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David Clark works in the Guilford County Public Defender’s Office, representing clients charged with high level felonies. All of them are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn’t mean they receive equal treatment.

The head of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools—North Carolina’s second-largest school system—says state lawmakers’ brewing talk of dividing large districts is “bad public policy.”

Policy Watch recently reviewed more than 20,000 pages of data for a series of stories about groundwater contamination in wells around Duke Energy’s coal ash ponds: Marshall, Cliffside, Allen, Buck and Dan River. This is the final installment in the series, which covers Sutton and Roxboro in context of the recent announcement of proposed changes to coal ash rules by the EPA.

When Lucia Salmeron thinks about her trailer, she thinks about her family’s future – her children riding their bikes with their friends in a neighborhood they love; she and her husband working on their home renovations; everyone being surrounded by a close-knit community of which they’ve spent years becoming a part.

In early spring, Lake Michie stirs to life, with fishers and the Duke University women’s rowing team taking to the water at dawn. The 480-acre reservoir near Bahama is not only a source of largemouth bass, but it is also a boating destination, and it provides Durham with 30 million to 35 million gallons of drinking water each day.

By the time Phillip Armachain was arrested last year, the 50-year old man from Cherokee had for years built a reputation for being “creepy” and “a pervert” who made women in the town uncomfortable and afraid.

When the N.C. General Assembly’s top staffer announced plans last week to roll out sexual harassment training for state lawmakers and legislative employees, some state lawmakers hailed the move as a good first step.

It took five deadlocked votes along party lines and a failed suggestion to draw names from a hat for eight members of the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement to finally agree on two nominees to serve in what could be a tie-breaking ninth seat.

Late March is prime spring planting season in North Carolina, and this year, as part of his personal scientific experiment, Mike Watters is sowing not just one garden, but four. Some vegetables will be grown in a greenhouse, irrigated with bottled water and shielded from rain potentially contaminated with GenX.

The following collection of numbers comes from the 2018 North Carolina Child Health Report Card compiled by researchers at NC Child and the NC Institute of Medicine.

46 - percentage of North Carolina children who live in poor or low-income homes (<200% Federal Poverty Level)

A lone Southern yellow pine tree has stood in the middle of Marvin Winstead’s Nash County field for at least 100 years. It is the heart of Winstead’s 70-acre farm, which has been in his family for three generations. The tree has survived hurricanes and tornadoes, cold snaps and heat waves, droughts and floods. But it may not survive the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Tallulah Cloos, 18, sometimes ponders ideal hiding spots if an active shooter were ever to terrorize her Buncombe County high school. It’s not easy, she says. A.C. Reynolds High, located just southeast of Asheville, has a wide campus with an abundance of open spaces.

Public hearing scheduled for next week This week the North Carolina Historical Commission’s Confederate Monuments Study Committee scheduled a forum to hear public comments on moving three monuments from the State Capitol grounds.

While tooth decay is sometimes perceived as a childhood rite of passage, elementary school-aged children missing school and causing parents to miss work due to painful toothaches are no laughing matter. Parents of children with poor oral health miss twice as much work as their counterparts, due to preventable, unnecessary tooth pain.

Last month, in response to the latest in a series of mass shootings in American schools, some lawmakers suggested arming North Carolina teachers. Last week, pollsters at Elon University released a poll in which they asked North Carolina teachers about the issue.