07:32 – In the wake of large-scale disasters like the Connecticut school shooting, it’s easy to forget that smaller-scale disasters claim our children every day. The paper this morning reports that an 11-year-old local boy was struck and killed by an SUV at a school bus stop. His parents are surely as devastated as the parents in Connecticut.
In other local news, a former high school band director has been convicted on 65 counts of having sex with a student. He was 25 years old when these incidents occurred, from August 2008 through the end of that school year. She was a high school senior. Nothing in the article leads me to believe that the relationship was anything other than fully consensual. The age of consent in North Carolina is 16, so the relationship would have been completely legal had it not been for the fact that he was a school employee and she a student. Again, I think a “no fucking the students” rule is perfectly appropriate for school teachers, but this should be a matter of contract law, not criminal law. Fire the guy, fine. Make sure he can never work in a school again, fine. But don’t imprison the guy and brand him a sex offender.
On the good news side of the ledger, Herbalife has committed to taking over the old Dell plant in Forsyth County and creating 500 highly-paid manufacturing and technical jobs. Winston-Salem was in competition with other cities, all of which are in right-to-work states.
We’re back in stock on all of our science kits.