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Bryan County Schools kicks off the new school year
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Carver Elementary School teachers cheer. - photo by Taylor Carpenter

Employees of Bryan County Schools got an early start to the 2014-2015 school year Friday with a system-wide convocation at Richmond Hill Middle School.

Superintendent Dr. Paul Brooksher started the event last year and said he created it as a way to “bring all faculty and staff together to celebrate the kick off of the school year.”

“It’s great really because everyone is involved,” he said.

Each school, a central office team and a transportation team competed against each other for best T-shirt, best skit, and most overall spirit. Transportation won best T-shirt, Lanier Primary School and Richmond Hill Middle School tied for best skit and Bryan County Elementary won most overall sprit.

Keith Forkin, a U.S. history and world geography teacher at RHHS, was the master of ceremonies for the event and ran games between skits. Brooksher gave opening and closing remarks. The 2014-2015 teachers of the year were the event judges.

Kristen Floyd, a new Pre-K teacher at Lanier, said the convocation was “very uplifting, motivating and fun,” and that it was unlike any other county.

Brooksher said he was looking forword to “just another great year.”

“Our school system’s mission statement is: dedicated to rigorous educational tasks that challenge and motivate students while always being focused on continuous improvement,” Brooksher said, “and the great thing about our employees is that they are always trying to get better each year.”

He also urges parents to be patient with transportation in the coming days.

“It’ll take about a week to get everything running smoothly,” he said.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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