Labor Day flyover to replace Canton parade

from Smoky Mountain News | August 19, 2020

DA will not press charges in Sylva Zoom bomb

BY CORY VAILLANCOURT S TAFF WRITER

The Coronavirus Pandemic may have left plans for Canton’s historic Labor Day festival up in the air, but a new idea launched by town officials Aug. 13 means things are looking up.

“There will be a celebration in Canton, but it will be in the sky,” said Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers, promising a Labor Day “like no other.”

Canton’s Labor Day Festival, the oldest in the South, has been one of Haywood County’s most anticipated events each September since 1906. In recent years, the festival has experienced a resurgence, booking big-name musical acts like Joe Lasher, Yonder Mountain String Band and the Oak Ridge Boys.

This year, it was to be pop country icons Diamond Rio and bluegrass legend Doyle Lawson, but as the live music industry began to experience the disruption of lockdowns and bans on large public gatherings earlier this year, Canton’s annual festival just didn’t make sense and was officially canceled in late June.

But Smathers and Canton’s Board of Aldermen/women didn’t want to let residents down, so around noon on Labor Day, the skies over Canton will be abuzz with vintage prop planes.

Around 25 times a year since 2012, the Raleigh-based Bandit Flight Team has thrilled audiences with flyovers at parades, NASCAR events and N.C. State football games.

Best of all, the airshow provided by the team will come at no cost to the town, keeping Canton’s budget grounded firmly in reality — the Cruso Endowment picked up

Used to putting on exciting, ground-based Labor Day events, the Town of Canton this year will move that action to the air.

Bandit Flight Team photo

the tab.

“They’re going to form up over Hazelwood, fly around Waynesville, visit the hospital and then come to Canton for a brief air show,” said Pat Smathers, the Canton attorney who handles much of the endowment’s activity.

Normally, the town would budget about $120,000 for the Labor Day festivities, but sponsorships and other revenues make up most of that; the town’s actual outlay is usually less than $20,000, but this year they won’t even need that — the budgeted revenue will remain in the town’s general fund.

Mayor Smathers said announcements on additional Labor Day events would be forthcoming.

Jackson purchases School Pass app

At a special called Jackson County School Board meeting on Aug. 11, the board approved the purchase — upon final legal review — of the School Pass app for $29,000 in order to keep schools safe and streamline the pick-up, drop-off process.

The app can handle daily student health and wellness checks. Parents will use the app to let schools know that students have not run a fever or been around people who have been exposed. Staff members that arrive on campus without completing a health check will be alerted by the app that they should complete a health check. The app will also alert administration if staff have come onto campus without completing a health check.

The app will help Jackson County Schools streamline transportation through carline automation. Parents can use the app to checkin as “here” when they are in line to pick up their child. The app will alert the student’s teacher that someone is there to pick them up, the teacher will choose “dismiss,” which will in turn alert the staff member in charge of the carline that the student is on their way from the classroom to carline.

If a parent does not have access to the app, the schools plan to have an employee at the beginning of the carline ready to check a parent in as “here.”

If a student has a usual mode of transportation that needs to change for the day, the parent can use the app to inform the school that a child will, for instance, be a car rider instead of a bus rider for the day. The app also allows bus drivers to check students in as they arrive on the bus, which will notify parents that their child is on the bus that day. After school systems will also be programmed into the app for notifications of arrival.

The app can also complete sex offender checks for any visitors to the schools, though JCPS says they do not expect many visitors this year. It will also handle volunteer and substitute tracking. The app will have the full list of authorized substitutes and volunteers for teachers to pull from.

In the case of an emergency evacuation, once in a secure location each teacher can check-in all the students they have with them. This way administration can know who is missing, who they need to locate and who has which students with them.

— Hannah McLeod

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