Sunbury man sentenced for rape, abduction

A Sun­bury man who admit­ted to rap­ing and abduct­ing an Indi­ana teenager was sen­tenced to 14 years in prison, the max­i­mum penalty for the crimes.

Scott Cisco, 47, orig­i­nally was charged with six counts of rape and three counts of kid­nap­ping, all first-degree felonies, as well as one count of abduc­tion, a third-degree felony. Cisco pleaded guilty in Jan­u­ary to the lesser charges of one count of rape and abduc­tion — a nego­ti­a­tion the victim’s mother said was accepted so her daugh­ter wouldn’t have to face Cisco at trial.

Cisco is to reg­is­ter as a tier III sex offender upon his release.

Big Walnut 2013 Kindergarten Registration Week

Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict ele­men­tary school build­ings will hold their 2013 Kinder­garten Reg­is­tra­tion Week from Mon­day April 8 through Fri­day, April 12.

The district’s three ele­men­tary schools — Big Wal­nut Ele­men­tary, Gen­eral Rose­crans Ele­men­tary and Hylen Soud­ers Ele­men­tary — will accept reg­is­tra­tion pack­ets from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. each day dur­ing reg­is­tra­tion week; and all three ele­men­tary build­ings will offer extended hours form 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Tues­day, April 9.

Golden Eagle Mentor Awards nominations sought

Each year, mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict honor their own at a recep­tion hosted by Roush Honda imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing the may board of edu­ca­tion meet­ing. The Golden Eagle Men­tor Award rec­og­nizes com­mu­nity mem­bers and staff who self­lessly serve at an extra­or­di­nary level either at a school build­ing or in the school district.

Roush Honda/Eagle Men­tor Award recip­i­ents are selected through a nom­i­na­tion process that begins this month when school admin­is­tra­tors, staff mem­bers and area res­i­dents are asked to nom­i­nate indi­vid­u­als they believe have made a pos­i­tive impact in the life of Big Wal­nut students.

Big Walnut Young Life a growing ministry

If you’re walk­ing or dri­ving past Sun­bury Town Hall on a Mon­day evening and won­der what all the teenagers are doing hang­ing out around the build­ing and going inside, it’s a weekly meet­ing of Big Wal­nut High School’s Young Life.

Young Life is a non-denominational out­reach min­istry for high school stu­dents started in 1941 by Jim Ray­burn. In 1938 Ray­burn, a young Pres­by­ter­ian youth leader and sem­i­nary stu­dent in Gainesville, Texas, was given a chal­lenge. A local min­is­ter invited him to con­sider the neigh­bor­hood high school as his parish and develop ways of con­tact­ing kids who had no inter­est in church.

Ray­burn started a weekly club for kids. There was singing, a skit or two, and a sim­ple mes­sage about Jesus Christ. After grad­u­at­ing from sem­i­nary, Ray­burn and four other sem­i­nar­i­ans col­lab­o­rated, and Young Life was offi­cially born. They devel­oped the club idea through­out Texas, with an empha­sis on show­ing kids that faith in God can be not only fun, but also exhil­a­rat­ing and life changing.

Electricity aggregation opt-out period over

Trebel’s Scott Bel­cas­tro, the Vil­lage of Sunbury’s energy bro­ker, was in cham­bers dur­ing last Wednesday’s (March 6) Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing, along with Fred Holmes of Vol­un­teer Energy, to present an update on the village’s res­i­den­tial and small busi­ness elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion programs.

Holmes began stump­ing for Vil­lage Coun­cil to place the two res­i­den­tial and small busi­ness aggre­ga­tion issues – elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas — on the bal­lot well over two years ago; and when the issues reached vot­ers they approved allow­ing the vil­lage to nego­ti­ate res­i­den­tial elec­tric and nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion by sig­nif­i­cant mar­gins. 
The vil­lage sub­se­quently approved Bel­cas­tro to serve as its energy bro­ker. Bel­cas­tro then nego­ti­ated an elec­tric­ity aggre­ga­tion pro­gram with Powell-based Bor­der Energy; Vol­un­teer Energy would be the vil­lage nat­ural gas provider if a nat­ural gas aggre­ga­tion pro­gram moves forward.

Local Taxpayers will feel squeeze under Governor’s proposed School Funding

School fund­ing in Ohio relies on the con­cept of shared respon­si­bil­ity between the local and state gov­ern­ment. Basi­cally, school dis­trict rev­enue con­sists of three main sources, which includes local, state and fed­eral. The local rev­enue sources account for 74.49 per­cent and include local prop­erty taxes, local income taxes, tuition pay­ments, fees, sales, etc. The state rev­enue sources account for 21.77 per­cent and include such sub­si­dies as Basic State Aid, rollback/homestead prop­erty tax allo­ca­tions, and state grants. The fed­eral rev­enue sources account for just 3.74 per­cent and include both restricted and unre­stricted fed­eral grants such as Title I (Read­ing), Title VI-B (Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion) and Title II-A (Teacher Pro­fes­sional Development).

Barber says 3-tier busing stays; Two-tier discussed for 2014-15

Dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing, dis­trict Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent Gary Bar­ber raised the issue of 2013–14 school year bell times. Those bell times deter­mine the district’s trans­porta­tion sched­ule – one-tier, two-tier, or three-tier busing.

In a one-tier bus­ing model all dis­trict schools start up and end their days at the same time, requir­ing the most buses on the road at the same time. In a two-tier sys­tem the dis­trict has two start and end bell times, allow­ing dri­vers to ser­vice one school’s bell times and then another’s, result­ing in fewer buses on the road and lower costs to the dis­trict in both fleet and personnel.

State Report Card final; BW Excellent With Distinction

It was already com­mon knowl­edge, but noth­ing was set in cement until the state inves­ti­ga­tion into school dis­tricts fal­si­fy­ing stu­dent infor­ma­tion to enhance their state report card was com­plete; but dur­ing Mon­day evening’s Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing Dis­trict Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Achieve­ment Angie Pol­lock reported that all 2011-12 State of Ohio Report Cards are now official.

Pol­lock said it’s finally con­firmed that Big Wal­nut is one of the 138 Ohio school dis­tricts out of the state’s 610 that have been rated Excel­lent With Dis­tinc­tion for the 2011-12 school year. Pol­lock also noted that the dis­trict has been rated Excel­lent for seven con­sec­u­tive years.