to build a replacement school on an unused part of the campus. But he says he hopes the meeting Wednesday will address parental concerns.
“It’s something that we’ve talked about at board committee meetings. We’ve never tried to hide it,” says Helm. “We’ve monitored the air. We’ve always felt like it’s safe. Certainly, we’re meeting with parents and we’ll explain all that and explain what steps we’ll take moving forward.”
Discussing an issue at school board committee meetings is a prime example of hiding in plain sight. That said, Superintendent Beverly Emory says she will recommend immediate air quality testing at both schools. And what if the air quality passes DENR’s muster? Will that satisfy parents worried about their child’s health? Probably not.
Look– this is a tailor-made mainstream media issue —environmental waste jeopardizing the children– while the fact remains that this very days hundreds of children will still pass through the doors of Lowrance and Hanes middles schools, just as thousands have passed through the doors over the years. How much evidence is there of children actually getting sick as a result of contaminated air?
This is a mess, and it will be interesting to see how Emory handles it. At the very least, I don’t how the school board and county commissioners can proceed with fast-track plans to replace Lowrance.
