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Sadeh and Meach named valedictorian, salutatorian at HVRHS
Ruth Epstein
Mar 18, 2026
Housatonic Valley Regional High School salutatorian Alexa Meach, left, and valedictorian Ibby Sadeh.
Ruth Epstein
FALLS VILLAGE — The top-ranking students in the class of 2026 at Housatonic Valley Regional High School attribute a great deal of their success to the dedicated teachers they’ve had over the last four years.
Valedictorian Ibby Sadeh and salutatorian Alexa Meach emphasized during a recent interview the important role many of the educators played in helping them achieve scholastic honors.
“We had great teachers,” said Sadeh, 17. “They were very approachable.” Sadeh, of Falls Village, and the daughter of Jaimie and Shamu Sadeh, is an alum of Lee H. Kellogg School, graduating in a class of nine. “It was definitely a weird transition coming into a class of 85, but all the freshmen teachers were so nice.”
She also said surrounding yourself with like-minded students makes for a successful high school career. A self-starter, she has always strived for good grades. “I put pressure on myself. My parents didn’t push me.”
Meach, 18, daughter of Jennifer and Robert Meach of Canaan, agreed, saying, “All the people and teachers here helped a lot. You find people and settle in. You get out of it what you put into it.”
Both serve on the school’s Class Council and are members of Next Women. Sadeh is part of The Lakeville Journal high school journalism program that produces HVRHS Today, the newspaper that is created by the students with staff from The Lakeville Journal, and a member of the Housatonic Musical Theater Society, which is putting on “Guys and Dolls” this week. Meach, an animal lover, works at H.H.H. Canine Lodge & Ranch in East Canaan.
Sadeh said her favorite courses at Housatonic were history and humanities, but while she has not declared any major when she begins at Tufts University in the fall, she is leaning toward science. For Meach, language and composition, environmental science and AP literature were among her favorite classes. She plans to study political science at New York University.
“2016 sparked me,” she said. “I stay up on current events. People in my family have differing views. There are multiple opinions in our conversations.”
Teachers such as Letitia Garcia Tripp, Damon Osora and Lori Bucco stood out and the pair also noted that American history with Peter Vermilyea was memorable.
They said they look forward to moving on with both trepidation and excitement.
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Lakeville bot-builder gears up for regional competition
Patrick L. Sullivan
Mar 18, 2026
William Sellery, of Lakeville, tests his robot ahead of the Eastern Pennsylvania Regional competition scheduled for April.
Patrick L. Sullivan
LAKEVILLE — During his spring break, William Sellery, a senior at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, spent hours inside the Methodist Church hall in Lakeville testing and troubleshooting a competition robot.
Sellery, the captain of Mercersburg’s robotics team, was preparing for the Eastern Pennsylvania Regional competition — a key qualifying event for the international championship scheduled for April in St. Louis.
On Thursday, March 12, he put the robot through its paces on a practice course that filled most of the church hall.
He directed the robot to a structure holding brightly colored, multi-sided objects slightly smaller than a softball.
The robot first gathered the balls using a complicated system of wheels.
“And a lot of rubber bands and zip ties,” Sellery said.
The robot then moved to the structure — an elevated, narrow rail — and deposited the balls.
Using an arm extending from the side, the robot pushed the balls along the rail and back to the floor.
Satisfied with the maneuver, Sellery turned to a laptop, explaining that he was fine-tuning the code that allows the robot to function autonomously.
Sellery said each team has four members. The drills last a couple of minutes, and team members have specific tasks — such as calling out directions to the person controlling the robot about where it should go next.
The Eastern Pennsylvania Regionals Sellery had been preparing for were held last weekend. Sellery said the competition “is the last stop before the international competition.”
Sellery also detailed the inner workings of the robot. He had an array of batteries charged and ready to go, each lasting about four minutes of nonstop use.
“There are eight motors in the robot, so the batteries go pretty fast,”he said.
The robot also includes two pneumatic devices that require air pressure. Sellery used a small, handheld air compressor to charge them to 100 pounds per square inch (psi).
Sellery said judges closely monitor the pressure. Going over the 100 psi limit results in disqualification.
Sellery has been interested in robotics since participating in a Salisbury Recreation LEGO robotics event at Town Hall in 2015.
He said the competition gets hectic, and that’s fine with him.
