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Your Community Press newspaper serving College Hill, Finneytown, Forest Park, Greenhills, Mount Airy, Mount Healthy, North College Hill, Seven Hills, Springfield Township
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2016
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GETTING TO NOE YOU:
New superintendent spent summer getting acquainted Jennie Key jkey@communitypress.com
$200,000 in donations through the Ice Bucket Challenge, and the chapter has given $120,000 to help patients cover medical and other expenses. “We’ve seen absolutely nothing like this, and frankly, I don’t think the world has seen anything like this,” Seymour said. “Today, most people will know that ALS is synonymous with the Ice Bucket Challenge. You can’t pay the best ad agency in the world to replicate something like that.” Two years ago, before ALS arrived, Leslie Rinderknecht joined in the fun and shot her own Ice Bucket Challenge video. Friends called on Paul Rinderknecht to participate, too, but he was new at his job as a sales representative for Johnson & Johnson, and suddenly, August was over, and life went on.
Students in the Finneytown Local School community will come back to school to a new superintendent this year. They will start getting to know her when school starts. We sat down with Superintendent Terri Noe to hear how she’s getting ready for the new Noe school year and what’s ahead for Finneytown. Q. How have you spent the time leading up to the start of school? A. “I spent the summer talking to people. Business owners, teachers, parents, other superintendents, church members, auxiliary groups, unions, and students. I did a lot of listening, gathering input. The Finneytown community has innate school support and pride in the school district from all walks of life. Not just students and parents, but community members.” Q. What have you learned so far? A. “This is a great community. Great people, kind-hearted. They want the best for their kids and they want to help, but they don’t know what they can do. When I have heard negative, and that’s been rare, it’s almost always followed up with suggestions. There was no expectation of instant fixes. But they want to be listened to and they like having input. We’re going to remember that.” Q. What should we expect to see this year? A. “We have work to do. We have moved in the right direction with our AP classes, but we need to go deeper. Students from kindergarten through grade 12 have to be ready to progress and learn. Our graduation rate is good. Now, we need to work on two things: academics and communication.” Q. Where do you start? A. “My top three priorities are students, staff and parents in that order. Students are the reason we are all here and why we do what we do. We need focus. We can’t all be working on 50 different things. We are going to work as a team to revamp our vision and mission. Together, we will identify our core values and core objective and that’s going to saturate our district. This is not just a banner we fly. This has to be included in our lessons, how we teach and inform every decision made by the board.” Q. What’s your leadership style? A. “I am a servant leader, and I think leadership style needs to be situational. People need different levels of leadership at different places in their life. I like to build relationships and trust. I like to celebrate the small wins as well as the big ones. It’s important to help teachers be successful. It’s not enough anymore to be a good teacher. We have
See ALS, Page 2A
See NOE, Page 2A
KAREEM ELGAZZAR/THE ENQUIRER
Paul Rinderknecht, 42, of Springfield Township, who was diagnosed with ALS in March, takes the Ice Bucket Challenge with a little help from Cincinnati Bengals tackle Andrew Whitworth, left, running back Rex Burkhead and guard Kevin Zeitler, right, at the conclusion of joint practice between the Minnesota Vikings and Cincinnati Bengals, on the practice fields next to Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati.
For Springfield Township man, hope comes from an ice bucket Anne Saker asaker@enquirer.com
Two Augusts ago, social media filled with goofy videos of people dumping buckets of ice over their heads, to raise money for research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Leslie Rinderknecht of Springfield Township gleefully joined in. But her husband, Paul, skipped the stunt. “I was really busy then,” he said. “People called me out to do it, and, I don’t know, I thought, no, I don’t have the time.” But on March 23, Paul Rinderknecht learned that the growing stiffness in his right fingers heralded the cascading paralysis of ALS, with its cold reality of no effective treatment and no cure. Now, he draws hope from new research breakthroughs that have come in part thanks to the wacky, enthusiastically viral Ice Bucket Challenge. “I do think I’m dreaming sometimes,” Rinderknecht, 42, said one morning in late July sitting with Leslie, 38, at their kitchen table. “It’s hard not to feel afraid. I want to watch my kids grow up. I want to teach my son what it’s like to be a man.” The disorder ALS destroys the nerve cells of the brain and spinal cells, and for the majority of patients brings death in three to five years. ALS is rare, and the acronym may be meaningless unless you tack on the words, “also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
Big bang from the buckets
In August 2014, hundreds of thousands of participants posted videos online of dumping buckets of ice over their heads and calling out friends and family to do the same and to make donations.
COURTING SUCCESS Which tennis, volleyball teams are in best position to show net gains this season? See Sports, 1B.
CARRIE COCHRAN/THE ENQUIRER
Paul Rinderknecht was diagnosed with ALS in March of this year. Here, he is photographed with his wife, Leslie, 4-year-old daughter Nora, and 6-year-old son, Leo.
Remarkably, donors followed through with the money, to the tune of a whopping $220 million worldwide, an unheard-of amount in such a short time. The ALS Association has said the injection of money has allowed research to press forward to breakthrough: On July 25, the association announced that more than 80 researchers in 11 countries have identified a gene, NEK1, that appears to be one of the most common contributors to the disease. The ALS Association now calls August its Ice Bucket Challenge month with the slogan, “Every drop adds up.” Locally, donations through the Ice Bucket Challenge eased the burden on patients and families. Marlin Seymour is executive director of the ALS Association of Central and Southern Ohio, which covers 55 of Ohio’s 88 counties. She said the chapter directly received nearly
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