Christopher Lile, 23, was just months away from graduating to begin a career in wildlife conservation when he first learned that North Carolina has a native wolf population. He was sitting in a senior-year class at Gardner-Webb University, and a Defenders of Wildlife representative was speaking about the red wolf. 

A new kind of professional development training session hosted by the Haywood County Chapter of the NAACP left local educators with a lot to think about as they return to their classrooms. 

CJ Deering sat at her desk inside the Haywood County Detention Center when she got a surprise phone call from a woman who had been sentenced to prison nine months ago. 

Haywood County commissioners may have to start seriously considering expanding the detention center now that the average daily inmate population is close to — and sometimes over — capacity levels. 

A consultant with the North Carolina Office of Charter Schools recommended that Shining Rock Classical Academy’s charter should be renewed for five years despite ongoing concerns about the school’s lack of transparency, and the state’s director of charter schools has refused to answer why. 

A recent property donation to the Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministries could help create jobs, add value to agricultural products and feed the hungry in Haywood County, if local agricultural and food service sectors can demonstrate there’s a need. 

Haywood County has seen its share of change over the past century, and nobody knows that better than Joe Morrow. 

Morrow, 86, grew up on 107 acres of steep mountain land that today is located just down the road and across from the Haywood County Fairgrounds. It’s been in the family since his grandparents were farming, but he and his wife Sue have now placed 53 acres in a conservation easement that allowed it to become Haywood Community College’s newest teaching forest. 

The issue of homelessness has been a growing concern among Haywood County residents, businesses, law enforcement and government officials for the last several years.

The small room of the Democratic headquarters for Haywood County was packed Oct. 31 for a speech by the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Cheri Beasley. 

When she showed up at Haywood Pathways Center, the woman and her young daughter had been homeless for three years. After three months’ residence in the new women and children’s dorm, the pair recently became the first family to leave it for a home of their own.