Random Act of Kindness Week at Junaluska Elementary School culminated on Friday when students and community volunteers gathered in the school gymnasium with the goal of packing 30,000 meals for the hungry. 

Next fall, students at Haywood Christian Academy will all attend classes together in a new building that brings the two campuses together but still leaves them room to grow. 

Many people were surprised by the sudden resignation of Ira Dove from his position as Haywood County manager last October, but just as surprising was an announcement last week that Dove would rejoin the county in a role that is different, but not new to him.

Although it’s still early in the budget process, Interim Haywood County Manager Joel Mashburn told commissioners that requests for the FY 2018-19 budget already total more than $3 million over projected revenues. 

A flurry of contentious public records requests by a longtime local government watchdog has prompted Haywood County officials to revise and update internal policies on how those requests are handled. 

Outside the Haywood County Justice Center in downtown Waynesville, Haywood County Tax Collector Mike Matthews stands with a slim manila folder in his hands while an attorney nearby reads off a boilerplate legal notice required when the county offers a foreclosed property at auction. 

Columbine, Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas — those names ring out like the bullets that once flew through their hallways, stark reminders of a perplexing and tragic problem that simply hasn’t gone away. 

Right about the time this newspaper hits the stands on Wednesday, March 14, students at Haywood County’s two public high schools, Tuscola and Pisgah, will be hitting the bricks as part of a national school walkout to protest gun violence in schools. 

Haywood County’s high-performing public schools will see a small budget increase for the FY 2018-19 school year, but at the same time takes care of some critical needs, including teacher supplement pay that helps attract and retain the best instructors. 

The type of traditional manufacturing that put many small towns on the map and provided a decent living to generations of Americans is long gone; it’s been in decline sine the 1970s and will never fully disappear, but the massive economic benefits of large-scale industrial production for the most part have.