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Help for Haiti - Bulloch students give and learn
W Haiti 7
Students collect donations at Mill Creek Elementary that will be donated to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. - photo by HAYLEY GREENE/special
      “You can learn from textbooks, but you can also learn a great deal by what’s happening around you,” said Sandra Smith, a teacher at Mill Creek Elementary.  
      You won’t find much about Haiti in the textbooks within Bulloch County’s schools, but walk the halls and students can tell you plenty about the earthquake-ravaged country:
      They know how to find it on a map. They’ve measured its distance from Statesboro in math class. And seniors now have chosen it as the topic for their senior research projects. Teachers have woven the theme into English classes, where students learned to write persuasively by soliciting help for Haiti and Ms. Stacy Dinello’s students learned about acrostics using the word Haiti.
      Students and adults alike now know how Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere was devastated by two earthquakes. Touched by media images, many in Bulloch schools immediately began seeking ways to help.  
      “It was the biggest pull on my heart that I’ve ever felt,” said Southeast Bulloch Middle School sixth grader Kera Olsen. “I said to myself, ‘Those people are going to get some help.’”
      So, she took that determination to her local church, where she boldly stood and told members just how she wanted to help. Motivated by her words, members responded with monetary donations and supplies, some of which were by the truckload, and all going to support a local relief effort called “Fresh Start Bags.” That effort was co-founded by Claudia Batichon, guardian of another SEB Middle sixth grader, Karen Batichon, who is her husband’s little sister.
      “I’m glad Karen and the other students are seeing things happen,” said Batichon, who was born in Haiti. “They’ll be able to look back one day, see that Haiti has recovered, and know that they had a special part in helping.”
      Fresh Start Bags is a grassroots relief effort started by Batichon, Pastor Travis Ivey of Abundant Life Church and Cheri Lance, a Brooklet business owner. Their goal is to gather enough basic hygiene supplies for men, women and infants to make 100,000 bags to distribute in Haiti.
      Batichon also has rallied support from Bulloch Academy students, while Lance focused on the public schools.  
“The support from all the schools has been amazing,” Batichon said.
      Claudia and her husband Hans, also a native of Haiti, and members of the Abundant Life Church are planning a trip to Haiti to personally deliver the bags.
      “Once I found out about the earthquake, I knew I wanted to do something,” said Lance, owner of the Brooklet Flower Basket. “I just didn’t want to send in $10 and be done - I wanted to do something.
      “When I went to work and saw Claudia Batichon’s picture on the front page of the Statesboro Herald, and read her story, I had my answer,” Lance said.  
      She picked up the phone, called Batichon, a complete stranger to her, and they arranged to meet in Lance’s shop along with Pastor Ivey.  From that meeting Fresh Start Bags began. Supporters or volunteers can contact the church, stop by Lance’s shop, or visit Fresh Start’s Facebook page for more information.
      Lance is an active volunteer, who serves as president of the Stilson Elementary School PTO. She contacted the school’s principal, Eileen Bayens, who immediately got students and parents involved. They soon added support from Nevils Elementary.
      Haiti is more than 1,100 miles southeast of Statesboro, but the earthquake’s impact is still felt locally.
      While not teaching at Mill Creek, Smith has been a summer missionary to Haiti since 1980. Her husband Randy Smith is a local doctor who will lead a medical team that leaves for Haiti Feb. 27.  
      The team won’t leave empty handed thanks to Mill Creek parents who answered the school’s call and donated enough supplies to fill 20 footlocker trunks. The school also raised $557 for Abundant Life Church’s mission team. Other schools like Langston Chapel Elementary, Brooklet Elementary, and Southeast Bulloch Middle have held unique penny fundraisers such as “Lifesavers for Haiti,” “Hats for Haiti, and “Coins for Haiti Children,” that have raised nearly $2,500 for the American Red Cross.
“Projects like this help our students see how fortunate they really are,” Smith said
      She said she carries student letters, drawings or school yearbooks from Mill Creek each summer to her Haitian students at the Village of Hope School in Ganthier, eight miles from Port-au-Prince.
      “We’d love to be pen pals, but Haiti does not have a mail system,” Smith said.  
Smith said the school was only slightly damaged in the earthquake, but early reports indicate some students and at least one teacher were killed.
      Hudak Hendrix’s Statesboro High social studies class calls it cultural diffusion - How one nation’s events affect your country.  
In elementary school halls the Character Word of the Day was “Kindness,” meaning to be warm-hearted, humane, or sympathetic.  
In Bulloch County; however, Batichon said students and adults have seen these words leave the page and put into action.

