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A newsletter from Nelson County School
Superintendent Anthony Orr

—Photo by Anthony Orr
Hot air balloons are on display during the Kentucky Bourbon Festival Balloon Glow.

Time to get fired up about our potential

Back in mid-September, my family and I enjoyed our first Kentucky Bourbon Festival Balloon Glow—along with several thousand friends. It was a gorgeous evening with beautiful weather. We enjoyed visiting with friends and seeing the beautiful balloons as they fired up throughout the evening. With gratitude to the event organizers for a delightful night, I left with a faint twinge of sadness that none of the balloons left the ground, but remained tethered throughout the evening.

Allowing those balloons to fly would have involved more preparation, great teamwork and even some risk. Ropes tying the balloons down would have to be released. Weights keeping their baskets on the ground would have to be left behind. What a change these things would have brought to that evening!

Looking back through the photos I had from the evening, I realized a connection to our students and schools in the Nelson County system. We have and are building beautiful facilities for our students. We have hard working staff members and a supportive school board and community. We have bright, good-hearted children and active parents. These are the elements that supply a tremendous potential to our students and our schools.

Getting our students and schools to achieve more will require smart preparation, focused collaboration and acceptance of the uncertainty of change. Negative attitudes that tie our schools down must be cut. Low expectations that weigh on our students must be left behind. However, the end results will be all the more uplifting for our families and our community as we "fire up" our resources and raise our students to their potential.

What a beautiful sight that will be!

Pathway to space – The vision from Nelson County all the way into space is quickly snapping into focus for students at Nelson County Area Technology Center (NCATC) and Nelson County High School. These two schools in particular, along with the entire Nelson County School District, are key players in an innovative program designed to create a new career pathway that integrates academics and technical courses to prepare students for careers in space science. "The whole Nelson County School District is involved. Our biggest partner is the high school, but we want to involve children at all grade levels in the school district," said John Sanders, the principal at NCATC. The technology center this fall received a $58,000 Perkins Reserve Fund federal grant to fund the initial design phase of the project and get the ball rolling. NCATC activities, including contacts with the international space station, have already attracted the interest of the University of Kentucky and Morehead State University. These two universities are major players in the Kentucky Space Grant Consortium. Nearby St. Catharine College and Elizabethtown Community and Technical College are also interested in the career pathway activities here. For additional information on this topic, please go here.

The Nelson County Board of Education regularly takes note of the many recent accomplishments of our staff and students. Here are just a few of the highlights heard during the October board meeting.

A worthy cause – The Air Force Junior ROTC program raised and donated $2,440 for the Tri-County March for Babies, and 42 cadets participated in the October March for Babies at Bernheim Forest. The group took the following honors: Top Youth Team, #5 Team overall and Top Youth Walker, with freshman Dallas Medley raising $304. This is the second year in a row the group took the Top Youth Team and Top Youth Walker, showing their commitment to this worthy cause.

Skype chat – Mrs. Amanda Nord's eighth-grade reading enrichment class at Bloomfield Middle School (BMS) hosted a video chat via Skype with Darrius Garrett, one of the original Freedom Writers. Skype is a free program which allows you to make video phone calls from one computer to another, anywhere in the world. This is the first time BMS has had the opportunity to incorporate such technology in the classroom. Twenty-six students participated in this engaging activity. The students asked insightful questions and received detailed answers, enriching their experience.

Something to sing about – Madison Faulkner, a fifth-grade student at Foster Heights Elementary School, has been selected for All-State Choir and will perform with that group this month. Also from Foster Heights, several students represented the school at the Fourth District Treble Chorus Performance. They are Madison Faulkner, Jacob Gilpin, Grace Frederick, Paul Hockensmith, Caroline Middleton, Miles Newton, Zachary Hamilton, Ike Johnson, Kaitlyn Wilson, Alex Barlow and Elizabeth Spalding.

A gifted response – Cox's Creek Elementary School (CCE) principal Jan Lanham has been named the representative for gifted education to the state Response to Intervention Task Force. Also from CCE, Clara Fulkerson, curriculum resource consultant and gifted resource teacher, directed the Arts and History Program at Wickland during fall break. She brought valuable history and arts connections to students during the three-day experience. In other CCE news, Jacob Sneed took second place in the free throw contest at Big Blue Madness on Oct. 15 in Lexington.

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