The building of a Union County School \ D. Wayne Goforth Director

The building of a 21st Century School for Union County


The School!

Paulette Elementary
Week 33


By Chip Brown | Maynardville@gmail.com


Have you ever seen those cartoons where a guy was trying to decide whether to do good or do evil? He has an angel on one shoulder whispering in his ear. On the other shoulder is a devil whispering bad advice. This has been me this week! Well I'm not actually seeing angels and devils I have medication to prevent that. But I have been torn all week on whether I should do the right thing. I have even seeked the council of my Principal and that of Jason the Principal of Paulette. They both advised me to do the right thing. Unfortunately, I haven't had much experience in doing the right thing and decided to go with what I know...EVIL!

I took a picture this week at Paulette that I believed could simply start a riot among teachers. I know I shouldn't post it but heck that would be no fun. The picture is the first set of completed storage cabinets in a Paulette classroom.

Storage is a huge problem at all of our schools that are getting on in years. If a student cleans out their desk an enterprising teacher will ask them to store supplies in it. Move anything in our schools and you'll find things stored under it. If the bleachers ever collapsed at MES nobody would notice. The boxes stored beneath them would hold the crowd up.

So as you can see in figure 1 the problem was addressed at the new school. This photo depicts the storage cabinets in one classroom. Each teacher at Paulette will enjoy a wall full of these cabinets. Enough storage to last for years!

So I printed off a copy of the photo and intended to show it to all the teachers at MES who were not going to Paulette. I figured I could at best cause a small riot. The least of the outcome would be teachers calling Mr. Goforth. My Principal caught me and told me not to show this picture to the teachers. I assumed she meant that particular sheet so I printed another and sent it around.

There was no riot! Instead teachers seemed happy for each other! I felt like the Grinch on top of the mountain listening to the Who Village sing! What is wrong with these people? Yes I know they are always telling kids to act nice toward each other. I figured that was just something they had to say! But here they were actually doing it!

What are they doing trying to be role models or something?

Okay this week at Paulette the playground was a major topic. Mr. Jason has decided that the original planned location for the playground would not be adequate. He has found an area behind the school he would rather use. He feels it will not only provide a better site, but also be more secure for the students and faculty.

The move will add no cost to the facility, and in fact the vendor that is supplying the equipment has agreed to throw in an extra swing set.

Figure 2 shows the location of the playground now. You can see that the area is already level and ready to go. Mr. Jason has said that while he wants enough mulch to make each play area safe he wants to utilize as much natural grass as possible.

Now behind this playground is additional level wooded land. This would be great for expansion should the lower end of the county grow as expected in the next ten years.

Figure 3 shows the area of additional land behind the new playground. While it could be used for expansion School Board Chairman Brian Oaks suggested to me it might be perfect for a special education playground. It is a new experience in our school system to have excess land. This is a luxury that many of our schools simply don't have.

Mr. Goforth was not at this week's meeting as he was attending the ribbon breaking at Sharp's Chapel. The new addition to that school has been opened for use. I believe it was opened ahead of schedule too. Small speeches were given by County Court members and Mr. Goforth. Mr. Goforth told me that he is most thankful for the resources that were added to Sharps Chapel.

One County Court member told me later that Mr. Goforth was one of the first Directors of Schools not to forget Sharps Chapel. Mr. Goforth has told me numerous times that the measure of the health of a school system is not taken with results at one school, but overall. He believes that good ideas and techniques may originate at one school, but if they work they should spread to schools throughout the county.

It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it needs and world leaders have to hold bake sales to finance wars.  ~Author unknown


Thank you to each and every person who made this possible.