Education

Despite setting a tax rate to take the highest revenue increase allowed by law, some members of the Anderson County Board of Education were baffled last week when Finance Officer David Wilkerson presented his working budget for the 2016-17 school year.

“We raised taxes and now we’re barely breaking even?” questioned board member Roger McDowell.

“We really needed a tax increase in the worst way. If we didn’t we’d be in the hole,” Wilkerson responded.

Chairman Lee Hahn echoed McDowell’s concerns.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 4075 and the Auxiliary are sponsoring two contests for youth in the community.

The “Voice of Democracy Scholarship Competition” is open to students in grades 9 through 12. It is a 3- to 5-minute audio essay on the subject “My responsibility to America.” First- and second-place winners will receive $500 and $250 respectively and be eligible for district, state and national scholarships.

Fourth-graders showed off their primary colors in art class last week at Robert B. Turner Elementary School.

In a unit about pop art — a style that emerged in the 1950s that turns items from popular culture into an art form — the students were learning about pioneers Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

Alexis Weathers spent four days over summer vacation doing something none of her other classmates did — attending the Congress of Future Medical Leaders at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Alexis was nominated by a Harvard University professor based on her grades and leadership abilities.

She said didn’t even know about the nomination.

“We got a packet in the mail saying I’d been nominated,” she explained.