Home Care In Sedalia, NC

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, N.C. (WECT) - Dr. Charles Foust is just weeks into his new job as Superintendent of New Hanover County Schools, taking over as the leader of the system on September 1st. But, the biggest challenge in the southeastern North Carolina district is the same one he would have faced at his previous position with the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools: dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and providing a quality education while working to keep students and employees safe.

“They’re doing a phenomenal job with having students at a remote distance,” Dr. Foust said after watching teachers and staff in the first few weeks of the new academic year. “I’m thankful for the work they’re doing. The teachers, along with the principals, who are making sure the students are getting the needed education.”

The pandemic is not the only challenge New Hanover County Schools currently faces. In the past three years, three educators were arrested and charged with sex crimes against students. Attorneys have filed civil cases against the school system on behalf of victims of those educators. There is also an ongoing investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation into whether administrators violated any laws in handling allegations that were reportedly brought to their attention. Dr. Foust said he learned about the cases while doing research after being made aware NHCS sought a permanent replacement for interim superintendent Dr. Del Burns.

“It wasn’t the first thing I looked at,” Dr. Foust said about the sex abuse scandal. “I looked at the district at a whole to see ‘What’s the district doing? What are the positive things going on in the district?’. Then, I did want to know ‘How did this happen?’ Everyone has their own saying of what happened. That’s not what we’re literally trying to find out. We want to make sure now that it doesn’t happen again. Yes, I was aware of the things, I read the news articles, all of the op-Eds. I’ve been trained in Title IX and Title VI, and so I know what should happen, and where we can help support our families, our employees, our communities to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. I’m not going to say there are predators out there that will not attempt it, but we need to know what is the process we will use in the event that there is a Title IX issue that takes place.”

New Hanover County Schools

about 3 years ago

The Honorable Judge Julius Corpening will administer the oath of office to Dr. Charles Foust at the Board Meeting this evening at 5:30. The meeting can be viewed on Spectrum Cable Channel 5 or streamed on Roku, Apple TV or online here https://videoplayer.telvue.com/…/M4qS8s-ArSEpaWb…/stream/732

Even after learning about the past sex abuse cases, Dr. Foust says he did not have second thoughts about applying for, and later accepting the job of leading the 12th largest public school system in North Carolina.

“What I do know is that there are some great employees here in the district,” he said. “Although there were a couple who were not following the policy and doing what they were supposed to do, there’s so many more that were doing what they were supposed to do. So, I looked at that light and said 'You know, that’s where I want to be. I want to be with the individuals who actually want to learn, who understand that ‘wrong is wrong’. That didn’t bring pause to me at any time.”

Charles Foust grew up in Sedalia, North Carolina, outside of Greensboro, and he says his parents prioritized education in the household. He began to develop an interest in teaching as an inquisitive student in elementary school.

“Sitting at the table with my mom, and she would always instruct me in doing homework,” he remembers with a smile. “I knew there had to be a better way! Oh my gosh, I said ‘this is like trial by fire!’ But I learned. I would get to school and often times I would see things, I would ask questions. It would translate different to me. When a teacher would put a problem up or we would do something, I would have a different approach to it. Things just came easy for me in there. Then, I started tutoring students. I would help students in class or after school doing some tutoring younger cousins. When I was in high school, I was in Future Teachers of America, and we would go to Sedalia Elementary (School) and tutor once a month, and I had a group of third graders there that I would work with for a couple hours. I thought I was going to be an attorney, but education had a stronger pull.”

While attending North Carolina A & T University, Foust drove a school bus to earn extra money. He talks about the experience at 14:00 of the podcast. His first job after college came as a teacher in Guilford County schools, where he rose to principal before leaving for a position with an Independent School System in Houston, Texas. That’s also where he completed his work to become a Doctor of Education in 2017, prodded to finish by a question from his oldest daughter, Kennedi.