“The most stressful moments I enjoy the most.”
Sellery reported Sunday evening, March 15, that the team’s performance at the regional competition was “not amazing.”
“We ran into some mechanical problems” and placed 40th overall.
But there was some good news.
“We also got an interview from a major YouTube channel,” FUN Robotics, and the team found out they received a judges award after they left.
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Many Region One students can access school health care if enrolled
Patrick L. Sullivan
Mar 18, 2026
Housatonic Valley Regional High School
File photo
Community Health and Wellness (CHWC), based in Torrington, operates three school-based health centers (SBHC) in Region One schools, giving students access to medical health services during the school day. However, medical staff cannot treat students unless their families enroll them in the program.
Becca Malone,a nursewith the program, urged parents during an online discussion Wednesday, March 11, to sign their children up. She emphasized that participation in the SBHC program does not replace a child’s pediatrician.
“It’s just another layer of support.”
CHWC currently operates centers at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, North Canaan Elementary School and Sharon Center School. Both medical and behavioral health services are available at the high school and North Canaan. Sharon currently offers behavioral health only.
There are 276 children enrolled in Region One.
Malone said she believes the school-based model is especially effective “because I get to see the students in their natural habitat.”
When families enroll, anything from routine health procedures to emergencies can be dealt with promptly at school.
Malone said this takes pressure off parents, who otherwise have to miss work in order to get their children to and from medical appointments that often involve a lengthy drive. A prompt response can also preclude an expensive visit to the emergency room at a hospital.
The in-school staff can also coordinate quickly with the school nurse, administrators and teachers.
Raneem El-Ayoub, a licensed clinical social worker, spoke about how the school-based team can respond to signs that a student is experiencing a behavioral problem.
“Are they withdrawn, flat and sad? Or are they acting out, being verbally or physically aggressive?”
With behavioral health, parents tend to react when “something big” happens.
The in-school team can act before the problem gets to that point.
Malone said in the last couple of years she has seen more eating disorder cases at HVRHS than in 15 years at an outpatient facility.
Catching it early is critical. “By the time the parents bring the child to the pediatrician they’re really sick. With school-based health my kids are able to be honest about it so much earlier in the disease process.”
One young woman was in trouble with an eating disorder. Malone was able to get the student to open up about it, and set up a schedule for a twice-weekly check-in.
After six months of that, the frequency changed to once a week, and then once every other week. The child completed an intensive outpatient course of treatment as well.
All of this was done in coordination with the parents, the child’s primary physician, and the high school staff.
“If we hadn’t caught it, it would have been much worse.”
Malone offered another case, that of a young woman who got hit on the head playing volleyball.
She said she saw the child an hour later for what was “an obvious concussion.”
“The whole thing happened quickly and collaboratively,” with the parents, pediatrician and school nurse all involved.
And for follow-up, the pediatrician, who was going on vacation, asked Malone and her team to provide the follow-up.
“We are able to assess a situation and create a safety plan. The child is seen and heard. And we can do it all in a couple of hours.”
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Suzan Scott on wonder and seeing
L. Tomaino
Mar 18, 2026
Suzan Scott discusses color, words, wonder and seeing at the Hunt Library on March 12.
L. Tomaino
FALLS VILLAGE — Painter Suzan Scott’s comparison of words to colors explained the visual language she has developed over many years. “I love the thesaurus.” When she chooses a color, it is like finding a word in the thesaurus. And to her “words have color, and tone, and weight. Finding the right word, is like finding the right color.”
Attendees at her talk looked with interest through a notebook she passed around, a kind of catalog of color, two or three rectangles on each page which she painted in solid, subtle tones using gouache. This was one of her books of visual syntax, demonstrating how sets of colors come together into an image the way words do in a sentence. “My language is line and color and shape. They are my voice made visible.”
How has she built her visual language? She remembers her delight when, as a child she finally was given“ a pad, a book of blank paper!” “All of this is very personal to me.” “I paint wonder. It’s really a landscape, but I paint wonder.”
“There is so much more here than what we can see, if I can step back, maybe not try to name things but just experience them.”
She will often start a canvas in orange, her color for the earth under the grass. Her process becomes a meditation “about layers under the hill, layers of time, life lived there”, by “digging holes into hills with color.” And about clouds, trees, the seasons, weather, and the night sky. She has created a series of paintings on each. When she arranged in sequence 365 paintings she had done one year, she saw the sweep of color of the sky and earth over time.
