Alamance-Burlington school board members postponed voting to revise an existing policy that governs grant funding for special projects, in order to add language that some school board members say they hope will allow a grant that an ABSS teacher received this spring for a greenhouse project to be transferred to her new school after the original site became unviable due to a state road widening project along North Graham-Hopedale Road in Burlington.
Shavon Via, then an exceptional children’s teacher at Eastlawn Elementary School, received a $20,000 grant in March 2024 from Impact Alamance to build a school garden and greenhouse equipped with solar panels and hydroponic systems at Eastlawn. A portion of the Eastlawn Elementary property will be impacted by the $25.7 million road widening project, which has been on the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s State Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) for years and was scheduled to begin construction in 2024.
School board members voted 7-0 during their work session two weeks ago to sell a drainage easement and a utility easement along the property of Eastlawn Elementary to the DOT for $118,175.
ABSS chief operating officer Greg Hook said at the August 13 work session that the purchase price for the two easements would cover the costs to replace existing fencing and planting beds that are part of a school garden. There was no discussion of the specific impact that the road widening would have on Via’s grant-funded project at Eastlawn.
In August 2023, Via had been honored by the school board for being one of the 40 teachers in the state selected to participate in the Kenan Fellows program based at N.C. State University. Two months later, she was one of eight Kenan Fellows awarded a grant through a program at N.C. A&T State University to create a greenhouse project to teach students about renewable energy, according to Kenan Fellows.
Via ultimately collaborated with another “2023-24 Clean Energy Kenan Fellow,” Trey Nichols, a Forsyth County elementary school teacher, to develop hands-on learning activities intended to teach their students – his, at Vienna Elementary School in Pfafftown and hers, at Eastlawn Elementary in Burlington – how to harness solar energy to power greenhouses and grow plants, the Kenan Institute at N.C. State reported last month.
An Alamance County native, Via learned to farm with her family, which owns V&V Family Farms, a Black Angus cattle, poultry, and produce farm in Snow Camp, based on earlier descriptions of her background to the school board. As an EC teacher for ABSS, Via says she integrates agricultural standards throughout her instruction and leads a 4-H club for children in Alamance County.
During the public comments portion of Monday night’s meeting, Via described herself to the school board as “an avid grant writer” and pointed out that the proposed revision to the policy for grant-funded special projects “seems to be overlooking some critical aspects.”
Via explained how, apparently after learning of the road widening project at Eastlawn, she found a new location (E.M. Holt Elementary School) that had room for her to build her grant-funded greenhouse project – but she can’t because the revised policy would require prior approval by the principal. “I urge you to reconsider how grant policies are applied [and] work toward a policy that truly supports the innovative efforts of our educators,” she said Monday night.
Medora Burke-Scoll, a science teacher at Eastern High School, praised Via’s previous efforts to launch a 4-H club at Eastern before leaving to teach in the EC program at Eastlawn.
“Now, road widening plans are going to go directly through her garden,” Burke-Scoll said Monday night. “Those plans are going to destroy what she worked years to build, and that’s terrible. That didn’t slow Shavon down; she started casting a net around the county, at more rural elementary schools, found a place, and moved to E.M. Holt this year to continue a love of 4-H and learning.
“Under [the board’s] policy, the grantors are willing to move her grant to the new school, but the policy is standing in the way,” Burke-Scoll said. “I really hope that Central Office [administrators] can find a way to continue to allow her to grow that program.”
The proposed revision to the policy that governs grants for special projects contains a new requirement, stating, “Applications for school-based grants must be approved in advance by the principal or site supervisor.”
ABSS interim superintendent Dr. Bill Harrison said later in the discussion that the proposed revision to the policy, titled “Grants and Funding for Special Projects,” is intended to ensure that school principals are informed in advance of any school-based projects that are to be funded by grants. “Nothing is ever as simple as it appears,” he said Monday night. “The point is, the principal needs to be aware in advance.”
For his part, Harrison recalled how a now-former Graham High School teacher had written a grant application to build a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) lab at Graham High School. That grant, for $196,396, was awarded by the Golden Leaf Foundation in August 2016, and the STEM lab opened at Graham High for the 2017-18 school year. “Valerie Sellars wrote the grant but left to go to Chapel Hill,” the interim superintendent said Monday night. “The grant didn’t go to Chapel Hill with Valerie.”
School board member Ryan Bowden asked Monday night whether the revised policy could be reworded “to cover situations such as that we heard from Miss Via.”
School board member Seneca Rogers agreed, saying he’d “like to see that added in,” referring to language to allow for the possibility of transferring grants for special projects from one ABSS school to another, if needed.
“We can definitely add language that makes it a little more clear as to what happens if a staff member leaves a school,” said ABSS chief student services officer Dr. Kristy Davis, who had presented the policy revision for a final reading and vote Monday night.
Harrison told the board that the proposed revision will be presented for further discussion at the work session on September 10.
