Laurels to Livingstone College students for reaching beyond the borders of their West Monroe Street campus and into the Rowan-Salisbury School System and community. Just this week, members of the college’s TRiO program spent an evening at Koontz Elementary School, where they organized a night of science activities based on experiments designed by the N.C. Science Festival as part of the school’s science, technology, engineering and math program. Physical science students worked with seventh-graders at Knox Middle School to demonstrate how pulleys can make it easier to lift weights. And on April 26, the college will host its annual Children’s Book Festival, which aims to help youngsters develop an appreciation for reading and books. Livingstone students, who know the value of reading, will surely be around to promote that effort.
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Dart to the acrimonious environment — including the one in Rowan County — that’s led school boards to threaten legal action against county commissioners and a local legislator to pen a bill banning that option. N.C. Rep. Carl Ford, a former Rowan County commissioner, says he’ll introduce a bill in the General Assembly’s upcoming short session that would restrict school boards’ right to sue county boards of commissioners for funding. That nuclear option is one the Rowan-Salisbury school board has recently dangled in its dispute over capital funding with county commissioners and one that last year resulted in a Union County judge ordering commissioners there to give the school system $90 million in additional funding. If members of both boards kept in mind the fact that students, and not dollars, are ultimately at stake, maybe lawsuits and legislation would be unnecessary.
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Laurels to the people and leaders of Rowan County for the efforts that led to improvement in several of the measures used in the annual County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, released this week and based on data gathered by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. According to the report, the county had improved scores in multiple health categories, including quality of life, social and economic factors and health behaviors. There’s still work to do. Rowan County had 33 percent of its adult population obese compared to the state average of 29 percent. And while neighboring Cabarrus County improved from 10th to ninth healthiest overall in the state this year, Rowan remained static at No. 68. That gives Rowan a goal, and the improvements give us hope that we can reach it.