School board
candidates say
children first
te ELIZABETH STEWART
lib.kmherald@gmail.com
The dozen candidates for five open seats on the Cleve-
land County Board of Education faced off during a candidate
forum last Tuesday sponsored by the Cleveland County’
Chapter of the NAACP.
Of the group, the four incumbents are Kenneth Ledford,
Jack Hamrick, Shearra Miller and Richard Hooker. Chal-
lengers are Danny Blanton, Melvin Clark, Yvette Grant, Sid
‘Bryson, Connie Phifer Savell, Page Morgan, Jerry Hoyle and
Roger Harris. :
All the candidates agreed that the children come first in ,
* any decisions that come before them at the table and one can-
didate commended all 12 "good people willing to serve."
The forum in the auditorium of Cleveland Memorial Li-
brary was a light turnout but NAACP Chairman Willie McIn-
tosh said the organization wanted to get school board
candidates a chance to connect with voters and he said they
did just that. The NAACP hosted candidate forums for city
council contenders in Kings Mountain last Monday and for
water board candidates Wednesday evening in Shelby.
The candidates received a copy of the five questions a few
minutes before the start-up and they had 1-2 minutes for their
replies. The timely questions generated lively discussion and
their answers follow:
1) What can the Board of Education do to create a di-
verse and fair employment process?
DANNY BLANTON - I think a team from the school sys-
tem should visit colleges and recruit teachers.
MELVIN CLARK - The school system has a policy in
place but we must put it into practice and recruit teachers:
Hispanic, Asian, etc. and initiate diversity, not wait until it
comes to Us. 3
YVETTE GRANT - Approaching diversity‘is important.
A policy is in place. Teachers must be qualified and we need
to prepare our students for a different culture.
SID BRYSON - The school system has a hiring policy in
place and we need to follow procedures. We must offer train-
ing to people we hire.
See CANDIDATES, 6A
Bailes to step in
as interim
county manager
Cleveland County Com-
missioners Tuesday ap-
pointed Eddie Bailes as
Interim County Manager ef-
fective Jan. 1, 2012.
|
98525700200
Bailes is currently the As-
sistant County Manager and
~ will assume the position held
by David Dear, who is retir-
ing, after 34 years with
Cleveland County.
Commissioners will be
developing a recruitment
plan over the next several
months and a permanent
manager should be ap-
pointed by the summer of
2012.
® on Cherokee and Gold streets and
continue to Battleground Avenue,
Mountain Street, and south on Rail-
road Avenue to the Gazebo at Patriots
, Park for post-parade sing- alongs, 4 ps
games and activities.
Local merchants are encouraged fo
dress in costumes to greet the chil-
i Boe Also, the Mauney Memorial A
. Children's Library, in cooperation 4 fo
with Cleveland County Childcare fio
+ Connections, Partnership for Chil- 7
See PARADE, 3A A %
A
all
2 Ca
Se The City of Kings Mountain will host its annual "Great
8% Pumpkin Halloween Parade" on Monday, Oct. 31. Chil-
¥ dren are invited to dress up in costumes and gather
Eleven of the 19 surviving Little Sisters of Hoboken, a
one-time missionary order that ran a leper colony on an
island south of France, discover that their cook, Sister
Julia, Child of God, accidentally killed the other fifty-two
residents of the convent with her tainted vichyssoise while
they were off playing bingo with a group of Maryknolls.
Upon discovering the disaster, Mother Superior had a
vision in which she was told to start a greeting card com-
pany to raise funds for the burials. The greeting cards were
an’enormous success and, thinking there was plenty of
money, the Reverend Mother bought a plasma TV for the
convent, leaving her with no money in the Kitty to pay for
the last four burials. With the deceased nuns on ice in the
the grand finale.
Sister Julia, Child of God (Joanna Gilbert), left, and Sister Wilhelm (Karen Lattimore) laugh it up in one of the many hi-
larious scenes in "Nunsense, the Mega Musical" which opens Friday at the Joy. Photos by EMILY WEAVER
essary amount.
the box office..
GROVER - This community's newest itton. the
Grover Pumpkin Festival, will kick off Saturday at
we NOON and promises fun for the whole family until 8 p.m.
» in downtown and on Cleveland Avenue. ]
Mayor J. D. Ledford said residents are rolling out |
“2 the red carpet to visitors to enjoy a wide variety of ac-
{ | tivities from hay rides, pumpkin carving, pie eating and
| costume contests, a corn maze, hay maze, carriage
J rides, pet costume contests, a not-so-haunted mansion,
trick or treat trail, pumpkin chunkin, Lil Pumpkin:
Queen, craft and food vendors, a beer garden, and more.
To culminate the event, a wall of 600 jack-o-lanterms
from the community and local schools will be lighted as
The mayor said that last year's Fall Festival attracted
3,500 people and this year he expects that number to
| double. The event has been widely advertised as North
deep freeze, they decide to stage a variety show in the
Mount Saint Helen's School auditorium to raise the nec-
It sets the scene for a play sure to make you laugh SO
hard you cry. "Nunsense, the Mega Musical" premieres at
the Joy Performance Center this weekend with 7:30 p.m.
shows on Friday and Saturday and a 3 p.m. matinee on
Sunday, Oct. 30. Tickets for $10 each will be available at
Principal actors are Susan Champion as Mother Supe-
rior Mary Regina, a former circus performer who cannot
See GROVER, 5A
¢
See NUNSENSE, 5A
HS Sophomores take on Haivard
for silver in science competition
sa
. EMILY WEAVER
Editor :
Four sophomores, some of Gaston
Day School’s brightest of the bright,
contended with students from 63 col-
leges, including some of the nation’s
best in the Ivy League, in a recent in-
ternational science competition. Their
highest hope was to win the bronze...
Against all odds, they walked away
with the silver.
Fifteen-year-old Steven Allen of
Kings Mountain and three of his class-
mates, Parth Patel, Gordon Ellison and
Samuel DuBois traveled with their ad-
visor Ms. Anne Byford to Indianapolis,
Indiana, to compete in the International
Genetically Engineered = Machine
(iGEM) competition.
Their challenge rested in the field of
Synthetic Biology — manipulating bac-
teria by engineering DNA. Their bac-
terium was a form of E. coli (E. coli
K12 to be exact, considered “safer”
than other versions of E. coli) that is
widely studied. Injecting the bacteria
with engineered DNA, they were able
to ‘show the presence of nitrates that
glowed a bright pink in a functional ni-
trate detector the team built, using red
fluorescent protein. The testing came
up rosy. Using various concentrations
of both sodium nitrate and calcium ni-
trate, the team was able to prove the
success of its detector.
“Our goal is to have a detector that is
RTT)
Building Trust
THA
easy for anyone to use in the field,” the
team wrote on its website, built by
Allen.
It all started with a March 4, 2008
article in “The Fayetteville Observer”.
The story highlighted the struggles of
North Carolina families with nitrate-
contaminated drinking water and noted
that at least one family waited months
before tests revealed that their well was
contaminated. Nearly 40 wells in the
area were contaminated. Between the
years of 1997 and 2003, more than 5.2
million North Carolinians drank nitrate-
polluted water, according to Allen.
“Similar cases exist all over the
world, andour goal is to create a cost-
See STUDENTS, 5A
209 S. Battleground Ave., Kings Mountain ¢ 704.739.5411
www.alliancebanknc.com . memser orc
oe mmens