Central Elementary receives Lighthouse Award

From Michael Gilbert, Orange County Schools public information officer:

Central Elementary School received the prestigious NCASCD’s 2010 Lighthouse Award.  In the span of three years, Ms. Daniels and her staff have taken Central Elementary School from Title I sanctions to among the best in the state.

For more information, read tomorrow's The News of Orange County.

Central visits downtown

A quick production day post: First-graders from Central Elementary School took a field trip to downtown Hillsborough, visiting businesses. We were lucky enough to have them stop in.
In the picture, Josh talks to the last group to come in about what we do here at The News of Orange County.
It was great of them to stop by, and a blast talking to the students, many of whom I had photographed or talked to in my trips to the school.

next week

As Josh mentioned, I voted yesterday at the Board of Elections. Being the 65th person to drop in a ballot was a little bit sad. I know Hillsborough's race may not necessarily be as exciting as a presidential election, but it's still important. Alright, I'll come down off my soapbox, but I do hope everyone goes out and votes.

It was nice having part of the Education Page be in colour this week; I don't think it's happened before in the year I've been here, so it was great to be able to show off some of the colourful photos I took and received. Big thanks to the Central PTSA for providing me with some really lovely photos of the fire safety presentation by Billy Nicholson, too. If you've got photos you'd like to see in the paper, by all means, e-mail them to me or drop them off at our office on King Street.

Anyway, this upcoming week is a bit up in the air for what I'll have, but here's what I'm working on:

• Halloween event photos from Friday;

• Maybe an Educator of the Week, if I can get a good enough backlog going. (On that note, if you know someone who's doing a great job in area schools, let me know!)

• A social-ish piece on a local water walking class;

• I'm going to next week's Board of Education meeting;

• And a few other things, like FEMMES, awards and a local company whose toy invention is taking off.

If you've got anything else, drop me a line at v(dot)shortley(at)newsoforange(dot)com or give me a shout at 732-2171.

what's next

Well, despite the four-day workweek, I've still got a bunch of stories coming in for the 9 Sept. edition.

Here's a look at some of what I've got so far:

•I got my hands on the district-level numbers for SAT scores, and there's some interesting stuff in there.

• The state teacher turnover report was released today, and the district's rate is a bit higher than the state's, though not nearly as high as Jones County, which has the highest turnover rate of more than 25 percent.

• I'll be heading over to Central Elementary School for two stories, but you'll have to wait and see what they are!

• Durham Tech is having a JobsNOW orientation tonight at the Orange County Campus. I'll have some information about that.

As Josh said, I'll be off tomorrow, so I hope everyone has a great Labour Day weekend!

donorschoose.org

I was surfing around on all the schools' Web sites, when I came across a link to DonorsChoose.org on Hillsborough Elementary School's site. DonorsChoose is a site that allows teachers to post projects they need money for so people can donate money to whatever school or project they chose.

In Orange County Schools there are 12 projects across four schools — nine at New Hope and one at each of Gravelly Hill, Central and A.L. Stanback.

This is a great resource, if you're looking for your money to have a direct impact on the classroom.

central ptsa

The new Central PTSA leadership have done a great job so far this year (before the official start of the school year!) to get the word out about what's going on over there. To that end, they have a Facebook profile (search under e-mail: centralptsa1@gmail.com), e-mail address, Web site and blog. So, enjoy Central parents — and all of you who want to see what's going on at the elementary school. I know I'm glad to have these great resources.