She spoke of the artist Sol Lewitt with whom she had contact while organizing slides as Assistant to the Curator of the LeWitt Collection in Chester, Connecticut. She described him as a gentle, approachable man whose work with sequences, minimalism, and conceptual art deepened her realization of what can be represented in her work, “simplifying to get the essence of a thing.”
“Wonders are there — we just have to look. Each one of us has a specific view. Individual vision is a gift.”
Her show at Hunt Library, in Falls Village, This Beautiful Place, ended on March 13. Her website is www.suzanscott.com. Hunt Library: www.huntlibrary.org
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Read Aloud Day comes to Salisbury Central
Patrick L. Sullivan
Mar 18, 2026
Peter Becket reads at Salisbury Central School Friday, March 6.
Patrick L. Sullivan
SALISBURY — “Woo Hoo! You’re Doing Great!” was the theme when members of the community came to Salisbury Central School for Read Aloud Day Friday, March 6.
The phrase is also the title of Sandra Boynton’s 2024 children’s book. Boynton, a bestselling children’s book author, led a school assembly in the afternoon.
Boynton also provided swag: t-shirts, bookmarks and stickers. The “Woo Hoo! Go SCS!” logo on the shirts was also on a banner hanging outside the middle school.
Janet Neary, a Salisbury resident, started off telling her group about Boynton’s early career making greeting cards with funny slogans like “Hippo Birdie Two Ewe.”
Peter Becket kidded around with his students before settling in with the book.
The event was scheduled for March 3 but was snowed out, so not all of the readers listed were able to make it. The readers were: Neary, Becket, David Valcin, Alex Harney, Lauren Brown, Lee Sohl, Kyla DeRisi, Elyse Harney Morris, Deb Orlup, Rita Delgado, and Lou Bucceri.
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Lakeville Journal earns top honors at New England newspaper awards
Christian Murray
Mar 18, 2026
Left to right, Christian Murray, Executive Editor; Nathan Miller, Managing Editor of The Millerton News; Natalia Zukerman, Arts & Lifestyle Editor; Thomas K. Carley, Chief Operating Officer; and James H. Clark, CEO/Publisher receive awards at the New England Newspaper and Press Association spring conference in Portsmouth, NH.
Melissa Ferrick
The Lakeville Journal earned several top honors at the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s annual spring conference on March 16 for its work in journalism, community engagement and audience outreach.
Among the awards, the organization received first place in the Community and Audience Engagement category for its high school journalism program. The program, launched in April 2025 with funding support from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, 21st Century Fund and individual donors, teaches professional journalism to students at Housatonic Valley Regional High School and launched the student newspaper HVRHS Today.
The paper also earned first place in the Human Interest category for Natalia Zukerman’s story, “Bearing Witness at Auschwitz,” a personal account examining the legacy of the Holocaust and the importance of remembrance.
Additional honors included second place for Fundraising Strategy, second place for Outstanding Newsletter for the paper’s “What To Do” newsletter, and second place for Newspaper Event for the community Street Fair.
Publisher James H. Clark said the awards reflect the organization’s belief that strong local news is the foundation of a strong community.
“These honors recognize the strength of our local reporting, our commitment to meaningful engagement and the deep connection we have to the communities we serve,” Clark said. “I’m proud of the work our team does every day to serve our readers and keep our communities connected.”
The high school journalism initiative was designed as a bottom-up program that gives students broad latitude to shape the publication’s voice, design and coverage. A team of five to six students plan each issue, pitching story ideas and reporting the articles independently.
Nathan Miller, managing editor of The Millerton News and program lead, said the recognition is shared with the students.
“The program’s success would not be possible without the amazing students who worked for the past year to create HVRHS Today,” Miller said.
Zukerman said she was grateful to see her work recognized. “I’m honored that this piece was recognized,” Zukerman said. “It documents not only a historic commemoration, but a deeply personal reckoning. For me, remembrance is not passive. In this time of rising authoritarianism and multiple ongoing genocides, I feel an unyielding responsibility to remember and to speak.”
The annual NENPA awards recognize excellence and innovation among newspapers and media organizations across New England, honoring work in reporting, audience development and community service.
The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News are published by LJMN Media, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
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