Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

Region One Superintendent Award Winners

Each spring, students throughout Region One School District nominate a standout classmate for the Superintendent Award. This honor recognizes individuals for outstanding academic performance, commitment to school sports and clubs, and dedication to the community. Below are winners for 2024.

Leila Hawken

Allie McCarron

Kent Center School

By Leila Hawken

KENT — With a strong record of academic achievement, Allie McCarron was selected as the Superintendent Award winner at Kent Center School (KCS).

She is involved in the Student Council and the Litchfield Rowing Club where she engages in competitive rowing. She shares her talents readily with younger students, providing a positive role model with a positive attitude.

During an interview on Wednesday, April 10, Allie recalled that she entered Kent Center School for the Second Grade, her family having moved from Kennett Square, Penn. She has participated in the school band since the Fourth Grade, playing alto saxophone.

While she has enjoyed her time at KCS, Allie singled out the sense of community among her fellow students and the teaching staff as the highlight. She said that she has appreciated the spirit of collaborative service within the school.

Allie plans to attend HVRHS in the fall.



Patrick L. Sullivan

Logan Miller

Lee H. Kellogg School

By Patrick L. Sullivan

FALLS VILLAGE — Logan Miller is this year’s winner of the Superintendent’s Award from Lee H. Kellogg School. Logan is a trumpet player in the LHK and Region One bands.

He runs track, plays hockey and baseball, and serves as a hockey referee.

As treasurer of the Student Council, he runs the school store, and he is the man inside the Falcon costume at pep rallies.

He told The Lakeville Journal that he is headed to Housatonic Valley Regional High School, where he plans to get involved with the agriculture education program and the Robotics team.

Beyond high school, he is thinking about studying science at (perhaps) Boston College, Boston University, or Quinnipiac University. “Somewhere with good sports.”



Riley Klein

Nate Young

Cornwall Consolidated School

By Riley Klein

CORNWALL — An active participant in the community, Nate Young was selected by his classmates as Cornwall Consolidated School’s 2024 Superintendent Award winner.

Nate is an active Boy Scout and proud leader of the CCS morning announcements team.

For his eighth grade exploration project, Nate is repairing a 1974 Land Rover.

“It’s awesome,” said Nate. “I spent probably two or three hours this weekend draining the fuel system... it had like 15-year-old fuel in it.”

“The fuel was older than you?” asked a Lakeville Journal reporter.

“Yeah,” Nate responded.

Nate will be attending HVRHS next year and is looking forward to continuing his passions for baseball, cross country running, saxophone, chorus, and agriculture education.



Patrick L. Sullivan

Mia Belter

Salisbury Central School

By Patrick L. Sullivan

SALISBURY — Mia Belter, an 8th grader at Salisbury Central School, is described as “mature, polite and kind-hearted. She is a role model who starts each day with a smile.”

When asked why she won the 2024 Superintendent’s Award for Salisbury Central School, she thought for a moment.

Then she said, “I’m nice to people, and I get good grades.”

Mia plays basketball and soccer and plans to run track this spring.

She is a big reader, with fiction of any kind a favorite. She admits to having two books going at a time.

“I used to read during nap time.”

Mia plans to attend Housatonic Valley Regional High School.




Riley Klein

Federico Vargas Tobon

North Canaan Elementary School

By Riley Klein

NORTH CANAAN — Federico Vargas Tobon of North Canaan Elementary School has been chosen as the school’s 2024 Superintendent Award winner by his peers.

On what the award means to him, he said, “It means a lot because all the work I’ve done finally pays off.”

An academic leader who excels in all subjects, Federico takes pride in his efforts on the student council, sports teams, and theater productions.

Federico played the Prince in NCES’s recent production of “The Little Mermaid.” He looks forward to continuing his passion for drama at HVRHS next year.

Federico plans to play on both the basketball and soccer teams when he becomes a Mountaineer next year.



Leila Hawken

Jayden Milton

Sharon Center School

By Leila Hawken

SHARON — Students at Sharon Center School (SCS) have chosen Jayden Milton as the 2024 Superintendent Award winner.

Presenting himself well with strong communication skills, Jayden wins SCS praise for his commitment to learning and for his qualities for being consistently respectful and responsible. He displays strong habits of mind in academics and within the school community.

He said that he has enjoyed working with the early-Kindergarteners and Grade 4 students, sometimes reading to them, but engaging in other activities at other times. Jayden performs with the Jazz Club as a percussionist, and he is serving as stage manager for the school musical.

