Where do they get this money.
Local taxes and hefty donations from local companies and notably wealthy families with kids going through the system. A lot of those local companies are owned by families with ties to the school. Also see below:
Winder is a weird area. It's been dirt poor rural forever. But is now in the concentric circles of suburban sprawl from Atlanta, Gainesville and Athens.
Howdy neighbor. From Barrow County all the way north to around Banks County is pretty much like this. Most of the area used to be a rural shit kick (still mostly is), but rising rent/real estate prices around DeKalb County and the Atlanta area have pushed a lot of people out into the rural areas around it. Most of Athens has stayed congested around the University of Georgia area and pushed slightly northwest. There's still a whole lot of fucking nothing except logging companies east of Clarke County until you hit ocean. A lot of counties in the north Georgia area had sub-10k populations prior to around the year 2000 or so. Hell, a few still do.
I forget if City of Winder has their own
They do, but it's a dinky Mayberry police force. Winder is, relatively speaking, a quiet area. Or at least from what I remember it being, haven't been out that way in quite some time.
There's that new humongous Korean Battery Factory not far from there
Is there one in Barrow County now, or are you talking about the one in Banks County off of Dry Pond? If not, holy shit. There was a big stink in the Banks city council over the battery plant bringing in their own Korean work force for construction instead of contracting out to local businesses. A guy falling off the scaffolding and dying didn't help either, the plant tried their damndest to keep that hush.
It brought a lot of jobs to the area, but they bulldozed the only drag strip around to build apartments for the new workforce coming in, so fuck em.
I saw a kid with her mother at a bus stop this morning on my way home from work who looked like she was pretty upset. I know it could be anything, but I'd imagine this could be the reason. It's bad enough being a kid and seeing it happen on the news, it's another when it's close enough to scare you.
My school had a few "bomb threats" growing up that never amounted to anything more than us getting to spend time dicking off outside of class. The fear of someone bringing a gun to school and going apeshit wasn't something a lot of us worried about. I know the world's gotten worse in the two decades since, but fuck. To emphasize on what I said earlier, this part of the world isn't exactly a ghetto or a warzone. Violent crime outside of domestic disputes is pretty low compared to inner-city areas.
Not gonna lie, knowing that there was a call ahead of time and nobody took any form of action from it kind of makes my piss boil. Even if you think someone might be bullshitting (in current year, don't count on it), it warrants at least SOME form of response. If not closing the school down for the day, at LEAST have a response force ready on-site.
