Polk Lore

This is the first a series of interviews with candidates who want to serve  — or continue to serve — the county as members of the Polk Schools Board of Education. It’s been a long time since so many people have been willing to do what is essentially a thankless job. In the past, acclamation has been the rule, or, if a seat opens does open up, the departing member finds a replacement, who is elected without competition. When’s the last time you saw a campaign sign for a school board candidate? Well, they’re out there now.

School board elections in Polk County, have become very big deals, as they have across the country. Conservatives have discovered the electoral power of cultural trigger issues, like how we should teach our kids about history — specifically the history of racism — how we deal with the needs of the tiny number of trans students who sit in our classrooms, and what do with books that explore with those kinds of issues a little more directly that some folks are used to. Progressives, meanwhile, are waking up to the need to protect public schools from those who, whether they realize it or now, are working to dismantle the entire system. Those forces are very much in evidence in Polk County.

This year five seats on the Board of Education are up for. Four of those seats — for Columbus, Tryon, Green Creek and Coopers Gap — are regular elections for expiring terms. The Saluda seat is open because the current member, Rob Parsons, was appointed by the board early this year to replace Sara Bell, who resigned before her term was up to take over the Polk County Community Foundation. Sara was only on the board briefly. She won a special 2020 election after being appointed to replace Rhonda Corley, who resigned when she left Polk County. 

However, only four of the five seats are being contested. Danielle Gibbs, who represents Columbus, has no challenger. That leaves Coopers Gap, Green Creek, Tryon, and Saluda with actual races, but here’s the really interesting bit: Each voter gets to cast a vote for a candidate in each race. So it makes sense to get at least at little familiar with everyone’s who running. I’m going to do my best to interview as many of the candidates as I can, but as in many elections, not everyone is what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, a “serious” candidate, and I’m going to use my judgment, based on 20 years of working in community newsrooms, to make that call.

First up is certified financial planner Mike Ashworth, who represents Tryon and currently chairs the board. Rick Covil and  Mike traded the chair and vice-chair positions recently, but Mike is a board veteran, with two children in Polk Schools. We talked at his office in Tryon at the end of August.

Resources:

One of the other hats I wear is that of chair of the Saluda Planning Board. It’s just an appointed position that pays nothing and requires you to stay awake and engaged for hours at a time discussing municipal zoning, housing density, sign ordinances, and a whole bunch of other topics that most people wouldn’t touch with a proverbial 10-foot pole.

Betsy Burdette is not one of those people. As the driving force behind the Saluda Community Land Trust, she lives, eats and breathes that kind of stuff. A land trust is what you go to when you’ve got a bunch land that the government wants to tax, but you and your family aren’t so keen on paying the taxes. You also don’t want to sell out and find your back yard turned into a subdivision of cookie-cutter homes. In these parts, she’s the one who will set you straight about how have your cake and eat it too.

Land conservancies can buy development rights but leave the land itself in the original owner’s hands. The owner loses the ability to build a subdivision, but gets a tax bill that's a fraction of what the  assessors could otherwise charge. The conservancy then extinguishes the development rights — forever — and replaces them with what’s called a conservation easement. For families who are land rich and cash poor this is often the only way to make everybody happy.

We all love the idea of preserving the rural character of Polk County. But if we preserve too much land, where are we going to build all that affordable housing that we all know we need to build if instead we’re all setting up conservation easements?

Believe it nor, Betsy and the land trust have an answer for that. So this Labor Day, I headed over to her house just outside of Saluda on Puzzle Gully Road to find out how this can be possible. We also talked about the sleazy real estate deals of the 70s, the hazards of poor record keeping, and why land-owners should pay a lot more attention to the boring parts of the real estate business and municipal planning.

Further reading:

The Green River Tavern. Green River Frame Shop and Gallery .Green River Cove Tubing. The Green River Brew Depot. Green River Barbeque. Green River Adventures. Green River Well and Pump.

Everyone one of those businesses is trading on the good name of the Green River. Some literally depend on its waters to pay their bills. Take the river out of the county, and there’d be a big hole to fill, not just on the map, but in our economy. It doesn’t just keep a few river guides employed, its trout attract fly-fishing aficionados from far and wide, and  turbines at two dams along its course make a decent little contribution to our electrical grid. The Green River is clean, it’s well protected, (thanks to the state game lands), and it’s an essential feature of Polk County’s identity. When someone in Henderson County wants to build an asphalt plant in the Green River watershed, you can count on a fair bit of opposition from Polk County. There’s a good reason there’s a thin blue swoosh in front of the mountains on the logo for Polk Lore.

But in between public controversies over problematic development proposals, how often are the Green River’s ecological, cultural, and economic significance raised in public conversations? There’s no Environmental Protection Agency for Polk County, and none of our municipalities sit right along its banks.

Fortunately, there are people who are paid to worry about such things. One of them is Erica Shanks, who this month took over as the Green Riverkeeper. She works for Mountain True, which is a regional environmental non-profit that, among a long list of other things, monitors the health of the Green River, and looks out for potential threats. She also happens to live in Saluda, just a few blocks from me. Even though she’s new to the job, she agreed to sit down for an interview, outside, in her yard, early this month.

