Three Oak Ridge High School football players were taken to two hospitals after a crash in Blount County on Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
The three were reportedly leaving Maryville to come to practice in Oak Ridge at the time of the crash, Wildcats Coach Joe Gaddis said.
He said two players were taken to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville and the third was taken to Blount Memorial.
Gaddis said the three had apparently spent the night with a friend. [Read more…]
Rachel Minardo, president of the Anderson County Education Association, and others have advocated for a 4 percent pay raise for county school teachers and staff. Above, Minardo talks to the 16-member Anderson County Commission in Clinton on Monday. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Note: This story was last updated at 4 p.m.
CLINTON—After rejecting a few other proposals, Anderson County commissioners on Monday approved a 10-cent property tax rate increase to fund 2 percent pay raises for county employees and school teachers and staff.
The vote for the tax rate increase was 9-5-1.
Eight cents of the 10-cent increase is for Anderson County Schools, and the other two cents will cover the pay raise for county employees, with the exception of elected officials and county commissioners.
Earlier in the five-hour meeting, commissioners rejected proposals to:
Teachers said they haven’t had a pay raise since 2012, and they last received a bonus in 2013 and that was $200. They have said all the surrounding school districts except Campbell County pay more, and they want to be able to recruit and retain good teachers—and not be a training ground for other districts. [Read more…]
Josie Fellers and teammate Olivia Jones assemble their robot’s arm at the ORAU Oak Ridge Robotics Academy. (Photo courtesy ORAU)
More than two dozen students from across East Tennessee recently spent a week designing, building, and programming robots during the Oak Ridge Robotics Academy.
Held at ORAU’s Center for Science Education, the week-long, free camp was led by Instructors Tad Douce and Ed Goodwin, both co-directors of the National Robotics Challenge, with help from Kayla Canario, the 2011 Extreme Classroom Makeover contest runner-up and the technology coordinator for Bearden Middle School.
The 6th annual ORAU Oak Ridge Robotics Academy included 26 students in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades.
Students were randomly placed into teams and faced daily engineering challenges such as programming their robots to solve a maze without being controlled or designing an arm to pick up a tennis ball.
“We call it a robotics academy, but it’s really an engineering academy,” Douce said. “Our main goal is to get the students to work with others, think logically and solve problems.” [Read more…]
Color Wheels (Photo courtesy Masskus Productions)
The Golden Dragon Acrobats will perform on Saturday, July 25, in a show that will benefit the Oak Ridge High School Masquers, the school’s drama program. It’s the group’s first visit to East Tennessee in more than a decade.
“The Golden Dragons are recognized throughout the United States and abroad as the premiere Chinese acrobatic touring company of today,” a press release said.
It said the Golden Dragon Acrobats represent the very best of a time-honored circus tradition that began more than 25 centuries ago. The group has more than two dozen highly trained acrobats and technicians.
The family entertainment event starts at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 25, at the Oak Ridge High School Performing Arts Center. All seats are reserved. Tickets are $25 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under, and they are available through www.KnoxvilleTickets.com. [Read more…]
Paul Phillips (left), executive director of the Roane State Foundation, and Dr. Michael Laman (right), Roane State dean of allied health sciences, accept a $2,000 donation from The Foundation for Geriatric Education, represented by Jeff Tambornini (center) of NHC HealthCare, Oak Ridge. (Submitted photo)
The Foundation for Geriatric Education donated $2,000 to help purchase equipment for Roane State Community College’s physical therapist assistant, or PTA, program.
“We greatly appreciate the foundation’s support for Roane State physical therapist assistant students,” said Dr. Michael Laman, Roane State dean of allied health sciences. “PTAs play a critical role in healthcare, and thanks to the foundation’s support, we will be able to provide our students with new learning tools to help them succeed in this important field.”
The Foundation for Geriatric Education is a nonprofit organization started by Dr. Carl Adams, founder of National HealthCare Corporation. Founded in 1982, the Foundation for Geriatric Education provides funding to schools and organizations to enhance their geriatric curriculum. [Read more…]
Pictured above from left to right are Ann Likens, Boys and Girls Club unit board
chair; scholarship recipients J. Lynn Dillon, Zach Kassner, and Ragan Anderson; Lawrence Hahn,
executive director emeritus; and Adam Wilson, unit director. (Submitted photo)
The Boys and Girls Clubs of the Clinch Valley recently awarded its scholarships for 2015.
The 2015 Boys and Girls Club of Oak Ridge Memorial Scholarships are in honor of Mike Anderson, Charles Burger, David Hahn, Kevin Hurt, Charles Kennedy, Baxter Underwood, and Jim Vines.
