Education

    Under a budget approved by the Bedford County School Board Thursday night, Bedford Primary School will be closed next year while Body Camp Elementary will remain open. School employees will also receive a 1 percent pay raise.

    After considering closing both schools, the board agreed at Thursday's special called meeting to consolidate Bedford Primary with Bedford Elementary School next year, making it a K-5 school. Sixth graders currently at the school will move over to Bedford Middle School.

If the budget for Bedford County Public Schools is adopted based on discussions during a five-hour school board work session last Thursday, neither Body Camp Elementary or Bedford Primary School would be closed next year.

    But cuts still have to be made and one school board member has yet to come to a decision on the issue while another wasn't at the meeting to voice an opinion about the proposed school closings.

For the past several months, a school-wide project at Forest Middle School has been uniting all of the students together with one goal. The result: a 9-foot-tall tetrahedron that the students put together last Wednesday.

    “We began to look at building this giant tetrahedron and tying it in with the math SOLs that (the students) were learning,” stated Nancy Young, a library media specialist at the school. “Every student in the school has actually made an individual tetrahedron to put into this project.”

Last Thursday the Bedford County School Board got its first look at a proposed budget from Schools Superintendent Dr. Douglas Schuch and at least one board member was surprised at what he saw.

    “This is very frustrating to me,” stated District 2 board member Dave Vaden.