It’s been quite a battle over masks the past several months here in South Carolina. I won’t go in to all the details but the main reason elementary and secondary school children are not masked is because there was a stipulation put in to the budget for this year that stated schools could not mandate masks.
As you could expect, they have been trying to work around it. The Department of Education has been and continues to be huge proponents of masking our children. They forced the issue with transportation requiring all students be masked. Now an Obama judge, Mary Geiger Lewis, who happens to be a Clemson grad and a Univ. of South Carolina law student, sided with the parents of immunocompromised children in a suit they brought forward with the help of the ACLU. By siding with these children, this opens the door to mask mandates being forced on several hundred thousand school children across the state. Greenville County Schools alone has more than 70,000 students. State Superintendent of Schools, Molly Spearman, is wasting no time telling schools that they MUST revise their mask policies if they had relied upon the excuse to not mask due to SC law since that law has been stuck down. They must come up with another reason why they aren’t requiring masks because they are out of line with the CDC which means they are out of line with SC DHEC and the expectations from the Department of Education….all this means is that we will likely see a lot of mask mandates in short order for our students.
I don’t have the details but I believe Attorney General Alan Wilson is challenging this ruling as might be a few of our state representatives. Here’s the memo Spearman sent to all school districts yesterday.
Meanwhile, it’s Wednesday afternoon and I fully expect we’ll have some school districts issuing mask mandates before the weekend.
Here’s a helpful link to the Masterplan for the Verdae development in Greenville, SC. This has been an ongoing development for years. They plan to have more than 10,000 residents and more than 550 businesses in this development when it’s completed. It’s the largest development in the history of Greenville. It is continuing to be developed today.
It’s exciting to see the continued growth in Greenville both in terms of housing, businesses and large employers. Here’s the main link to the Verdae Community and Development.
This broke last month but thought I would post it here for the record given all the craziness we are seeing coming from the government trying to incentivize people to get the Covid-19 vaccine. This is the first I’ve seen this done in the schools. Anderson School District 5’s $100 Covid-19 vaccine incentive has received a lot of attention from this as you can imagine. Anderson County is one of the counties here in the Upstate. It’s still apparently getting peoples’ attention as I heard it on the radio news yesterday. One of the district administrators was on the air making sure that people realize they are not going direct to the students to get the jab. He said they still need to get parently approval. I don’t know if that’s the law or just them being courteous to not upset the parents. The main thing is they said they want to reward those who go get vaccinated.
I think they’ll have more luck if they start to offer the new iPhone 13 as an incentive. In fact, maybe they could purchase 10 or 20 of them and have a raffle? Why not? Will kids fall for it? I hope not.
Here’s the main site for Anderson School District 5.
Marvin Windows builds gorgeous, high quality windows. They had a very big footprint in the upper Midwest. I’m not sure how prevalent they are here in the south. Chris Von Dohlen is a friend of mine and is heading up their Design Transformation initiative with something called Human Centered Innovation. I wish him and the whole team there much success as they continue to innovate and building beautiful, high quality windows and doors.
Last week after President Biden issued his statement about potential mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations for employers with more than 100 employees, the South Carolina Sherriffs’ Association published a very clear statement basically saying they will not be enforcing any kind of federal government mandate when it comes to vaccines.
BMW Spartanburg manufacturing plant had three of its models recognized by J.D. Power in 2021. The X4, X6, and X7 all received this prestigious recognition.
I have not yet taken a tour of the BMW plant but it is on my list of things to do. I have driven in to the employee parking lot as well as driven around the back of it on SC-101 which is on the north side of the facility. The plant is MASSIVE. It was amazing to drive past it and I can’t wait to check it out some day. BMW has played a critical part in the overall growth and success of the Upstate. Here’s the link for the tours at BMW Spartanburg.
I took this shot yesterday as we were driving around downtown Greenville and some close in neighborhoods as we needed to kill some time before dropping our boys off for an activity. It was a cloudy day and in many ways was perfect for this photo. The view of the new DECA luxury apartment building really caught my eye.
Shaw Garden is just one of many public gardens throughout the city of Greenville. There are many lovely botanical gardens that the public can enjoy. It located on East Camperdown Way within a block or so of the Greenville County Schools office. This of course was shot on September 19, 2021 so it’s at the end of the garden season. I’m sure this is spectacular in April and May. Perhaps I’ll swing by next year to take a look again.
Fox Carolina posted a video of some of the roses in the Shaw Garden. You’ll need to get past the 15 second ad first before you can view it.