As a new school year begins, the Anderson Career and Technology Center is entering it with a stronger front porch, a bigger footprint and a long list of ambitions that would make a conventional high school blush. The center, which serves students from Anderson School Districts 1 and 2, has added parking, is preparing for a new welding and auto collision facility, and is trying to keep pace with a student population that has filled the school to capacity.

The reopening also serves as the finale to Mill Town Players’ 12th season, and Ragland chose a musical that would feel celebratory without being merely nostalgic. “Guys & Dolls,” with its gamblers, showgirls and durable songs, offered that balance.

Anderson County Council moved ahead Tuesday night on a slate of development and infrastructure measures that included approvals for two major industrial projects, a new county hazardous-materials employee, a continued push to slow data-center development, major updates at Green Pond Landing and Events Center, and the beginning of a large amphitheater renovation tied to a public-private concert partnership.

Anderson is the only county in the United States that utilizes voting precincts to determine land use zoning boundaries. Because voting precincts are drawn based on population density for political representation—and must be reapportioned after every census—tying land-use regulations to these political lines creates a logistical challenge.

Anderson School District Five’s board is set to take up a routine but wide-ranging agenda Tuesday night, including financial reports, policy revisions, a modified school calendar, and several staffing and facilities matters. The 6:30 p.m. meeting at the district’s administrative office will also include discussion of student meal accounts, screen time, and an employee survey planned for a future work session.

Anderson County Council will vote on third reading a shoring up of laws related to conservation subdivision standards, what qualifies as a short-term rental property, as well as tax incentive agreements Athrex and International Vitamin Corporation/Nutra Manufacturing, LLC., and a pair of bids to increase tourism.

Anderson County began in 1826, when the sprawling Pendleton District—then encompassing what are now Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens counties—became too large for practical governance. Travel for court business had become difficult to manage in Pendleton, and the legislature divided the district, naming the new counties for Revolutionary War figures Andrew Pickens and Robert Anderson, two men Drake described as inseparable in life and honored in death.

The new 240,000-square-foot Pendleton High School is opening in August, and with it comes the moving of Riverside Middle School into the former high school building, a reshuffling made possible by land purchased more than a decade ago and by a $115 million referendum approved in 2023.

Honea Path officially opened the newest feature of Dogwood Park on Saturday with a ribbon-cutting for the new Open-Air Pavilion. The new community gathering space is designed to host a variety of events throughout the year, including festivals, concerts, community celebrations, educational programs, markets, and other special events.

The signs for the new Richard A. Shirley Memorial Parkway were unveiled as family and local officials remembered the man who served as Anderson Mayor, city councilman and County Clerk of Court.

For 37 years, the Electrolux Anderson plant has been tied to food preservation. But after April’s announcement of a long-term North American partnership with Midea, the Chinese appliance giant, a reordering of production that will move the Anderson factory away from refrigerators and toward laundry equipment.

Anderson School District 1 heads back to school this year with a revamped elementary school lineup thanks to the opening of Oak Hill Elementary, which gives the district a ninth elementary school and, at least in Powdersville, a more conventional K-5 structure after years of a split arrangement that divided younger and older elementary students between Concrete and Powdersville Elementary

The East-West Parkway will be named after former Anderson Mayor Richard A. Shirley, who also served on city council and Anderson County Clerk of Court, in a ceremony at 10 a.m. at the roadway’s Francis M. Crowder Park.

Anderson County is preparing for an unusually compressed and unusually consequential election calendar following the death of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., which will trigger a special Republican primary to choose a candidate for the general-election ballot. The primary is set for Aug. 11, with a runoff, if needed, on Aug. 25.

Anderson School District 3 operates five schools: three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. It also shares the Anderson Institute of Technology with Anderson districts 4 and 5, a facility Hipp described as a major benefit both for space at Crescent High School and for career and college readiness. AIT was built, Hipp said, through a deliberate planning process that matched programs to workforce needs in the region.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday night of a “brief and sudden illness,” the South Carolina Republican’s office announced early Sunday.

“Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period,” the statement added.

Donald Trump’s national approval rating has drifted into the mid-thirties, according to a recent Winthrop/YouGov survey, suggesting his unpopularity is not a momentary wobble but a settled estrangement between a president and much of the country. Nearly seven in ten independents disapprove of the way he is doing his job—an especially ominous number for a party that will need ambivalent voters simply to break even in November.

Ayers’ selection to lead the 30,000-student university came four days after the previously chosen candidate, Kevin Guskiewicz, unexpectedly opted to remain president at Michigan State University.

Ayers will replace former President Jim Clements, who abruptly retired in December after 12 years on the job.

Draped with buntings of red, white, and blue and other decorations meant to mark both the nation’s 250th anniversary and the county’s 200th, the Anderson County Library has turned its Anderson location into a kind of civic stage set, one that celebrates memory while also trying to persuade the county that libraries are not merely repositories of books but engaged participants in community life.

Tonya Winbush has asked the South Carolina Supreme Court to expedite her appeal in Anderson’s Seat 5 election fight, a case that has displayed an array of civic dramas in which residency, procedure, and political fate all seem to occupy the same cramped room.