Interested in serving the larger community, he has recently become a Junior Firefighter and received training in hazardous chemicals and how to deal with them.

Jayden plans to enroll this fall at Oliver Wolcott Technical High School with an interest in the machine tool program. Eventually, he hopes to pursue engineering studies.


Click here to see more winners.

Latest News

Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

On Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cornwall Historical Society, author and genealogist John Mills will breathe new life into the stories of some of Connecticut’s more underappreciated patriots. The reason these heroes were forgotten? They were Black.

At a time when white colonists were fighting for their own liberty and political independence, many Black men who fought alongside them remained enslaved. Some risked their lives only to return to bondage. Though enslaved people were promised freedom from both sides of the Revolutionary War in exchange for their service, Great Britain, too, was still deeply dependent on slavery. For Black people in America, the war presented both extraordinary risks and uncertain paths to the freedom that white colonists were demanding for themselves.

Keep ReadingShow less

A sanctuary for second chances

A sanctuary for second chances

Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.

Madi Long
You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor.
— Stephanie Saetta

Stephanie Saetta has spent much of her life caring for others. A physician at White Plains Hospital, she has another calling at home in Salisbury — one that has four legs and a wagging tail. She runs Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary, a nonprofit dog rescue that brings dogs from overcrowded pounds and the streets of Texas to foster homes in northwestern Connecticut, where they can begin again.

The sanctuary is named for Charlie, the dog who taught her how special a bond between a person and rescue animal can be.

Keep ReadingShow less
Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Hunter Runnette, founder and board chair of field, has spent years fostering arts and cultural programming in the Berkshires.

Provided

What do joy, gardening, artificial intelligence, the American experiment and the creative process have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out, at least when some of the world’s most compelling thinkers get together to talk about them.

From Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25, Lenox, Massachusetts, will host the inaugural field festival, a three-day gathering of writers, artists, scholars and cultural figures at Shakespeare & Company. Billed as a festival of ideas, entertainment, learning and discovery, field brings together an impressive roster of voices to explore everything from the deeply personal to the profoundly political.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

The Pink House AM is serving up community

Mare Rubin and Maggie Levine of the Pink House AM.

Madi Long

It all started with a yoga class. Mare Rubin was working on her second act after leaving the Upper West Side, where she’d raised a family and worked in corporate marketing. Newly empty nesters, she and her husband decided to move to the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where they had spent 15 years as weekenders, to see what life in the woods had in store for them.

Rubin started teaching yoga classes at the Union in West Cornwall, a space designated by the town of Cornwall as a community hub with couches, Wi-Fi, occasional events and a growing yoga class schedule. She was adjusting well but missed one important thing about city life: a casual coffee shop.

Keep ReadingShow less
Sons of Astro are musicians, friends and bandmates — in that order

The Sons of Astro will be at the Common Pub in Housatonic on Oct. 24 and the 2nd Home Lounge in Winsted on Nov. 14.

Provided

No matter where they are in the world, musicians seem to find other musicians. There’s a shared language, a shared experience of being on stage and performing, and a shared enthusiasm for making those melodies by themselves or together. Such is the case with Norfolk and Brooklyn-based cosmic Americana band Sons of Astro.

That magnetic musicians’ bond drew Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mike Cobb into the orbit of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Statler. The two neighbors took to each other right away and were soon playing open mics together. As an ethics professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Statler made the case that if he sat in for Cobb’s set and Cobb sat in for Statler’s, they could play together and double their stage time. Clearly, these men wanted to make as much music as possible. That became a little harder when Cobb and his family moved up to Norfolk, Connecticut.

Keep ReadingShow less
One more weekend to get inside the art at ArtEast

The participating artists in this year’s ArtEast open studios.

Provided

ArtEast’s annual October Open Studio Tour is already underway, but there’s still one more weekend to step inside the creative worlds of artists working throughout eastern Dutchess County. On Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25, artists will once again open their studio doors, inviting visitors to see where the work happens, meet the people who make it and perhaps discover something worth taking home.

Now in its 21st year, the ArtEast October Open Studio Tour offers a self-guided journey with participating studios in Holmes, LaGrangeville, Hopewell Junction, Pawling, Patterson, Poughquag and Wingdale. Visitors can explore painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media and other artistic practices, and get some leaf-peeping in at the same time.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.