The 2015 recipients are J. Lynn Dillon, Zach Kassner, and Ragan Anderson.
The Alternative Program is housed in the G Building at Oak Ridge High School.
The Oak Ridge Alternative Program has been renamed the Secret City Academy.
The Oak Ridge Board of Education unanimously approved the name change in a voice vote during its June meeting. Staff and students had previously weighed in on the name change.
Here was the rationale, according to a May meeting agenda for the Oak Ridge Board of Education:
The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society is sponsoring an Introduction to Geocaching Workshop for rising fifth- through eighth-grade students on Tuesday, July 28, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the UT Arboretum.
The cost is $15 and is payable in advance. Advance registration is required, with a limit of 16 participants.
Students will learn the basics of using a GPS device, determining location, inputting waypoints, following a short course, hiding a cache, and finding caches hidden by others, a press release said. The Arboretum Society will provide the GPS devices for the class to use.
Janet Bigelow, a UTAS board member, will teach this workshop with help from other UTAS members. She is a semi-retired middle school teacher with 41 years of indoor and outdoor classroom experience. [Read more…]
Rachel Minardo, right, a first-grade teacher at Claxton Elementary School and president of the Anderson County Education Association, asks for a 4 percent pay raise for county teachers and school staff during a May 28 public hearing on the county budget. Also pictured are Chris Phillips, left, director of accounts and budgets for Anderson County, and Connie Aytes, deputy budget director.
CLINTON—Anderson County teachers were disappointed as they watched county commissioners postpone a vote on the budget and a possible 4 percent pay raise on Tuesday.
But they’ll be back on Monday, June 29, for the next meeting of the Anderson County Commission, said Rachel Minardo, a first-grade teacher at Claxton Elementary School and president of the Anderson County Education Association.
It’s not clear if the 16-member Commission will agree to fund the school system’s request for a 4 percent raise for all teachers and staff. That’s what the Anderson County Board of Education unanimously recommended last month. The request could require the equivalent of an 18-cent increase in the property tax rate.
But during debate over proposed pay raises for some county employees on Tuesday, several commissioners said they want to be consistent and fair to all workers. [Read more…]
Concerns over federal funding, lead-based paint, and the Oak Ridge Preschool appear to be reaching a resolution. And that ought to be good news for parents and staff members who have been worried during the past year that the program could lose federal money and even have part of its program shut down.
There have been two separate concerns, one related to lead-based paint at the Oak Ridge Schools Preschool and the other related to the reported falsification of federal data.
Work to repair the lead-based paint could start June 29, Preschool Principal Charlsey Cofer said after a Monday night meeting of the Oak Ridge Board of Education.
And a one-year probationary period with an on-site monitor for the Head Start program ends the next day, on June 30. That monitor was put into place last year as part of a 10-point plan worked out by Anderson County and Oak Ridge schools in April 2014 after concerns were raised about the falsification of federal data at the Oak Ridge Preschool, specifically reports on the motor skills of children.
Oak Ridge Schools will now do its own monitoring, but Anderson County Schools, which supervises the local Head Start program, can come in at any time. [Read more…]
Scholarship recipients and RSI managers pictured left to right are Staci Ferguson, RSI vice president; Abby Colvais; Peter Caswell, RSI vice president; Sierra Sims; Lonnie Goss; Dmitry Petrov; Morgan Cleveland; Jackson Lloyd; and Paul Clay, RSI President. Not pictured are Christian Ironside and Tyler Moore. (Submitted photo)
Restoration Services Inc. and its voluntary Employee Outreach Committee have offered eight $1,000 college scholarships to “help students achieve their greatest potential through higher education,” a press release said.
Six scholarships were awarded to graduating high school students who will be attending college in the upcoming fall 2015 semester. The remaining two scholarships were awarded to children of RSI employees who are upcoming sophomores, juniors, or seniors currently enrolled in an accredited college for the 2015 fall semester. Scholarship recipients were selected from submitted applications that included academic accomplishments, community involvement and leadership roles, and an essay on current environmental threats.
The scholarship recipients entering college are: [Read more…]
Paige Green
Paige Green has been named the new girls basketball coach at Oak Ridge High School, making her one half of a husband-wife coaching duo. Green’s husband, Aaron Green, is the boys basketball coach.
The appointment was announced Wednesday and went into effect immediately. Green, who has an impressive résumé as a player and has coached middle school and AAU basketball, will replace David Scott, who announced his decision to resign in late May. Scott cited family reasons after a second stint as coach.
It’s not unprecedented to have a husband-wife coaching duo. Aaron Green said he knows of two other similar coaching couples, the McWilliams at Upperman High School near Cookeville and Keith and Jennifer Galloway at Hardin Valley Academy. [Read more…]
