Laurels & lances: New store, old story
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Laurel: To shopping around. The Greater Pittsburgh region will have a new neighbor in the grocery market. This week, popular New York-based retailer Wegmans announced its first foray into the area.
A 115,000-square-foot location is planned for a 13-acre plot in Cranberry, adjacent to the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex. A Wegmans official said the chain is “definitely looking at doing additional locations in the market.”
In addition to hiring 400 to 500 employees at the Cranberry location, planned for a 2027 opening, Gary Fechter, senior vice president for the company’s Pennsylvania division, said he looks forward to being in the market alongside “great competitors” like Giant Eagle.
Another major retailer can be beneficial to customers who reap the rewards of sales, loyalty programs and other attempts to draw business.
Lance: To jumping on the banned wagon. The new year is starting out with a new attempt to cut a book out of a school curriculum.
On Monday, Pine-Richland School Board voted against including “Angel of Greenwood” in the district’s ninth grade curriculum. In a meeting that stretched for hours and was often hostile, board members, administrators and the public were heated in their debate.
“Angel of Greenwood” by Randi Pink is set during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. A 2001 commission appointed by the Oklahoma legislature said the massacre had a death toll of 39 confirmed and up to 300 estimated.
While many other books in area school districts have been protested on grounds of sexual content or LGBTQ references, that is not the case with Pink’s book. It is a young adult love story set in the midst of a racially charged historical event.
An active debate over the books our children read should be encouraged. Students benefit by a genuine exchange of ideas, whether it is in the classroom or in the boardrooms where decisions about curriculum are made. Parents, community members, teachers, administrators and elected officials should be engaged in this regularly. Unfortunately, this engagement seems most likely to arise around attempts to place fences around ideas.
The Pine-Richland board narrowly passed a revised ninth grade language arts curriculum by a vote of 5 to 4 — but “Angel of Greenwood” didn’t fly, shot down by a vote of 3 to 5 with one abstention.