The Herald-Sun has two nice features worth a look in the paper this morning. There's an excellent profile on the Union Independent School, a new tuition-free private school opening in July, founded with help from Union Baptist Church and UNC's business school and starting out of an after-school enrichment initiative started in part by the late Frank Hawkins Kenan.
Like the Durham Nativity School, Union Independent is tuition-free, and UIS focuses exclusively on educating children who live in North-East Central Durham. The laboratory school will provide an extended school day (until 6:30pm) adding enrichment and reducing the need for childcare among parents who may lead single-parent households. Find out more at the Herald-Sun's two-parter (#1, #2); we'll have a feature on the school at BCR in the coming weeks.
Also worth reading: Monica Chen's profile of Morgan Imports' 40th anniversary, which includes a sad-but-hilarious anecdote on how longtime downtowner Richard Morgan was told by city planners that they wanted to surround the outdoor seating area at a Five Points restaurant he once owned with a brick wall -- to protect the patrons from cars and their exhaust. "I said to them, 'Have you ever been to New York, where people just sit on the street and eat?" Morgan says in this nice retrospective on four decades in Durham's center.
In other news:
- There's been little conflict on this year's City budget, but inevitably, someone's going to complain about something, and Ray Gronberg writes today on what's there. Some NECD activists are complaining about the recentering of Earl Phillips around neighborhood revitalization city-wide instead of just in the district, but the mayor's behind the plan and vows that the City Council's NECD committee will make sure the area gets the attention it needs.
- Council's Diane Catotti also expressed some "qualms" over splitting transit out of transportation, noting that the transportation planners would stay with Mark Ahrendsen's group, though Gronberg notes that this is a standard practice in some other communities.
- Speaking of Council, tonight's the public hearing on the budget; expect some turnout from city workers disgruntled over layoffs and from some non-city agencies, but with Council voting to set discussion at just one hour, the cards are on the table: this one's going to pass as is, it seems.
- Duke Gardens celebrated its 75th anniversary this weekend. (H-S)
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