Summer’s end

The summer began with an ending note. The long tenure of Region One School Superintendent Lisa Carter culminated with her retirement, though her next chapter has started at EdAdvance in Litchfield. The story of Lisa Carter’s big contribution to Region One schools appeared in a June edition of The Lakeville Journal along with photographs of all the graduates in the Class of 2024 from Housatonic Valley Regional High School. Graduation would follow the next week, marking an end to secondary education and a new beginning for all the graduates.

With the start of school again this week, it’s time to say goodbye to summer and to welcome a new season. The pages of last week’s Journal were filled with profiles of the new teachers at HVRHS that included photos and brief bios — compiled by one of HVRHS’s own, Mia Barnes, a Class of 2022 alumna. Barnes, a rising junior at Skidmore College, was among The Journal’s 2024 class of summer interns.

With school started again, The Journal last week also published school bus routes for all the towns for morning and afternoon trips.

Throughout the summer weeks, besides keeping a bead on education, The Journal has focused on what else matters in our community. Our reporters have written about the critical need for affordable housing in the Northwest Corner. Covering the environment, we have explained the potentially devastating impact of hydrilla on our lakes. On the health front, in July we profiled the new executive director of Project Sage, a community organization dedicated to supporting victims of relationship violence through a range of services and outreach programs. Before that, in May we told our readers about the state-of-the-art health care center in North Canaan that welcomed patients in June, commencing an era for health care described as critically needed and long overdue.

We have reported on the machinations of local government, covering routine committee meetings every week along with related public hearings so that our readers know what their elected representatives — and those much-appreciated committee volunteers — decide about matters that affect everyone in the community.

The Journal has expanded its coverage of local sports, because we recognize its importance to the community at-large and especially to the young athletes we capture in our stories and photographs. Steven Waldman, president of Rebuild Local News and co-founder of Report for America, has written that covering local sports — along with obituaries and local theater — can make communities stronger. We can’t agree more. Every week, we aim to provide our readers with a Sports Page. Obituaries also are a mainstay of our publications. With Compass we expand our core coverage to Arts, Entertainment and Lifestyle to contribute to our community by showcasing what is going on beyond the government, education, health care, housing, environment and sports beats.

As citizens of the Northwest Corner, we are connected by a communal fabric that is rich in history, rich in human talent and full of aspiration for a better world. We know that people who follow local news generally feel more attachment to their community. Our news staff believes that no story is too small for The Lakeville Journal. We know that our readers are devoted to the Turning Back the Pages column that draws us back to our past. The same is true of the bus-routes listings, vital news for today’s families.

With all the news that happens over the summer, it has not been a vacation time for our staff, yet we, too, feel the potential energy of a new season and look forward to giving you the best in community news coverage.