🗞️ Piney Grove fifth graders are collecting 2,500 pairs of shoes to get to Williamsburg

🗞️ Walkertown Fire Academy students climbed the stadium stairs to remember 9/11

🗞️ The lottery's share for schools fell to 16 percent as online games took over, state audit says

🗞️ Hanes Mill Road bridge closes tonight through Monday, and the landfill stays open

⛈️ Showers and storms | High: 85°F | Low: 70°F

Saturday is the wet one. The morning starts mostly cloudy and muggy, and the National Weather Service has showers and thunderstorms moving in mainly after 2 PM, with an 80 percent chance of rain and a high near 85. Rain totals look like a tenth to a quarter of an inch, more under any thunderstorm. That timing is kind to the yard sales, the Vintage Market and the Festival de las Naciones, all of which wrap up by early afternoon, but the 4 PM Cruise-In and RidgeFest's fireworks in Oak Ridge are squarely on watch (the Folly's rain date is Sunday). Storms linger overnight before 2 AM with a low around 70. Sunday clears to mostly sunny and 88 with only a slight chance of an afternoon storm, and Monday is sunny and 88. Get the errands done early and keep the umbrella in the car.

Piney Grove Elementary's fifth graders have a March date with Colonial Williamsburg, and they are paying for it one pair of shoes at a time.

The class launched a shoe drive this month with two goals: cover the cost of the school's annual overnight trip to Colonial Williamsburg and the nearby Yorktown battlefield in Virginia, and put shoes in the hands of people overseas who can sell them for a living. The shoes go to Funds2Orgs, a company that helps about 24,000 schools run collection drives and then ships the shoes to small-scale entrepreneurs in developing countries. Piney Grove gets paid by the pound.

"We go on an overnight field trip, and it is super-expensive. The money we raise will go to students that can't afford it," teacher Jessica Medley told the Kernersville News. The trip lines up with about half of the fifth-grade social studies curriculum, but the memories are the real point. "We still have people that went here that come back later and say how much they enjoyed that trip. All of the younger students here can't wait to get to fifth grade to go on this trip. I have been here 21 years, and except for the COVID years we have always had this overnight trip," Medley said.

As of Wednesday the drive had 250 pairs. The goal is 2,500, so the closets of Kernersville have some work to do. Gently worn, used or new shoes can be dropped off at the school on Piney Grove Road through Oct. 9, and there will be a collection box at the Fall Festival on Saturday, Sept. 26, from 9 AM to 1 PM. "We know that most people have extra shoes in their closets they would like to donate to us," principal Brendan Elkins said. "It's a win-win for everyone."

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Walkertown High School's Fire Academy marked 25 years since Sept. 11 the way firehouses across the country do it: on the stairs.

Students in the academy, which trains high schoolers alongside the Walkertown Fire Department, climbed the football stadium steps on Friday in a 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb. Climbs like this one stand in for the 110 floors of the World Trade Center that firefighters climbed that morning, and they have become a fixture of the anniversary at fire departments everywhere.

Not one of these students was alive in 2001. WS/FCS Cable 2 photojournalist Kevin Wrenn followed them up the steps and asked why a generation that knows that day only from history class chose to climb for it. Their answers are in the district's video, and it is a good three minutes to spend this weekend. Kernersville held its own ceremony at Fourth of July Park the same morning.

Watch the video

The N.C. Education Lottery is selling more tickets than ever and sending a smaller slice of the money to schools, according to a performance audit released this week by State Auditor Dave Boliek.

State law sets a target of 38 percent of lottery revenue for education "to the extent practicable." The audit found the lottery has never hit it, and the share has been sliding: 23 percent in fiscal 2023, 16 percent in fiscal 2025. The reason is the online, slot-style instant games the lottery launched in that span. They went from zero to about 40 percent of sales, roughly $2.6 billion, in three years, and they pay out about 87 percent in prizes, far more than scratch-offs and drawing games. Gross sales jumped from $4.3 billion to $6.6 billion over the two years; the transfer to education inched from about $1.02 billion to $1.08 billion.

"The Education Lottery today isn't what it used to be," Boliek said, and the audit recommends that lawmakers revisit what the lottery is actually for. The lottery points out it has sent more than $12 billion to education since 2006, including grants for more than 100 school construction projects, and says it will review the findings with its commission and legislative leaders. Lottery money is part of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools budget too, which is worth remembering in a year the district is already absorbing state funding cuts.

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If a dump run is on the weekend to-do list, read this first.

An NCDOT contractor will close the new Hanes Mill Road bridge between the U.S. 52 ramps from 8 PM tonight (Saturday) until 4 PM Monday, weather permitting, to install storm drainpipe under the travel lanes as part of the Hanes Mill Road widening project. The Hanes Mill Road Solid Waste Facility stays open with its regular Saturday and Monday hours, so the landfill is still reachable; the detour just runs by way of University Parkway, and crews will have signs up.

Winston-Salem officials are asking drivers to avoid the area if they can. Closure and detour details are posted on DriveNC.gov, and the city sends road and utility alerts by text and email through cityofws.org/notifyme.

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