Brunswick County
PFAS found in blood samples of more than 1,000 people in Cape Fear River Basin
For more than a year, Laura Petersen has waited for the message to arrive. “I’m so nervous to open that letter,” she said at a meeting this week co-hosted by scientists from the GenX Exposure Study and members of the Haw River Assembly. Petersen and her family have lived in Pittsboro for 12 years. Every […]
NC Court of Appeals: Charter school operator can’t sue former superintendent for libel
The North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled earlier this week that charter school operator Baker Mitchell Jr. cannot sue former Brunswick County superintendent Edward Pruden for libel. Mitchell is a founder of Charter Day School in Leland and his company Roger Bacon Academies receives millions in public dollars to run four charter schools in the Wilmington area. […]
Three students file court challenge to an eastern N.C. charter’s policy requiring that girls wear skirts
Three students at a Brunswick County charter school are challenging the school’s policy requiring that girls wear skirts, the ACLU of N.C. said today. The ACLU and Raleigh firm Ellis & Winters LLP filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of N.C. Monday on behalf of three students—ages 5, 10 and […]
North Carolina school to spend half-million to fix coal ash-filled playing field
And in perhaps this week’s most bizarre news: The Wilmington Star-News reported Sunday that school officials in Brunswick County, a rural county south of Wilmington, will be spending nearly a half-million dollars to clean up a middle school playing field that sits atop coal ash. In case you’ve been living under a rock in the last […]
ACLU seeks records related to book banning effort
As noted here yesterday, it’s not at all clear that the book banning efforts of religious conservatives in the Brunswick County schools were put to rest with the recent vote to keep Alice Walker’s The Color Purple on the reading list for some students. Happily, the good folks at the ACLU of North Carolina are digging […]
Book banning in Brunswick County: Not dead yet?
Bad news for those who had hoped that the move by religious conservatives to ban Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in the Brunswick County schools had run out of steam once and for all with the 3-2 “no” vote on January 3. Judging by the comments of chief book ban champion, board member Catherine Cooke, […]
Baker Mitchell’s charter schools under investigation by the U.S. Dept. of Education
Yesterday, the State Board of Education approved 26 new charter schools to open this fall – including South Brunswick Charter School, the fourth charter school to open under the management of Baker A. Mitchell, Jr. Mitchell has collected in the neighborhood of $16 million in taxpayer funds over the past five years for managing three […]