ashe

The issue with going behind the current school is how much of that hill will need to be cut and is the hill mostly rock or some combination of something that is stable or easy to stabilize. It's a big hill.

If they are going to stay on the same site, the site needs a sewer lift station located between the schools and the NCDOT, it needs an 8 inch water line from Town, and it needs a 100K standpipe for pressure. Chemicon's sewage can be pumped into that lift station and a collection line can be placed in Warrensville that would eventually catch the Elementary School. You could also then build some apartments and Section 8 housing in the area and grow it a bit.

If they stay there, do it right, upgrade 88, and prod our State Representatives to get involved.

There is not enough room to build and demolish unless you cut about 400' into the hill. I suppose you could marshal equipment on the softball field and then take the hill out, but it seems like a tight space to me. But what do I know.

When the demo happens kids don't need to be around any of the dust as it will have lead and asbestos. Any practical plan to temporarily relocate the 7th and 8th grade also has to have a facility to feed them.

If you stay there, the County and the State need to also invest in Warrensville itself - I hope corners aren't cut.

This is not an education decision, it's an economic development decision.

You may be correct, dog, and it would depend completely on how much of that hillside the BOE actually owns. I still don't see how they could pull it off, but, alas, I'm not an architect. Looking into my crystal ball, I see mobile classrooms in Warrensville during some lengthy construction. Heck, maybe they can build porches onto the trailers and put an old recliner out there on each for the kids to sit and take smoke breaks.

My understanding was there is room to build the new school and then demolish the old one.

And if they build on the same land, where will the students be taught during the construction? Building a new middle school in Warrensville would be the dumbest thing I've seen in this place yet; and trust me, I've seen some pretty dumb things happen here in a fairly short period of time! Condemn the Walmart property and build there.

I dont think the county or the school board have any choice but to build on the same land. We cant afford to buy and build the land and the school. The best choice is what they are doing. Now that swimming hole can be redone.

I dont think we quite need a new school there anyway . 50 years old is nothing for a building. The school people just want a new building like other counties are getting.

Anyway, to answer the two doctors' question's posed in the paper - it's going to be $6 - $8 million to get water and sewer to Warrensville.

What a horrible job - you know that no one will have the sense of the political will to attempt to widen 88 while this project goes forward so that will mean attempting to squeeze a water line and a sewer force main line into the side of a narrow road.

To gain a fire insurance benefit, the water line will need to be 8 inches. A standpipe for pressure on the campus will be needed - perhaps 100K gallons. The septic will be a lift station - hopefully it's designed by a legitimate PE instead of a someone who just rips the public off. The lift station needs to be designed with a false bottom so that the volume of the station can be increased if the area grows a little. Remember you can't let sewage sit in the station but so long before it goes septic (no pun intended). If people were smart poor people in Warrensville could be use to defray the cost with a CDBG project that serves them, however, they are uses to their sewage just trickling down to the river so paying for sewer treatment would be a shock.

That pool is an albatross and the location is horrible for real public use.

Save that decrepit pool?

**** those are some stupid people. Stupid, stupid people.

At least according to the latest Post story on it, they plan to save the gym and pool... LoL

As City said, the current location is not that suitable for a middle school, particularly if they are considering adding additional grades. As much as I feel for my friends and neighbors in the nw section of the county, they need to let emotions go and agree to a location near Smethport that has the infrastructure to support the facility. Yes the bus rides are long, but they are long now. When at the middle school, my son caught the bus at 6:30 am and was picked up by his mother to shorten his ride time in the evenings.

Back in the winter middle school was so bad that a little girl committed suicide.

OCM you are correct about no one having much faith in the middle school. I have had people telling me for years even before my kids started school that I would regret the day my kids went to the middle school. In more than 10 years I haven't met one single person that doesn't think the middle school is screwed up. They seem to do what ever they want with little or no supervision from the school board. This has been the topic of a couple of conversations that I have had with the new superintendent.

Joe, they may have caught it late, but I don't have much faith in the middle school, nor do most parents who have had a child there.

The middle school is akin to an unruly zoo and I'm not sure who the keepers really are - the administration or the better students.

Clod, the State of NC busses kids because bussed kids are cheaper to deal with than the criminals they become if not schooled.

More to the issue, you can take the Constitution of the State of NC and use it for fishwrap. The US Constitution is what has the weight in this country and the 14th Amendment is the federal trump over ever State situation that is "unequal".

The NC Constitution says that NC will provide a free education to its children. That incudes bussing the little whippersnappers to school - it does not have to be spelled out, it need only be a reasonable and customary expectation necessary to provide equal protection.

The State of NC has 115 or so school systems, 100 Counties, a few towns are left, and the Cherokee Reservation. The NCGS constructs that districts in such a way that non-service is not contemplated.

To work around this you would need to use the Urban Service laws that located in NCGS 160 A or maybe they are in 159, I don't remember. An urban service district is a defacto town, that is not a town, that agrees to tax itself for services.

You could make nice urban service district in Ashe County running from Jefferson Landing, including the Town, including the area around Mountain Aire, then including the narrow arrow running to Warresnville and Lansing. That would a district where "urban" levels of service are reasonable and affordable. Most counties attempt to skirt this and do it themselves, this is where you get urban services in Timbucktoo.

I've studied this problem for a decade in hopes of one day presenting a possible solution to make things better for the folks who live here, but the truth is harsh and I hesitate to note the solution.

In an ideal world, Ashe County would be the area west of a line of Bald Mountain and Phoenix. Lansing would be it's county seat, or perhaps Warrensville. The other two thirds would be it's own county or parceled out to Watauga and Alleghany.

North and Western Ashe is in a different climatic zone than the rest of Ashe County. It is different in many ways and the spatial isolation creates a number of problems that the more urban or suburban two thirds of Ashe County is unable or unwilling to address. However, as a separate County, they would be as poor as Tyrell or Robeson County.

Short of this, improved transportation connections are the area's only real hope. However, the County has always put its limited transportation mojo toward Sparta for some reason. Given NC DOT new rules for highway classification, it will take bold, specific action by Jonathon Jordon and what's his face from Boone to address the situation.

Blanch why would you send a bad report home then?

And what are you terming as abuse Bench? My son has always known that if he brings home a bad report card he will get his butt kicked, not so much as to be abuse but he will know that he's been corrected. If more parents used good old fashioned spanking there would be more kids that behave and are respectful and less that have the sense of entitlement that seems to abound today.

Then the schools need better administration.

Believe it or not there is a lot of abuse from parents when those report cards hit home.

Which makes my point instead of giving them out today just wait until tomorrow and hand out a complete correct card.

Because some kids that got a D but should have got a B will be getting their ***es beat tonight.

Here's another example of how backwards the people at the middle school are. Report cards came out today and the principle called to tell parents that part of the grades are wrong due to a incorrect date in the computer. He then said that another report card with the correct date and grades would be sent home tomorrow. The question is why didn't they just wait until tomorrow and send out a complete correct report card? I guess that would have made to much sense.