“I’ll never forget, she was in the backseat and we were on Highway 288 (in Houston) and she said, ‘Have you ever quit anything?’,” he remembers. “I said, ‘No, I’ve never quit anything. I always finish what I start’. She said, ‘What about your doctoral degree?’ I said, ‘Ohhhh! It’s on hold, I didn’t actually quit!’ She said, ‘Well, when are you going to finish?’ After that conversation, it was probably a couple of months before I enrolled at the University of Houston, had things transferred over (after starting at UNC Chapel Hill years earlier) and was able to finish the degree. Now I ask her, 'Hey, we’re ready for school, and there’s no quitting with school!”

After returning to North Carolina to work as a School Performance Officer, Union County Schools, Dr. Foust got his first opportunity to become a superintendent. He took over the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools in 2018. According to published reports, after a year it was no longer the lowest performing district in the state, with 39 of the 43 schools showing positive gains in English Language Arts. In an effort to increase the graduation rate, the superintendent and other members of the administration went so far as to hit the street, seeking out students that had dropped out and encouraging them to return to complete their degrees.

“We had a picture of the student, and so I was able to talk to the student if they opened the door, I was talking to mom, dad, aunt, uncle, in some cases, it was grandma who would answer that door,” Dr. Foust says. “I’d tell them what they needed. We were breaking down their transcripts for them. That’s what we were able to see. We’d say, ‘Hey, you need 27 credit hours and you have 25. You’re there! Come back, we can do this!’ That was great.”

Dr. Foust took some criticism from the Kansas City, Kansas community when New Hanover County Schools announced his hiring as superintendent on July 31. He addresses those views at the 28:00 mark of the podcast. As the school board made its' decision, leaders were still finalizing how students would resume learning for the new academic year. Plans call for all-remote learning at least until the end of the first grading period. Dr. Foust says the reviews so far from parents are mixed, and he plans to work on improving the experience as staff prepares to welcome students back to classrooms.

“There are those who are not a fan of coming back to school right now, and we have those who are saying ‘Please, we need our kids back in school! We aren’t getting the quality education we are accustomed to by being virtual. We need more time on task, and we can do that face-to-face versus the remote learning’,” he says. “We can’t put a student in front of a computer for six hours non-stop, where in a classroom you’re going to be teaching 90 minutes, 45 minutes, whatsoever, to get the lesson through. We’re going to have to do some re-teaching. But we are wanting to make sure, first and foremost, that students and employees are safe.”

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Stacker compiled a list of places with the most expensive homes in Guilford County, NC using data from Zillow. Places are ranked by the Zillow Home Values Index for all homes as of November 2022. The ZVHI represents a seasonally adjusted price for the middle market for all homes. All 12 cities and towns with data available were included in the list.

#12. High Point, NC– Typical home value: $228,801– 1-year price change: +18.3%– 5-year price change: +79.0%

#11. Sedalia, NC– Typical home value: $231,508– 1-year price change: +16.5%– 5-year price change: +71.2%

#10. Greensboro, NC– Typical home value: $248,598– 1-year price change: +17.4%– 5-year price change: +74.8%

#9. Julian, NC– Typical home value: $269,073– 1-year price change: +14.1%– 5-year price change: +66.8%

#8. Gibsonville, NC– Typical home value: $283,414– 1-year price change: +17.2%– 5-year price change: +72.7%

#7. Mc Leansville, NC– Typical home value: $288,171– 1-year price change: +19.2%– 5-year price change: +79.2%

#6. Browns Summit, NC– Typical home value: $288,363– 1-year price change: +17.5%– 5-year price change: +72.3%

#5. Pleasant Garden, NC– Typical home value: $288,893– 1-year price change: +14.4%– 5-year price change: +64.3%

#4. Whitsett, NC– Typical home value: $314,515– 1-year price change: +17.6%– 5-year price change: +69.2%

#3. Jamestown, NC– Typical home value: $346,245– 1-year price change: +16.5%– 5-year price change: +66.9%

#2. Summerfield, NC– Typical home value: $479,639– 1-year price change: +16.0%– 5-year price change: +55.1%

#1. Oak Ridge, NC– Typical home value: $530,775– 1-year price change: +14.7%– 5-year price change: +52.8%

SEDALIA, N.C. — One pioneer of education went from being in a school with little to no black students to teaching a class full of less fortunate black students in rural areas.

Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown, the founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, refurbished a day and boarding school for African Americans in Sedalia, NC, in 1902, according to the NCPedia website.

Dr. Brown was born in Henderson, NC, in 1883, but her family moved to Massachusetts when she was a child to escape the Jim Crow and the social practices of the South. She was one of the only few black students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then, Dr. Brown met mentor Alice Freeman Palmer, North Carolina Historic Site.

Palmer was an educator who was highly impressed by Dr. Brown’s perseverance. Palmer saw her passion for higher education, and she was heavily involved in her academic journey. Along with sponsoring Dr. Brown, Palmer introduced her to prominent people in Boston, Massachusetts Dr. Brown could find helpful in her future.

Before moving back to her home state, Dr. Brown accepted a 25-dollar-a-month job from the American Missionary Association (AMA), according to Kelly Fatyol, an educational coordinator at the Palmer Memorial Institute.

In 1901, she came to Bethany Institute in Sedalia, NC, to teach poor black students. However, the school needed many repairs, and the AMA decided to shut it down, leaving Dr. Brown jobless. Yet, that didn’t stop the resilient Dr. Brown. With the encouragement of local African Americans, 18-year-old Dr. Brown took matters into her own hands. The NCPedia site states, that through vast donations and her hard work ethic, she started her school.

Credit: WMFY

Dr. Brown moved the school across the street to a blacksmith’s shed before raising enough money to build a 200-acre campus with new buildings.

By 1900, North Carolina had more than 2,000 private schools for African Americans. However, most teachers only had an elementary school education. Palmer Institute stood out because Dr. Brown offered college prep and had junior and senior high school setting students. Fatyol mentioned Palmer Institute was one of the first schools in NC to offer an African American history class in high school.

"The Alice Freeman Palmer building was the primary building on campus by 1922 and on Feb.14, 1971, it burned down. It was made out of 225,000 bricks hand-made by the students on campus," Fatyol explained.

Dr. Brown was nationally known as an educator. She was also known as a lecturer, social advocate, and religious leader who believed in the American principles of freedom and justice for all humans as stated on the NCPedia website. She was a woman with pride who put her blood, sweat in tears into creating what we now know as the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum.

You can schedule a tour of the Palmer Memorial Institute at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum on Eventbrite. Tours of the site are open to the public Tuesday through Friday at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and on Saturdays at 1 p.m. Tours are approximately an hour and a half long.

Canary Cottage: Inside Dr. Brown's home

The Palmer Memorial Institute, a historic secondary school that served Black students before desegregation, was designated one of the nation’s ”most endangered historic” places in May.

Damages in the school’s structure have ballooned over decades of neglect: crumbling walls, water and pest damage, mold from poor ventilation. A fire in 1971 burned down the main classroom spaces and left a large hole in the girls dormitory.

A week after the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s designation, it seemed like the designation could be a breakthrough for the historic school in Sedalia, N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper’s proposed budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year included an allocation of $16 million for renovations.

However, funding for the institute’s preservation was nowhere to be found in the legislature-drafted budget bill Cooper signed Monday.

“It is a massive setback that we did not receive funding for the dormitories in this latest budget,” wrote assistant site manager Liz Melendez in an email. “We cannot guarantee the future of those buildings without major sustained funding. They will continue to decay and suffer storm damage until we do something, and we can’t do anything without sustained funding.”

Currently, the funding for maintaining the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, the state site the school is on and named after the school’s founder, comes mainly from the state budget. Funds are also supplemented by site tours, which cost $2 per person, according to Melendez.

Melendez said that if the state funding was approved, it would have gone towards stabilizing the dormitories’ foundations and roofs, removing toxic materials, and potentially getting power and water back into the building.

