🗞️ A Kernersville program is helping 150 local kids start the school year ready

🗞️ 'AI is here to stay': Triad mayors weigh in on data centers

🗞️ A rare George Washington letter goes on view at Old Salem

🗞️ Atrium Health cuts the ribbon on a big new Greensboro medical complex

🌡 Hot and dry | High: 92°F | Low: 70°F

Another hot, dry day with a high near 92 and little chance of rain as the heat wave and drought continue. Drink water, find shade, and check on neighbors who feel the heat.

A Kernersville effort is making sure local students do not start the school year at a disadvantage. The Kernersville Foundation has given an $8,000 grant to the YMCA's Bright Beginnings program, which helps young people ages 5 to 18 head back to class with the clothes, shoes and supplies they need. Being well-equipped, organizers say, helps kids build the confidence to do their best in the classroom.

Here is how it works: a student identified by local schools as needing help is paired with an adult volunteer to go shopping for clothing and shoes, and each child also gets a backpack stocked with grade-appropriate supplies. The YMCA's goal is to raise $30,000 to serve about 150 Kernersville-area students this year.

"YMCA Bright Beginnings is one of my favorite programs and one of the most rewarding times of the year at the Y," said Kernersville YMCA executive director Adam Cardwell. The big shopping day is Saturday, Aug. 1, and the Y still needs volunteers to ride the buses and shop alongside students, plus help serve breakfast. To volunteer, contact Cardwell at [email protected]; donations can be mailed to the Kernersville Family YMCA at 1113 W. Mountain St.

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As data center proposals stir up opposition across the region, including the Project Iron Spur plan in nearby Rural Hall, the Triad's big-city mayors say the projects are here to stay, but they want rules to manage them. The topic dominated a mayors panel hosted Tuesday by the Greensboro Regional Realtors Association, featuring Greensboro Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter, Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines, High Point Mayor Cyril Jefferson and Burlington Mayor Beth Kennett.

The moderator noted that a state economic development leader called data centers the "fastest swell of resistance he's seen in his 30 years." Even so, the mayors agreed that banning them is not realistic. "There are some what I'd probably call very extreme opinions about just banning data centers altogether, and I hope that most pragmatic folks would know we can't do that," Jefferson said, noting the centers power everyday tools like cellphones and the internet. "AI is here to stay. We know this," Abuzuaiter added.

At the same time, all favored guardrails. Abuzuaiter said Greensboro will likely need zoning standards to keep centers away from neighborhoods and limit noise, and wants industry answers on water and energy use. Joines floated ideas like an electricity surcharge, requiring centers to recycle untreated greywater, and spacing them apart. "What we don't want is our residents to feel like they have to shoulder the burden for someone else," Jefferson said.

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Just in time for the country's 250th birthday, the Moravian Archives in Old Salem are giving the public a rare peek into the vault. The America 250 Vault Tours, offered Thursday and Friday, put a handful of Colonial-era treasures on display, drawn from millions of records the archives keep in Winston-Salem.

The highlights are remarkable. They include a handwritten letter from President George Washington to the Brethren of Wachovia, penned after his 1791 visit to Salem, and a 1798 letter from John Adams to the citizens of Stokes County. Also on view is a 1783 proclamation by Gov. Alexander Martin recognizing Salem's July 4 celebration, said to be the first of its kind in the nation, plus one of fewer than 20 known original copies of the Star-Spangled Banner and a document printed by Benjamin Franklin.

"I'm also really trying to focus on the Moravian connection, from the inception of this land being colonized to the government being set up, to how it's celebrated," said Sabrina Garity, assistant director of the Moravian Archives Southern Province. Tours run at 1 and 2:30 p.m. Thursday and 3:30 p.m. Friday, with tickets at $28. It is a special chance to stand a few inches from the founding era right in our backyard.

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Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist will hold a ribbon-cutting Friday for its first major facility in Greensboro, a $163 million medical office building and surgical center in the northwest part of the city. Medical Plaza Northwest Greensboro is a five-story, 134,000-square-foot building at 2909 Horse Pen Creek Road, and Baptist says it will start seeing patients by late July. The 8:30 a.m. ceremony is being held with the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce.

The new plaza is built to be a regional hub for outpatient surgery, specialty care and comprehensive cancer care, with three operating rooms, procedure rooms, a heart and vascular suite, infusion bays, a pharmacy, imaging and physical therapy. Services will span cardiology, gastroenterology, general surgery, weight management, orthopedics and oncology, adding to Baptist's 35-plus locations already in the city.

A 36-bed hospital is planned for the same campus, with a projected opening of Jan. 1, 2029, part of a $432 million overall investment. The expansion has drawn objections from rival Cone Health, and Novant has quietly bought nearby land too, a sign of how fiercely the region's health systems are competing for Triad patients. For Kernersville families, it is more specialty care and surgery options a short drive away.

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