What's Ahead: Meadowbrook students and faculty defend school despite its limitations

By Sherry Youngquist
Winston-Salem Journal

KING

The students at Meadowbrook School in King have returned to their cramped quarters at a former fitness center, but they've vowed to make the best of it.

They have to take a bus to get lunch at a nearby school and make do with a bookshelf-lined hallway that serves as the media center. When it's raining, they sometimes do aerobics in their classrooms instead of going outside to play.

All other Stokes County schools open today, but Meadowbrook students have been back since July 26. They had hoped to be settled in at their new school on the campus of North Stokes High School.

In March, the school board approved moving the school to North Stokes, thinking that it would solve two problems at once. The move would have given Meadowbrook students more access to lab space, physical education and vocational programs while making use of the extra space at the county's northern high school.

But in May a group of parents and a retired school administrator filed a lawsuit against the move because there had been no public hearing before the decision.

A month later, the school board reversed itself and appointed a committee of parents, students and teachers to examine the system's capital needs.

The committee is expected to publish its findings no later than February.