Cambro Manufacturing held a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday at the site where it will build a 380,000-square-foot distribution facility in Mebane. The new building will be at 1250 W. Holt St., just east of the company’s current 500,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that opened less than 10 years ago. Equipped with 56 dock doors and two drive-in doors, the new facility will be climate-controlled with insulated, tilt-up panels and an insulated roof.
MEBANE — The principal of Woodlawn Middle School has been suspended after being accused of not reporting an allegation that a teacher assistant assaulted a student, the Alamance-Burlington School System said.
Teacher assistant William Jackson was charged with misdemeanor child abuse and misdemeanor assault on a child under 12 years of age.
Principal Tom Kazimir was charged with misdemeanor failure to report a crime against juveniles.
As a 10-month employee, Jackson’s last day of employment for the 2023-24 school year was Thursday, June 13, ABSS said. Jackson was first hired by ABSS in 2020.
Kazimir was suspended with pay on Thursday after the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office notified ABSS of the charge, ABSS said. Kazimir was hired by ABSS as a social studies teacher in 2000. He was an assistant principal form 2013 to 2023.
The school district and the sheriff’s office are continuing to investigate, ABSS said.
“We are notifying our Woodlawn Middle School staff and families about this very concerning information today,” a statement from ABSS said. “Our Woodlawn Middle administrators and staff will continue to fully support students and families while ABSS continues to cooperate fully with the sheriff’s department in order to ensure that our highest priority of student safety is observed by all of our employees.”
12 month employee: suspended with pay effective June 13, 2024
A state legislative commission’s report harshly criticizing how the Alamance-Burlington School System handled the awarding of contracts to deal with toxic mold in a number of school buildings last summer is “a waste of taxpayer dollars,” the school system’s interim superintendent said Thursday.
The report by the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations was released late Wednesday by state Sen. Amy Galey, R-Alamance, who had asked the commission in February to investigate ABSS’s capital and operations decisions after months of financial trouble and tense relations between the school system and the Alamance County Board of Commissioners.
The report said that ABSS may have violated some state-mandated budgeting procedures as well as its own policies in its awarding of no-bid contracts last summer even though state law allows no-bid contracts in case of a health emergency.
“No rationale was given for selecting those companies that performed the work other than they agreed to complete the work expeditiously,” the letter said. “There was no evidence presented that shows services were purchased ‘in a manner consistent with the board’s purchasing goals’ nor ‘after careful pricing.’ ”
ABSS spent about $29.3 million on the mold remediation efforts, according to the commission’s letter. Most of that, $22.6 million, went to Sasser Companies LLC. Another company, Builder Services Inc., received more than $5.1 million. Four other companies also were involved in either air-quality testing, HVAC repair or airflow evaluation.
The report also said that the Alamance-Burlington Board of Education chair Sandy Ellington-Graves signed 12 contracts for mold remediation work without the approval of the entire board, in violation of the board’s policy.
Ellington-Graves said school officials’ primary focus was ensuring the safety and well-being of students.
“I believe we all handled an unprecedented situation as closely ‘by the book’ as possible, given the urgency of the situation,” she said.
In addition, the report said that an independent auditor’s report after the 2022-23 school year found that the school board violated the School Budget and Fiscal Control Act by incurring nearly $4.3 million in expenditures that exceeded budgeted appropriations.
ABSS Interim Superintendent Bill Harrison lambasted the report.
“It’s a joke,” Harrison said. “We have some real financial issues with which we’re dealing. … My understanding is that GovOps was down there to help us uncover the cause of those and a way out. ... I hate to sound so disrespectful towards our people at the state level, but ... [the report was] a total waste of time.”
Harrison said state legislators need to revisit the state’s funding model for public education and focus on meeting their constitutional obligation to fully fund public schools.
“I just don’t think the state is doing what they’re constitutionally required to do, and leaving an unfair burden on our county commissioners,” he said.
Galey told the Times-News that Harrison’s criticism of the legislature’s education funding is baseless.
“It is irrefutable that North Carolina spends more state funds than ever before on traditional K-12 education. Average teacher pay has gone up over 16% in the last four years alone. To determine whether state funds are adequate for ABSS, we must look at student achievement,” she said, and cited ABSS’s below-average student scores on testing.
“The ABSS student population is presumably similar to the state student population in socioeconomic terms, and ABSS receives the same state funds as other school systems,” she said. “Adequacy of state funding cannot be the issue when ABSS receives equivalent funds but has poor outcomes compared to state averages.”