Welcome to Friday…

Weather: Warming up. Still nothing but sunny skies, but temperatures will be getting a little warmer day by day. Today’s high will reach the lower 70s, with highs on Saturday in the upper 70s and on Sunday in the lower 80s. Nighttime lows in the middle 40s tonight, drifting up to the middle 50s by Sunday night.

School separation issue gets contentious. An emailed message from Jefferson County Board of Education President Jennifer Parsons to a parent in Mt. Olive about students there being excluded from Gardendale’s new school system led to a rebuke from Gardendale Supt. Dr. Patrick Martin in a press statement Thursday afternoon. That, in turn, led to a testy response from Parsons after Thursday night’s regular monthly board meeting, who said she stands by her emailed remarks. The whole matter goes all the way back to the Gardendale system’s decision to not seek annexation of the area of Mt. Olive whose students have attended Bragg Middle and Gardendale High schools for many years. That decision meant that those students will be moved by JefCoEd to other schools remaining in their system, unless negotiations between the county and Gardendale systems allow them to be grandfathered in.

Ebola in the Big Apple. A doctor who just returned from treating Ebola-stricken patients in Africa has now contracted the disease himself, and is being treated at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Of concern to authorities there is the fact that Craig Spencer had previous ridden two subway lines, gone bowling, and taken a taxi. Three other people who had contact with Spencer are also quarantined. The incident came during a tense day in the city, after a man attacked police officers there with a hatchet, critically injuring one; the attacker was shot and killed. Terrorism has not been ruled out in that attack.

Sports: Looking out for number one. The NJN Big Game for this week features Gardendale hosting Clay-Chalkville, the top-ranked team in Class 6A. An upset by the Rockets would be the first of a number-one team since the early 1990s, and would throw the Region 6 playoff seeds topsy-turvy. In other games with playoff implications, Fultondale hosts Midfield, with the winner getting home-field advantage in the first playoff round; Pinson Valley heads to Shades Valley; No. 8 (5A) Mortimer Jordan is at Springville; and Locust Fork goes to J.B. Pennington.