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Crossnore receives $5M pledge for expansion campaign

Crossnore Communities for Children has received a $5 million gift, the largest in the organization’s 110-year history. 

The anonymous gift will go toward Crossnore’s $41 million campaign to expand services provided by the statewide foster care organization.

It will require at least $3 million in matching funds for a charter school in Winston-Salem. The campaign will also boost support for Crossnore campuses in Avery County and Hendersonville, as well as for planned services in the Charlotte region.

Crossnore Chief Executive Officer Brett Loftis says North Carolina is experiencing a foster care crisis, with children at times being forced to sleep in offices while awaiting placement.

"So this is about making more access for them, both safe places to live, and trauma-informed places to learn," says Loftis. "So part of this will also be the opening of a new charter school there in Winston Salem, that would be a fully trauma-informed public school."

Loftis says the school for kindergarten through fourth-grade students will be in a renovated building with an opening target date of August 2025. 

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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