LRSD Spotlight

Central students competed in the State Envirothon Competition on November 20 and 21 in Conway, AR. Teams compete in five natural resource areas: soils, aquatics, forestry, wildlife, and a current environmental issue.

Central won five of the six categories in the competition with our two teams taking first and second place.

Deepa Manjanatha, Aya Kantorovich, Carl Napolitano, Adil Khan, and Liston Barber took first place winning the categories of WILDLIFE, AQUATICS, FORESTRY, and ORAL PRESENTATION. They will represent the state of Arkansas in the 25th anniversary International Envirothon to take place in July in Pennsylvania. They will compete for scholarships that total up to $25,000.00 for each team. Our winning team members also received scholarship offers to the University of Arkansas.

Emily Hill, Jerry Melnyk, Cunal Shah, Alex Zhang, and Joseph Berleant took second place winning the category of SOILS in the competition. They are the alternate team to attend the international Envirothon. Congratulations to these students on an outstanding job!

Gibbs students have been celebrating International Education Week with visitors from many cultures and countries. To raise cultural awareness and improve geographic literacy, visitors have been sharing their cultures with students in second through fifth grades. Tuesday, November 15th, was the kick-off of International Education Week, and visitors from Japan and Saudi Arabia talked with second graders in Japan Class and Saudi Arabia class respectively. We have also had guests from Senegal, Vietnam, and Thailand.

LRCH SECME team won the engineering notebook at the UALR HUB for BEST Robotics. SECME stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics Education. LRCH were 3rd overall and the only LRSD school to move on to the Regional's in Fort Smith coming up on December 9th &10th. There were 15 teams in the UALR HUB and there will be 150 teams from 15 states in the Regional's. Congratulations to the SECME Team on this accomplishment!

Mabelvale Magnet Middle School recently hosted a special group of volunteers, City Year! General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark, Board Chair of City Year Little Rock\North Little Rock, recently visited our school to meet with the CY volunteers at Mabelvale. Sarah Roberson, CY Executive Director, and Jeremy Haggard, CY Development Director, were also present to tour the building and meet with the teachers and students. Shawnna James, Team Leader, led our guests through a tour of the school, including classroom drop ins and visits with student participants in the program. The culminating activity was a Round Table Discussion with the City Year volunteers: Shawnna James, Jessica Auger, Isabel Burri, Steve Colby, Jessica Garrett, Omari Holt And Christine Leguzamo. City Year volunteers have contributed many hours of mentoring and tutoring to the students at Mabelvale Magnet Middle School.

The EAST program received an After Hours Grant for approximately $5,000 to map the Haven of Rest Cemetery. The students will use GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and GPS (Global Positioning Systems) to create map of the graves. The students will work 2-3 days a week after school to complete the project. Once it is completed the maps will be given to the Friends of the Haven of Rest Cemetery. This organization is working to preserve the cemetery and hopefully get it listed as one the state's historical landmarks. This EAST After Hours project is funded by the Enhancing Education Through Technology grant made possible by the Arkansas Department of Education and is done in cooperation with the Southeast Educational Service Cooperative and the EAST Initiative. This award has helped to expose our EAST students to new technology and made them aware of their local community. The students are learning an appreciation for Arkansas History as well.