We'll take the good along with the bad

For anyone who was hoping we were done with the big winter storms, and maybe we’d now get just a nice, gushy mud season leading into spring: Sorry, we’ll just have to wait.

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At a time when it seems bad news outweighs good news by quite a large percentage, it’s good to remember some of the positive things happening in the Northwest Corner. Anyone following what the students at Region One schools are up to recently have caught up with some of that good news. If we have hope for the future, it’s centered on our youth, and they are finding ways to contribute and to make life better in the region.

At Housatonic Valley Regional High School, the sports teams are active, working hard and having success. Five wrestlers went to the state championships this past weekend, and both the girls and boys varsity basketball teams have made it to the Berkshire League and state tournaments. It is noteworthy that while girls basketball star senior Paxton Thornton (who last year became the first player in the school’s history to score 1,000 points in three years) has met, but not broken, the record of scoring 35 points in a single game. If she does break it, she’ll dethrone her mother, Becky Thornton, who’s held the record for 31 years. This is the spirit of high-school sports personified: We can all picture Becky shooting hoops with her daughter from a young age, leading up to a great high school basketball career for a second generation.

In addition, students are taking on, as always, fundraising events to help those who need it, through Hoops for Hearts, Rotary Interact, and other projects, such as a pasta dinner to help out a custodian who’s been at the high school for years, and who needs support with medical expenses. The pasta dinner, by the way, is on Friday, March 20, from 5 to 7 p.m., tickets ranging from $5 to $10. Our teens are showing their commitment to helping others as well as having their own goals, and that is commendable.

The Housy newspaper, The Northwest Corner, appeared last week in this newspaper, as well as having a distribution to all inside the school. This Winter 2009 edition highlights winter sports (including Thornton’s achievements), as well as school testing, the music program, an ag-ed department food drive, and more. Kudos to all those who work on their school newspaper to inform their fellow students and the community about all that’s happening at Housy.

To see more information on events at the high school, go to hvrhs.org and look under announcements. You’ll be amazed at just how busy the students there are, and how much they are accomplishing.

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It’s too bad that as we see evidence of a school system that’s working, yet is having to face hard cuts to meet a swiftly shrinking budget, there has been an arrest centered on alleged embezzling at Salisbury Central School (see story, page A1.) If the charges prove to be true, money taken from that school’s operations was money taken from the education of the children of that community. It’s hard to imagine being able to justify such actions to oneself, no matter what the personal need may be.