Superintendent Reconsiders New School On Old, Contaminated Site

In a drastic change from her position last week, the superintendent of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools no longer fully supports replacing the deteriorating Lowrance Middle School with a new $15.4 million building on the same campus. Beverly Emory is also weighing the challenges of keeping open the adjoining Hanes Middle School.

Concerns over the air quality in the existing schools, which Emory says she believes is safe, are just part of the problem. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, school officials also would face steep challenges in their efforts to convince parents that toxins in the groundwater will not affect the health of their children. To do so, Emory said, the school system would have to consider bearing the cost of regular air-quality monitoring – for decades. She said she thought it would be difficult to overcome the perception of the property.