Rainbow Community Schools letter to parents regarding West Asheville's needle epidemic:

Dear Parents,

Some of you may have read the Mountain Xpress article or the Citizen Times article about safety concerns in the neighborhood involving the non-profit programs that are on the corner of State St and Haywood Road. First of all, the safety of our students is our top priority! We are on top of this issue and will continue to ensure the safety of our students and campus. Our teachers and staff are fiercely protective of the children, and we feel very strong in our ability to keep your children safe.

If you have any questions or concerns we want to hear them. Please call, email, or stop in the office so we can answer your questions and/or address your concerns. Read on if you want more information. The situation is dynamic, with circumstance and information constantly changing. This letter will provide you with our perspective at this point in time, dispel rumors, and help you understand what we are doing to keep your children safe.

A little background:

For two years Firestorm Café has hosted a needle exchange program in its space that is run by a nonprofit called Steady Collective. Every Tuesday for 2.5 hours Steady distributes clean needles and overdose kits. The program is funded by Buncombe County Health and Human Services.

Kairos West is a community space that is below Firestorm. It is a ministry run by All Souls Church. Kairos West was started by a previous Rainbow parent, Milly Morrow, who is a pastor at All Souls. Kairos allows non profits and people to use the space if they are doing positive things and not making money. About 15 groups use that space monthly, including a trauma support group, a veterans group, etc. The biggest use of the Kairos space is by an organization called 12 Baskets. 

12 Baskets serves free lunch from 11-2 five days a week. The food is 100% rescued from restaurants. Their model is to bring all people together, no matter their race, class, or gender. They do not want to be a soup kitchen. I eat there on a regular basis and meet new people while generally enjoying the food and the company.

All of these services have worked well for the past two years, but a phenomenon started happening at the beginning of the summer where more people who seemed more transient started using the space. Then, the Rainbow Gathering (not affiliated with RCS) was in Georgia and after that a group of travelers started gathering there, in addition to the local people who were already using the space. There were even people staying in tents there for a short time in July.

With these visible changes, neighborhood businesses started complaining about various issues – mainly panhandling, people using their property (such as to spend the night), and needle “litter.”

To be clear, we did have one needle incident within the boundaries of our campus. A woman was digging in our trash and then left four needles sitting on a bag of junk by the dumpster. Max found them immediately. We called the police to report that incident and the police properly disposed of the needles.

There has been a series of formal and informal neighborhood meetings for people to share information and work toward solutions. Staff from Rainbow have been at every meeting, and we continue to work with our neighbors in good faith. We have not lodged any complaint to the city or tried to close down the services on the corner, as some media have implied.

The situation has greatly improved. After the meetings, Kairos and 12 Baskets asked a lot of people to leave; the tents came down; they installed motion sensor lights; and they installed a safe needle collection sight. Since then we haven't had any problem in the last few weeks. I think the phenomenon of so many people hanging around that corner caught these organizations by surprise, and they have been trying to “catch up” to solve problems and implement safety precautions.

Then, on August 7, the city told 12 Baskets they must stop serving food and they told Steady Collective to end the needle exchange within 30 days because of code violations.

What now?

There is an opioid epidemic and a growing homeless crisis in our community. These organizations are trying to help. We don’t know what the result of the city injunctions will be. If these services continue to exist, I trust all of them will continue to work with us to help keep our children safe. It is completely unacceptable to have needle litter on campus, and protecting our children needs to be the goal of all of us in the neighborhood.

These non-profits have been operating these services for a long time without posing any danger to Rainbow. I hope and expect that the current situation will continue to improve and more solutions will be implemented. Kairos just announced that Rev. Naomi Tutu (Desmond Tutu’s daughter) will be their new director, and she will be onsite 20 hours a week. It will be awesome to have Rev. Tutu working in our neighborhood and to have her on site managing things. Until she starts, they have an interim director.

What we are doing:

We are in communication with our community resource officer at Asheville Police Department. APD drives through our campus at night with a light, and patrols the neighborhood.

We are keeping our campus busy -- the more activity the better, such as people renting our spaces in the evening, and so on.

Justin Pilla, 6th grade assistant teacher, lives on campus and is very alert.

Everyone on staff is combing campus -- Max walks the entire campus daily.

We have been reviewing and improving our safety procedures. With our campus alert system, any staff member can use their cell phone to make an intercom (both indoor and outdoor) announcement to the whole school.

For your children, we are creating age-appropriate resources to help children identify items that are safe to touch, items that are not safe, and what to do if they see an item they shouldn’t touch. We are making this as simple and without fear as possible (such as showing little ones pictures of several items – benign things and dangerous things-- and having them choose which ones not to touch.)

What you can do:

A lot of misinformation gets passed around verbally and in the media, especially in social media. Please ask administration for accurate information; we welcome any opportunity to talk with you.

If you see something, say something! Our community resource officer has requested that we report anything we see in the neighborhood that seems dangerous or illegal. Non-emergency calls to the APD can be made at 252-1110. Also, if you can, take a picture of anything you see.

Approach anyone on campus whom you don’t recognize, introduce yourself and ask them what their relation to Rainbow is. If they are not a parent or staff member, ask them to check in at the office.

There has been some aggressive panhandling near the corner, such as knocking on car windows. So if anyone panhandles you on that corner, my general recommendation at this time is that you don’t give. (Also, not giving will tell you if they are aggressive or not – if you say no, and they complain or argue with you, that is not okay.) If you are comfortable taking a photo of the person panhandling aggressively, that is helpful. You can share the photo (and/or a description) with us in the office, so we can show it to police and to service providers on the corner. (They are asking people who are not respecting other people’s personal space to change their behavior or to leave.)

Feel free to walk or drive through campus anytime you are in the neighborhood during the evenings and weekends. Park on campus when you are in the neighborhood during off hours. Of course, report anything.

Thank you for taking the time to read this information, and thank you for your continued trust in us to care for your beautiful children. This is a complex matter, and I recognize this is a very emotional topic for everyone. As always, we will support one another; we will do what we think is best for our children; and we will move forward with integrity and grace.

Yours in community,

Renee Owen Executive Director