Further reading

https://mountaintrue.com

https://greenriveNC.com

If you haven’t had COVID by now, you almost certainly know at least a couple of people who have suffered through it. You may even have a lost a close family member or a friend, although that seems to be relatively rare – for the moment. Aside from the threat that this new coronavirus poses to our health, it’s also taken a big toll on the economy. It’s upended careers, shortening some and derailed or redirected others. Not every business made it through. And if you were a teacher, a student, or a parent over the last couple of years, you know that things are going to take a long time to get back to where they were. Something about COVID opened a floodgate of frustration with our schools, and if you haven’t listened to the first three episodes of this podcast, cue them up after this one.

It was tough on everyone, but no one had it as bad as the front-line health-care workers. At some point, I want to sit down have a long talk with some of them. But first, it seemed like a good idea to review Polk County’s COVID experience with Josh Kennedy. As head of the county’s health and human services agency, he was responsible for overseeing local efforts to respond to the pandemic. I joined him at the Womack Building in Columbus to discuss what went wrong, what went right — hey, the news isn’t all bad — and how we can deal with the next one. Because there will be another pandemic at some point. And because there is no global or national  response plan in place, it will again be up to each county — and county staff — to figure out what to do.

The numbers on vaccine hesitancy:

The threat the unvaccinated pose to the rest of us:

Can we change anyone's mind about vaccines:

Last month, a few hours after the Supreme Court of the United States reversed its  1973 ruling that had granted American women the right to terminate a pregnancy, about 70 Polk County residents gathered on the lawn of the county courthouse. Which is a pretty impressive turnout for 4 p.m. on a workday with no advertising or advance notice. They were there to object to the decision and to share some stories about what losing the right to abortion could mean.

My guest is someone with a very personal perspective on the ramifications of letting states decide whether woman should be able to choose to end an pregnancy. Like more than 70,000 other American women each year, Kelly Hanlon turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have a child because she wasn’t able to have them without the assistance of modern medical science.

Science isn’t perfect, though, and IVF usually involves the fertilization of several eggs; for every embryo that is successfully implanted, others have to be discarded. And because it involves the inevitable destruction of embryos, even if they are only hours old, IVF could soon be illegal in many states. I talked with Kelly about that scenario at her home a few days ago.

Further reading:

The Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade:

Numbers of women using IVF:

What overturning Roe v. Wade could mean for IVF:

Access to abortion data:

So far in this series on education in Polk County, we’ve heard from a teacher and student. But right from the start it was clear that this series wasn’t going to be complete without a talk with Aaron Greene, the superintendent of Polk Schools. Before taking over the top job six years ago, he was assistant superintendent, and before that principal at Polk High. It’s probably safe to say if anyone has their hand on the pulse of public education in the county, it’s Aaron Greene.

But these days school administrators have a lot more on their plate than just managing teachers and developing lesson plans. Schools aren’t just places students go to learn the things society has determined they need to know. They’re also a source of nutrition for kids whose families are having trouble putting food on table, and safe place for those whose home lives are not as safe as they should be. Polk Schools, like so many other school districts in this country, are a vital part of the entire social fabric. Right or wrong, that’s been true for years, and those kind of issues are now part and parcel of the job.

And then came COVID-19.

North Carolina handed the job of deciding how to respond to the pandemic to each school district. Polk Schools’ Board of Education, which wasn’t used to analyzing epidemiology data and weighing the risks and benefits of masks, vaccines, ventilation, and remote instruction had to rely on administrative staff to figure it all out. It was, to put it mildly, a difficult couple of years, and the board wasn’t always willing to take the superintendent’s advice. But Aaron Greene survived, which is more than you can say about a fair number of superintendents across this country. We talked in his office a few weeks ago.

Further reading:

Charlotte-Mecklenberg superintendent fired

https://www.yahoo.com/video/cms-board-hold-emergency-meeting-190130132.html

Fairfax superintendent prompts student walk-out

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/19/we-walked-out-over-fairfax-countys-new-superintendent-heres-why/

Superintendent turnover in NC

https://www.ednc.org/lessons-learned-superintendent-transitions/

For the second part of our series on education, let’s turn to the student’s point of view. I’ve known Myles Freeman for about a decade, since he was a student at Saluda Elementary, and one of my son’s friends. I’d like to able to claim that I long ago recognized he would rise above the pack. You know — the way some teachers say they can identify right from kindergarten who will succeed and who will fail. But the truth is, Myles was pretty much like any other student. Exceptionally good at some things, like soccer — and a relatively free spirit who seemed to able to choose friends wisely — but not obviously destined to take on the establishment. 

Fast forward to this past February, to the monthly meeting of the Polk Schools Board of Education. Like most meetings, the open portion wrapped up with public comments. One member of the audience walked to the microphone, spent the first 45 seconds of her allotted three minutes saying a prayer, and then demanded that the school do something about trans students, implying that they constitute a threat. 

A few minutes later, Myles walked to the microphone to give a rebuttal. Even though i hadn’t yet begun to work on this podcast, i knew right then that i wanted Myles to be a guest, if for no other reason than any fourteen-year-old who’s brave enough to stand up to bullying parents at a school board meeting deserves more than three minutes to be heard. We talked a few weeks ago in Saluda. 

Resources: What really happened in Loudon, Virginia:

Gender identity ban proposed for NC Schools: