Big Walnut juniors recognized by Sunbury/Big Walnut Area Chamber

Last Fri­day morn­ing The Delaware Area Career Cen­ter and Colum­bus State Com­mu­nity Col­lege hosted a Sunbury/Big Wal­nut Area Cham­ber of Com­merce break­fast meet­ing at North­Star Golf Club hon­or­ing four Big Wal­nut High School juniors, one Colum­bus State stu­dent and one DACC stu­dent who have demon­strated out­stand­ing achieve­ment in the com­bined areas of schol­ar­ship, lead­er­ship and service.

Present for the occa­sion were Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Super­in­ten­dent Steve Mazzi, DACC Super­in­ten­dent Mary Beth Free­man, CSCC Delaware Cam­pus Dean Angelo Frole, and Big Wal­nut High School guid­ance coun­selors Nancy McCracken-Bennett, Tammi Jor­dan and Molly Fortune.

New Ohio Combat Infantry Badge flag dedicated

A newly designed State of Ohio Head­quar­ters Com­pany Flag of the Com­bat Infantryman’s Asso­ci­a­tion was com­mem­o­rated dur­ing an offi­cial cer­e­mony at the Ohio Fallen Heroes Memo­r­ial Park on Sat­ur­day, April 6. Ohio Com­man­der Chris Callen designed the flag, which will rep­re­sent the Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion in future events such as parades, pub­lic events, and Honor Guard ceremonies.

“As you know the Ohio Com­bat Infantryman’s Asso­ci­a­tion was formed for the pur­pose of rep­re­sent­ing U.S. Army Com­bat Infantry Badge recip­i­ents through­out Ohio,” Callen said. “Since our incep­tion our mem­ber­ship is grow­ing and we are con­tin­u­ing to look for new mem­bers. Hope­fully with our flag being rep­re­sented dur­ing future events we will attract more mem­bers once they real­ize the Asso­ci­a­tion exists.”

Souders McTeacher Night draws crowd

There’s noth­ing like meet­ing the real thing. Whether it’s a politi­cian, a world-class ath­lete or a famous movie star, the real thing is worth an evening out for a chance for a photo-op, a hand­shake, and maybe a word or two.

That’s what area fam­i­lies were able to do dur­ing last week’s Hylen Soud­ers Ele­men­tary School McTeacher Night at the Sun­bury McDonald’s. And they didn’t get to rub shoul­ders with just any old politi­cian, dime a dozen movie star or aging ath­lete turned used car sales­man; they got to bump knuck­les and high five with the one and only Ronald McDonald.

Katie’s Relay Flea Market set for tomorrow, Saturday

The Amer­i­can Can­cer Society’s Big Wal­nut Area Relay For Life begins on Fri­day evening, June 7, at Big Wal­nut High School; but area teams are already busy orga­niz­ing and rais­ing funds to help reach this year’s local goal.

Katie Cautela, owner of Katie’s Kloset on the Square, will hold Katie’s Kloset Fundrais­ing Team Event, a First Annual Flea Mar­ket with Bake Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., tomor­row (Fri­day, April 19) and Sat­ur­day (April 20) at Sun­bury Town Hall.

Common Core Standards coming to BW Schools

Google Com­mon Core State Stan­dards and you come up with a host of hits — 37,700,000 hits to be exact. The Com­mon Core Stan­dards, as they are pop­u­larly known, are get­ting media atten­tion across the spec­trum, from more respectable and knowl­edge­able media out­lets like the New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post and National Pub­lic Radio, all the way down the prover­bial food chain to bot­tom feed­ing bloggers.

Dur­ing Mon­day evening’s Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing Dis­trict Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Achieve­ment Angie Pol­lock briefly spoke about the new Com­mon Core State Stan­dards. She said she wanted to remind every­body Ohio school dis­tricts have been oper­at­ing under very sim­i­lar stan­dards for well over a decade.

Pol­lock also noted that the dis­trict has been phas­ing in the national Com­mon Core State Stan­dards in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts and Math for the past three years. (Com­mon Core State Stan­dards can be mis­lead­ing because the word State is in the title, but it means stan­dards that will be com­mon core stan­dards in every state in the coun­try that adopts the stan­dards.) The other two stan­dards areas, Sci­ence and Social Stud­ies, are tran­si­tion­ing into what is called Revised Ohio Aca­d­e­mic Con­tent Standards.

Barber resigns to take helm at Marion City Schools

On Mon­day evening mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion accepted the res­ig­na­tion of assis­tant dis­trict admin­is­tra­tor Gary Bar­ber. In a let­ter dated Mon­day, April 1, Bar­ber informed dis­trict staff that he had accepted a posi­tion as super­in­ten­dent of the Mar­ion City Schools.

Bar­ber was hired as the Big Wal­nut High School Prin­ci­pal in 2007; he came from Franklin Heights, where he served as the Franklin Heights High School prin­ci­pal. In 2009, when for­mer dis­trict super­in­ten­dent April Domine resigned, Big Walnut’s assis­tant super­in­ten­dent Steve Mazzi was tapped to take the dis­trict helm, and on Jan­u­ary 1, 2009, Bar­ber was selected to fill the vacated assis­tant superintendent’s position.

Dur­ing the years that fol­lowed, Bar­ber and Mazzi guided the dis­trict through a crip­pling reces­sion, a major staff reduc­tion, two failed emer­gency oper­at­ing levies, one suc­cess­ful levy and a host of belt-tightening mea­sures, while at the same time main­tain­ing the school district’s Excel­lent rat­ing on the Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Report Card.

Galena Building sold to Journey Fellowship

After 156 years of serv­ing east­ern Delaware County stu­dents the Galena Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing, for­merly the Galena School and then a build­ing serv­ing Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict stu­dents, was sold at auc­tion on Wednes­day, April 3.

Par­tially built in 1867, the present building’s foot­print took shape with addi­tions and ren­o­va­tions in the early 20th cen­tury. With 15,000 square feet of inte­rior space and sit­ting on a .942 acre lot on a knoll, the his­toric build­ing over­looked Galena Square and Big Wal­nut Creek.

Through the years since con­sol­i­da­tion in the early 1950’s the Galena School build­ing served a vari­ety of grades, one through nine; and it was ren­o­vated in 1991 to house the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict admin­is­tra­tion offices.

St. John Neumann breaks ground on church expansion

On Sun­day, St. John Neu­mann Parish offi­cially broke ground on a project for a 17,559-square-foot church expan­sion which includes a day chapel build­ing to be used for ado­ra­tion and week­day Mass, as well as con­nec­tors for all four parish buildings.

The cur­rent church build­ing was ded­i­cated in Sep­tem­ber 2004 when the orig­i­nal 1983 church was out­grown. Since 2004, St. John Neu­mann Parish pop­u­la­tion has tripled to over 1,200 fam­i­lies. A long-range mas­ter plan cre­ated in 2010 by the work of numer­ous vol­un­teers with input from all parish fam­i­lies, indi­cated the need for an expanded church after the Parish Offices and Faith & Fam­ily Cen­ter ded­i­ca­tion in 2012, which pro­vided edu­ca­tion, office and social space for this dynamic parish.

Transepts will be added to expand from 500 seats to 1,000. The parish is also adding beauty, sym­me­try and pro­por­tion to the space with larger stained glass win­dows, a carved wood altar of repose, large Sta­tions of the Cross and painted murals depict­ing the life to Jesus, Mary and Joseph. An immer­sion bap­tismal font will also be added, floors will be tiled, lights replaced and upgraded, new pews con­structed, and a state of the art audio and video sys­tem will be installed.