Haywood School Superintendent Anne Garrett came up with a novel approach for predicting how many students a new charter school will siphon out of the public school system.

Haywood County Schools have been losing students slowly but steadily over the past decade. Despite high academic performance, the school system has 500 fewer students.

Where did they go? Why? Will the decline continue?

• Case #1: The homeschool factor
• Case #2: Recession drives working families to leave Haywood
• Case #3: Private schools only a minor league player
• Case #4: New charter school makes a trial run in Haywood
• Haywood Schools grapple with enrollment wildcard

Caleb Burress sees a rebirth — in himself and his music.

“2014 was an education for us on many levels — we had a lot going on,” he said. “I think the changes we’ve experienced couldn’t have come at a better time. We didn’t die, we merely took the opportunity we had been presented with to really do some soul searching as a group, and figure out what we really wanted.”

Haywood County Schools will get a modest 2 percent increase each year for the next three years in its student per capita funding from the county.

Haywood County farmers caught some face time with elected leaders this week over heaping plates of bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits and hash browns to talk candidly about the issues facing today’s farmers — and the unrelenting rain over the past week wasn’t one of them.

Haywood County is back on the prowl for potential sites to build a new $3 million animal shelter to replace its existing one.

County commissioners initially set their sights on an empty field at the Haywood County Fairgrounds. But that is now off the table due to deed hang-ups — namely legal covenants limiting what the fairground property can be used for.

All tobacco products will soon be banned from being used on county-owned property in Haywood County.

Commissioners approved an amendment to the county tobacco-use policy prohibiting tobacco products, including smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes, from being used outside county buildings and in county vehicles. The only exception is at the Haywood County Fairgrounds.

A Haywood County political operative and local government critic was cleared of alleged cyberstalking charges in court last week.

Monroe Miller, 67, was accused of cyberstalking by Savannah Tedesco, 24, who claimed Miller would not stop sending her intimidating and embarrassing emails after she asked him to quit. A judge dismissed the misdemeanor cyberstalking charge.

After signing a five-year lease for a 29-acre property on Ratcliffe Cove Road, just past the traffic circle in Waynesville, Haywood County’s first charter school will soon be able to move somewhere a little bigger than the single-room office it now rents downtown.

There’s good news in the marketplace for Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Canton.