“From the career in the approach of Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown, to the education of more than 2000 students over nearly seven decades, the Palmer Memorial Institute is incredibly important in the history of the United States of American education,” said Katherine Malone-France, chief preservation officer at the National Trust.

This year, 122 sites around the country were nominated through the National Trust’s public nomination process, according to Malone-France. The sites were analyzed based on their national significance, whether they faced “urgent threats,” and whether the site already has “dedicated local groups and individuals who are fighting for them.”

PMI fit all their criteria for endangered and historic sites, Malone-France said.

Melendez said that preserving the dormitories is an integral part of telling that story, especially since the 1971 fire also burned down the main classroom spaces in the school.

“Losing the dormitories would be losing that kind of sensory history, of the literal exact spot where these students were growing socially, making friends, meeting boyfriends and girlfriends that they would keep going to college,” Melendez said.

Being included on NTHP’s list could bring support to PMI “in a range of different ways,” Malone-France said. She also noted that in the 35 years that the National Trust has created an annual list of endangered places, less than 5% of the 300 sites listed have been lost.

Despite the lack of state funding, Melendez wrote that since the National Trust’s list was published, the Palmer Memorial Institute has received increased interest and visitation from the media and public.

“My hope is that folks who come visit this site, learn this history, hear the stories of the students who attended Palmer can carry those stories to their communities, and [contact] their legislators and let them know why it’s important to preserve this site,” Melendez wrote. “The stories these buildings carry tell us so much about our state, about Black resilience, about Black education. This site has the ability to be a community hub, a place for storytellers, artists, community leaders. We can’t make that happen until we have the investment necessary to keep the site standing.”

This article is compiled from reports issued by the Pettis County Sheriff's Office.

Thursday evening, Deputies were dispatched to the 1000 block of East Lane Street in La Monte in reference to a physical disturbance. Deputies located an intoxicated suspect being restrained by a juvenile inside the residence. Once the juvenile moved away from the suspect, the suspect attempted to grab the juvenile around his neck and swung a closed fist at him. Deputies identified themselves, and attempted to grab the suspect, when he began to fight with Deputies and refuse to comply. After being handcuffed, the intoxicated suspect continued to resist and kicked one of the Deputies several times. After an investigation, several parties on the scene stated that the suspect had assaulted his girlfriend and her mother. Lewis R. E. Neal, 37, of La Monte, was placed under arrest. Due to Neal allegedly assaulting the juvenile with closed fists and attempting to grab him around the neck, Deputies are requesting the charge of felony Assault in the 3rd Degree*. Due to Neal slamming a car door on the leg of the wheelchair bound mother (who is paralyzed on half of her body), Deputies are requesting the charge of felony Assault in the 3rd Degree (Special Victim). Due to Neal kicking a Deputy several times, he also faces another charge of felony Assault in the 3rd Degree (Special Victim). Neal also faces charges of felony Resisting Arrest and misdemeanor Assault in the 4th Degree (Special Victim). Neal was transported to the BRHC for a fit for confinement check due to his level of intoxication. Then, he was transported to the Pettis County Jail to be placed on a 24-hour hold. Bond was set at $25,000 cash or surety.

On the morning of December 19th, Deputies were dispatched to the area of Buchannan Road and Bennett Road in Green Ridge for a report of an abandoned vehicle blocking the road. When Deputies arrived, they did observe a Dodge pickup completely blocking Buchanan Road. The vehicle was towed from the scene.

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*This charge is listed in the Sheriff’s Office report. However, has been altered to a charge of Assault in the 4th Degree (Special Victim) in Casenet (23PT-CR01661) . The whole incident took place in proximity of a five-month-old baby in a bassinet, which was pushed around and almost kicked over. According to the probable cause statement, since the incident affected the infant, Deputies sought a charge of Endangering the Welfare of a Child in the 2nd Degree. However, that charge is not pending in Casenet against Neal.