1. Book banning battles hit North Carolina schools
Conservatives target works dealing with race and LGBTQ themes
Parents of sixth graders in a gifted language-arts class at Marvin Ridge Middle School received an email from their children’s teacher last month warning them that a book selected for the class’s unit on African American literature would at times be “uncomfortable.”
The teacher at the Union County school, Cason Treharn, was confident, however, that her academically advanced students were mature enough to handle Melba Pattillo Beals’s autobiographical account of the Little Rock Nine’s integration of Central High School in Arkansas in 1957.
Beals was one of nine Black students who stared down angry mobs of white racists and segregationists to attend the previously all-white school. [Read more…]
Owners of the Weaver Fertilizer plant in Winston-Salem failed to submit a required chemical inventory to the NC Department of Public Safety in 2020, a key piece of information for state and local emergency officials — and a symptom of the lack of oversight of facilities nationwide that handle ammonium nitrate.
Nearly 600 tons of ammonium nitrate caught fire at the Weaver plant on Jan. 31 and burned for four days. The risk of explosion was so great that Winston-Salem officials asked people to evacuate within a mile radius, temporarily displacing 6,000 residents. Residents are now allowed back into their homes, although on Feb. 6, the ruins were still smoldering.
Whether Weaver Fertilizer is also required to file an emergency response plan hinges on that inventory, according to Keith Acree, public information officer with the NC Department of Public Safety. Without the chemical inventory, “it’s unknown if an emergency response plan is required,” Acree wrote in an email. [Read more…]
3. Contact tracing, staying home no longer required for K-12 students, staff exposed to COVID-19
Individual contract tracing is no longer recommended for K-12 schools and students and staff members are no longer required to stay home after a COVID-19 exposure unless they experience symptoms or test positive for the disease, according to an update to the state’s StrongSchoolsNC Public Health Toolkit.
The new rules go into effect Feb. 21, according to a press release posted on the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) website.
Keeping students in the classroom is a top priority, State Health Secretary Kody Kinsley said in a statement. [Read more….]
4. Pandemic pitfalls, widening inequality threaten NC’s ambitious 2030 higher-education goal.
Three years ago, North Carolina established a goal of having two million adults with a post-secondary degree or high-quality credential by 2030. This week, NC State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues convened leading educators, policymakers, and local leaders to discuss how North Carolina is doing in reaching that benchmark.
Rebecca Tippett, director for Carolina Demography, said before the pandemic 1.2 million adults (age 25-44) in the state held an associate’s degree or higher. Roughly 204,000 held a certificate or credential.
But over the last two years, the state has seen a disruption in its post-secondary pipeline.
“When you look at the share of DPI graduates who say they intend to continue their education, that share has decreased 4.3 percent since pre-pandemic,” said Tippett.[Read more…]
5. When it comes to gerrymandering, there simply must be a limit
Last week, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the most recent batch of egregiously gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps fashioned by Republican majorities at the General Assembly.
It should not have been necessary.
Thirteen years ago this month, Republican senators introduced a bill that would have easily prevented the necessity of such a controversial ruling. Filed on Feb. 2, 2009, by a group that included current Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, Senate Bill 25 would have asked North Carolina voters to approve the establishment of an independent redistricting commission.
It seems all but certain that voters would have said “yes” had the measure made it to the ballot. [Read more…]
Active Energy Renewable Power, a wood pellet company beset by regulatory, legal, and operational troubles, is allegedly discharging high levels of toxic PFAS into the Lumber River, a drinking water supply for 25,000 people in Robeson County.
The company is also allegedly discharging the compounds into Jacob’s Branch, a tributary of the Lumber River.
The claims were detailed in a “Notice of Intent to Sue” sent to the company by the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Active Energy did not produce the PFAS, also known as perfluorinated and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, but SELC alleges that the company has run afoul of the Clean Water Act, since 2019, when it purchased the property on Alamac Road in Lumberton. The Clean Water Act prohibits facility owners from discharging any pollutants — including PFAS — from their property into rivers and streams without a federal permit. Active Energy’s outdated permit does not include PFAS in the list of pollutants that can be discharged. [Read more…]
7. Experts examine the interaction of science and politics in UNC panel
Should scientists stand outside of politics or do they have an obligation to engage in political debates around science? Do evolving social rules and mores threaten the teaching of science? Does the politicization of science, particularly in a global pandemic, threaten the public’s trust in it?
Those were some of the lofty topics tackled by a panel of experts at Tuesday’s night’s Abbey Speaker Series panel at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The panel, moderated by new university Provost Chris Clemens, featured former UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor and current editor-in-chief of of Science magazine Holden Thorp, and Luana Maroja, chair of the Biochemistry & Molecular Biology program at Williams College. [Read more…]
The owner of a McDowell County adult care home recently won an appeals court case against the state in which he argued that over-zealous inspectors reached conclusions that were so off-base they amounted to negligence. Because of the ruling, the owner can claim damages.
The three-judge appeals court panel split 2-1 in favor of owner Fred Leonard, who wants compensation for losses connected to sanctions against Cedarbrook Residential Center.
When regulators suspended new admissions to Cedarbrook for about six months, Leonard said occupancy declined more than 50%, and he lost the chance to sell the facility. He is seeking the maximum $1 million allowed under the Tort Claims Act.
The decision for the Cedarbrook owner came soon after the appeals court ruled in a separate case that state regulators didn’t do enough to ensure residents were safe. In that case, the court agreed the state should pay $500,000 to the family of a woman who died after wandering away from a Cleveland County adult care home in 2008.
Mouy Tieng Tang disappeared from the Unique Living adult care home in 2008. Her remains were found in 2018.
In both cases, the appeals court upheld NC Industrial Commission decisions, which under state law can decide civil claims against state agencies. The Industrial Commission decided that sovereign immunity did not shield DHHS, which is how the cases landed in appeals court. [Read more…]
9. States target ballot drop boxes in fight over voting rights
In the November 2020 general election, nearly 40 states had ballot drop boxes available and more voters used drop boxes than in any election in U.S. history, according to a report from the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.
But in the lead up to the election and the years since, the big metal boxes have become the focus of controversy in state legislatures from Georgia to Texas to Nebraska and in courts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In many states, Republican lawmakers want to limit or end voters’ choice to return their ballots to drop boxes, citing the potential for tampering or fraud — though there’s no proof that’s happened.
Larry Olson, the vice president of Laserfab, a Washington state-based metal fabrication company that has manufactured drop boxes since 2010, recognizes the irony of all the attention on metal boxes in 2022. [Read more…]
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The post From book banning to changing COVID recommendations, to toxic PFAS in a NC river: The week’s top stories on Policy Watch appeared first on The Pulse.