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Georgia Southern rents roughly 1/3 of Charme apartments, securing beds for returning students
Privately owned multistory development on Georgia Avenue made for 694 beds; regents OK lease of 240
Charme apartments
The Charme on Georgia Avenue mid-rise student apartment complex under construction on the former University Plaza shopping center grounds is expected to be ready for occupancy for the 2025 fall semester that begins in August. Workers are shown working on the complex Tuesday morning, April 29. (JIM HEALY/staff(

In their mid-April meeting on the Georgia Southern University campus, the regents of the University System of Georgia unanimously authorized Georgia Southern's almost $3 million one-year sub-rental of 81 apartments containing 240 student beds in the privately owned new Charme on Georgia Avenue complex.

Technically, it's the Georgia Southern University Housing Foundation Inc. that is "sub-landlord," while the Board of Regents is legally "sub-tenant" in renting the space for Georgia Southern's use and benefit.

Since student apartments developer Rael Corp launched the project in winter 2023, construction has been targeted for summer 2025 completion, and appears to be on track, judging from appearances at the site and a statement in the memo for the Board of Regents' April 15 session. "Charme is expected to open for the Fall 2025 semester," it stated. Georgia Southern's fall semester classes begin Aug.  13.

The 5-to-6-story building, technically just "mid-rise" but very imposing compared to older stand-alone apartment buildings in Statesboro, reportedly contains 291 apartment units with space for 694 beds. So for the rent amount of $243,750 monthly, or $2,925,000 for the year, the university will secure less than one-third of Charme on Georgia Avenue's total units but more than one-third of the total bed count.

The initial term of the sub-rental agreement was set to begin "around Aug. 1, 2025" and end July 15, 2026. The units sub-rented for the university will have 84,972 square feet of floor space, so the rent amounts to $34.42 per rentable square foot for the year, the regents' summary stated.

Although not stated this way in the memo, the university's rental cost per bed, or in other words per student, apparently would be almost $1,016 a month. However, the base rent will include water, electricity and internet service.

On-campus housing supply maxed out

According to the explanation given the regents, the university is making this move to secure apartments for returning sophomores through seniors at a time when the anticipated influx of freshmen, who get first dibs on on-campus housing, is expected to swell the number of students wanting to live on campus beyond the supply.

Georgia Southern "is currently projecting an on-campus student housing occupancy of 103% for Fall 2025, primarily due to an increase in the incoming freshman class. Leasing these additional off-campus beds would enable (Georgia Southern) to offer housing to returning upperclass students who wish to live on or close to campus but may not be able to meet the credit qualifications and security deposit required to enter into a direct lease with the Landlord," stated the last paragraph of the memo.

That landlord, owner of the property, is RDC Statesboro Investments LLC, which is registered in Georgia but whose principal business address is that of Rael Corporation headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

Charme contains a mix of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and four-bedroom apartments. Amenities include an elevated pool, an outdoor games area, a game room and a coffee shop. It has parking structures not included in the floor count.

It occupies 124,582 square feet, or 2.86 acres, of ground, the former University Plaza shopping center site. This is across the street from Centennial Place, a university-owned complex housing up to 1,001 students.

Charme alone comprises about 20% of the roughly 1,500 housing units that Statesboro Planning and Housing Administrator Justin Williams said were "going vertical" — in other words, actively under construction — in Statesboro as of April. These are from a larger number — more than 3,900 units ranging from stand-alone single-family homes and townhouses to small apartments — planned or proposed by developers as of last fall.

Pointe Grand's contrast

Another apartment complex noticeably going vertical this spring, Pointe Grand, contrasts with Charme both in the type of buildings used and the demographic of residents the owners hope to attract. On Lovett Road, across from the back of Statesboro Mall and beside L.A.  Waters Furniture, Pointe Grand is a complex of six long, three-story buildings planned to contain 216 apartments, plus a fitness center and clubhouse area.

Pointe Grande apartments
Construction on the 216-unit Pointe Grand apartment complex on Lovett Road in Statesboro has been ongoing for more than ayear, with the six multi-story buildings scheduled to be ready for occupancy later in 2025. (JIM HEALY/staff)

Occupying an 18.5-acre site, the development is hard to miss as some of the buildings, lined up almost out to Lovett, have siding up while others still have green-backed insulation sheaths showing. There is a newly paved central drive, not yet open, between the buildings.

Pointe Grand is the work of Hillpointe, an Athens, Georgia-based company "focused on the development of market-rate workforce housing across the Sun Belt," its website proclaims.

Pointe Grande apartments
Construction workers put some sealing tape on one of the buildings that make up the 216-unit Pointe Grand apartment complex currently under construction on Lovett Drive, across from the Statesboro Mall, Tuesday morning, April 29. (JIM HEALY/staff)

So it is not intended, at least not primarily, to attract university students. "Pointe Grand" is also the surname for Hillpointe's complexes in more than 20  other Georgia, South Carolina and northern and central Florida cities. So there's the Pointe Grand Augusta, Pointe Grand Columbia, Pointe Grand Macon, Pointe Grand Brunswick, Pointe Grand Daytona Beach. …

So far, the construction fence here just identifies the Statesboro work in progress as "Pointe Grand Apartment Homes." 

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