School board recognizes student artists for award winning designs
The Mitchell County Schools Board of Education honored students who won the annual Christmas card competition at its regular meeting last week.
Associate Superintendent Jennifer Gregory noted that ordinarily the winners would have been recognized earlier in the year, but there were scheduling conflicts and weather complications that delayed the ceremony.
The winner at the elementary level was Lincy Queriapa Ceja, who was unable to attend the meeting. The middle school winner was Ella Calhoun.
“Ella had the snowman, marshmallows, and the hot chocolate, and she was our middle school winner,” Gregory said. “And then we had two high school winners because these two were our high school entries, and they were very hard to choose a winner.”
The high-school level winners were Sadie Calhoun and Salvador Reyes-Campos, who was also unable to attend the meeting. Art teacher Melissa Cadell came to accept Reyes-Campos’ prize in his place.
Cadell said the district’s art students look forward to the competition every year.
“A little bit about Salvador that I’d like to share with you — he’s going to be graduating this year with three visual arts classes and a ceramics course along with the highest honors in an arts program with the National Honor Society, Art Honor Society, this year, his senior year,” Cadell said. “And he received a scholarship from Penland school of arts that is going to pay for his tuition, room and board, and his materials for two weeks in the class, which is well over $4,000. … We’re very proud of him.”
Cadell also thanked the board for its continuing support of arts education.
Construction update
Assistant Superintendent Kevin Huskins gave the board an update on district construction projects.
“The baseball field at the high school is completed; we’ve played games on it the past two weeks,” Huskins said. “The softball field has been delayed … the rain that’s been on it for the last couple of weeks has made it very difficult.”
Huskins said that significant progress has been made on a new sports complex, although there have been delays.
“Right now we estimate that we’re about two to three weeks behind, but they can make that up with some decent weather this summer, even after the hurricane,” he said.