Blogs
By Geoff Green and Ruby Sinreich
With the the new Northside Elementary School, a.k.a. elementary #11, set to open next summer (as well as Frank Porter Graham Elementary School's transition to a dual-language magnet school), we'll be forced to go through another dreaded reassignment process to balance enrollment and capacity at our oft-crowded elementary schools. Superintendent Tom Forcella issued a memo on August 2 (PDF) about how this could go.
Forcella says he expects to reassign over 1,000 elementary school students. A redistricting team of 8 staff members has already been created. They are charged with creating three plans to be reviewed by a Redistricting Advisory Council, made up of staff and parent representatives from all the elementary schools and from Carrboro High School, which will recommend one to the School Board.
I'm surprised no one has yet posted comments about the following article by Mark Schultz that appeared in Chapel Hill News. Chapel Hill Town Council has taken many principled positions on contentious national issues such as gay rights or gun control, to name two. Why not Palestine? Where does this community stand on the issue of free speech? Why is it OK to take positions on some issues, but not others? In this case the town itself is not actually taking a position, but allowing a local church to pay for ads that say the following: “Join with us. Build peace with justice and equality. End U.S. military aid to Israel.” It's a simple message quite in keeping with many of the values Chapel Hillians hold dear. Should the town censor this particular kind of speech on town buses?
Town leaders will discuss their policy for bus advertising after an ad calling for an end of U.S. military aid to Israel drew complaints.
Nearly 80 participants leave for Bloomington a week from this Sunday. The discussions to be held during the visit should spark some interesting dialogue both during the event and once back in Orange County. The visit is split up into a series of Conversations with topics including: Community Branding, Economic Development, A Thriving Downtown, Student Housing, University-Community Partnerships,Innovations in Government, Community Colleges: Entrepreneurship and Workforce Development, and K-12 Education. There will also be time for one-on-one conversations with our counterparts. On the second day there will be field trips to a trail, theater, high school, museum, or art center (I hope to go visit the Bloomington Community Orchard).
The Twitter hashtag for the visit is #ICV2012. I plan to tweet during the visit (@mollsdemarco), and I imagine a number of others will as well.
The informal foot path connecting Estes Park Apartments and Pleaseant Drive in Carrboro is a critical link for hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists like me who don't want to brave the shoulders of Estes Drive. I hadn't been there in a while due to the idiotic closure of the Merrit Crossing, but I walked through yesterday and found that the residents of the co-op housing on Crest Street (which backs up to the path) have been inspired by Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree (a book I still can't read without crying) to create "The Giving Communitree." It's a collection of little spots and works of art with books, art, and other gifts to share with anyone who wants them.
I took some pictures.
This month the Town of Chapel Hill followed up on their promise to help create a community center for the Rogers Road neighborhood by... shutting down the center that neighbors set up for themselves for code violations! What?
Did anyone at Town Hall think twice before doing this? Did anyone think 'given our huge debt to this community and our stated goal of supporting a community center there, how can we help improve this center and bring it up to code?'
No, as if they were computers instead of humans, they kicked the Rogers-Eubank Neighborhood Association out of their home. What were they thinking?
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