Schools

Young students at Jessamine County schools got a chance to celebrate Arbor Day on Friday by planting trees on their own schools’ grounds. State forester Kent Slusher visited Nicholasville Elementary School, Jessamine Early Learning Village and Warner Elementary School to plant sugar-maple and blue-ash trees. He said the blue-ash trees were especially appropriate for the land in front of JELV, which used to be the county’s middle school. “Trees like this, when I went to junior high school, used to be in the front; blue ash used to be right here in the front of the school, and now they’ve all kind of gone away,” Slusher said.

One of Kentucky's best known elected officials weighed in recently on how the state should prevent massacres like the one in Newtown, Conn. Sen. Rand Paul's ideas were characteristically bold, but also off the mark.  Paul told a group of Oldham County business leaders last week he believes teachers and principals who obtain licenses to carry concealed firearms should be allowed to do so on the job. It's not surprising that Paul, a patron saint...

The Southern Athletic Association has added the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis as affiliate football members of the recently formed conference. The affiliate membership begins in the fall of 2015.   The University of Chicago has an undergraduate enrollment of 4,500 and was recently selected as the No. 5 ranked school in the National Universities category by the U.S. News and World Report. Washington University in St. Louis enrolls over 6,200 undergraduates and was ranked No. 13 overall in the same National University rankings.

Hustonville Elementary Principal David Morris has accepted a position with the Boyle County Board of Education. He will be serving as the Finance Director and looks forward to his new job. “It's a wonderful opportunity and it will be challenging,” Morris said. Morris and his wife are building a house in Boyle County and accepting the position was in their best interest, he said. While Morris was the principal of Hustonville Elementary for only a year, he has worked throughout the county for eleven years.

The superintendent of Jessamine County Schools is a finalist for the same post in Fayette County. Lu Young, who has worked in the Jessamine school district for 28 years, including the last seven as its chief, participated in a day-long interview process Tuesday in Lexington after the finalists were announced June 1. Current superintendent Stu Silberman announced his retirement in February and will be the next executive director of the Prichard Committee....

The Jessamine County school district's summer-feeding program is off to a roaring start despite the closing of one of the main cafeteria locations. The federally funded program started June 4 and is in its fourth year of providing free lunches Monday through Friday to all children 18 years old or younger. It has expanded to 11 locations across the county this year but is not serving meals out of Nicholasville Elementary as in years past; the school is undergoing a comprehensive renovation.

Boyle County schools will not have school Friday. School will be in session Monday.

Dear Editor, I want to commend Sen. John McCain for his position on arts education. Our schools need more arts education. Despite including the arts as one of the 10 core academic subjects, the No Child Left Behind law has actually pushed arts classes to the side. Tom WaltersNicholasville

LIBERTY - High water that blocked highways during the night forced the Casey County schools to close today. Flooding kept Ky. 70 West closed this morning, and water was across the road on Red Hill Road in Dunnville, and Ky. 198 between Middleburg and Yosemite, according to Roger Durham, school district transportation officer. "We decided to call school off today," Durham said, adding that some of the water has receded. Buses could have backtracked, but attendance would have been down, he said.

The Harrodsburg Independent School District will be in session Monday, Feb. 16, to make up a day missed for inclement weather earlier this year. Director of Pupil Personnel Larry Cotton said the district had originally scheduled Presidents' Day as a holiday.

STANFORD - A rainbow over the Stuart Underwood Auditorium greeted the 68 newest graduates of Fort Logan High School Thursday, as they stepped out of school and into the rest of their lives. An hour and a half earlier, twin graduating seniors Candi and Mandy Miracle were waiting with excited smiles on their faces in the line of all-but-graduated students. "I'm really nervous," Mandy said as last-moment instructions began echoing down the noisy hallway. "I wasn't nervous until about 10 minutes ago, and now it's like one minute away.

Often referred to as “the quads” by friends and classmates, siblings Brendan, Delaney, Galen and Regan Overstreet will be among hundreds of students graduating Friday night at Boyle County High School. The quadruplets are believed to be the first in school's 50-year history. “I say quads, it's like twins but there's four, said Delaney Overstreet with a smile. She is the only girl out of the four and said it often seems people have trouble understanding. Following graduation, Brendan, who is the firstborn of the four, plans to enter the Air National Guard.

STANFORD - Lincoln County School Board approved a plan Tuesday to refinance bonds and save $680,000 over the course of 17 years. Greg Phillips, a bond consultant for the district with Hilliard Lyons, said a unique contract clause allows the board to call in $5.43 million worth of Build America Bonds sold in 2010 and sell new bonds at a better interest rate. The bonds in question were taken out for energy efficiency measures and subsidized by the federal government while the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was in effect, Phillips explained.

Supports prayer at graduation   As the graduation of the Lincoln County High School Class of 2013 draws near, I would like to say that I support having prayer at the exercise.  I have heard a great deal concerning the controversy. I don't think that anyone should be prevented from expressing their concerns about prayer at a school event. I firmly believe in freedom of speech.  As a pastor, I firmly believe that the problems we are facing in our schools today, i.e. teen pregnancies, drug abuse,teenage drinking, and bullying could very well stem from Godly values being removed from our education system as far back as the day when prayer was removed from schools.

All A's - Donovan Reynolds, Dalton Patterson, Saragrace Ramlochan, Tara Watson, Victoria Long, Maili Cole, Chaney Hagan, Christopher Whitaker, Alexis Adams, Benjamin Harris, Emmalee Patterson, Ryan York, Brianna Johnson, Ricky Carter, Landon Burton, Emily Smith and Chelsea Denney. A's and B's - Hope VanHook, David Walker, James Hunt, Trent Wren, Joey Ellis, Pascha Mullins, Shelbie Mills , Desirae Ellison, Brooklyn Garrett, Kaylee Wells, Trent Watson, Kayla Spencer, Danielle Cornett, Eric McDaniel, Danielle Miller, Madison Williams, William Padgett, Phillip Lane, Marley Ranck, Gracie Padgett, Makayla Butt, Carissa Whitaker, Dalton Jenkins, Tyler Grodi, Jesse Riley, Alexis Snow, Daitlyn Gray, Charity Bowling, Christian Hargis, Kaylee Lorsong Baker, Samantha Honaker, Emily Liming and Nicholas Estep.

The West Jessamine High School principal was demoted from that position last week, according to personnel actions obtained by The Journal through an open-records request. Ed Jones was suspended with pay April 29 and was no longer the principal of the school May 14. The personnel actions acknowledged by the Jessamine County Board of Education on Monday and obtained by The Journal on Thursday indicate Jones was demoted from principal to teacher May 14 and that he was transferred to a special assignment at central office May 15 for the remainder of the school year.

The West High site-based decision-making (SBDM) council met Tuesday to begin the process of selecting a new principal with still no official details available on the circumstances of their previous principal's departure. Ed Jones had served six years as principal of the school. He was suspended with pay April 29 and was no longer the principal as of May 15. An open-records request from The Journal for the personnel actions acknowledged at Monday's school-board meeting is pending, but officials have given no details so far on the reason for the suspension or why Jones was no longer the principal.

With just two weeks left in their sophomore year, East Jessamine High School students participating in an iPad innovation project pleaded with the school board Monday to support expanding the program to buy more devices. But the request came too late in the game - next year's tentative budget was approved Monday - and East High is gearing up to ask for support from the community. East High's Project 225 innovation plan began when current sophomores were freshman with a focus on competency-based graduation and standards-based grading.

The Jessamine County Board of Education chose a familiar face Monday night as the architect for an upcoming renovation to Warner Elementary School. The board heard presentations from two firms, Tate Hill Jacobs and Murphy + Graves, at a work session April 8. Chief operating officer Jimmy Adams told the board at its May work session that the administration would be recommending Tate Hill Jacobs because of architect Margie Jacobs' familiarity with the school and her history with the district.

At the Boyle County High School Senior Awards Night on May 13, the following students were recognized. The following students were honored for earning a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or above: Ryan Alexander, Logan Arnold, Madeline Aumiller, Charles C. Blevins, Hannah Bodner, Maria Bristow, Tayler Burchfield, Cullen Byrne, Kate Carman, David J. Carter, Emily Carter, Lyndsey Cook, Alexis Draut, Laura Elsea, Tabitha Evans, John D. Faulkner, Nicholas...