Thursday, May 9, 2019 • Vol. 54, No. 51 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25
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Verona Press The
Hometown Days
Thursdays are back First night of annual festival reimagined for young adults
change Hometown Days patrons will notice is the changed time and day of the 5K. Now called “Hometown Hustle,” it’s been moved from Sunday morning to Friday night as a twilight run. Much of the festival will remain the same, other than the loss of helicopter rides, as the company that conducted the rides lost its lease for the aircrafts, Jordan said. Last year, the Chamber had dropped the Thursday night activities from its schedule. She told the Press last year that low attendance, combined with the cost of running the carnival on the first night, was causing the community fundraiser to just barely break even. Jordan said that the Chamber received mixed feedback last year after deciding to cancel Thursday night, so this year its marketing and promotions committee worked with vendors to brainstorm how it could reinvent Thursday night. Jordan said committee members came to the conclusion that they needed to
KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Thursday nights are back for Hometown Days with a slightly different demographic in mind after a year off for the traditional first night of Verona’s summer festival. Rebranded as “Club HTD,” Thursday night’s activities include trivia, a live DJ and a laser light show, all geared for an age group that Verona Area Chamber of Jordan Commerce executive director Le Jordan said the festival was lacking in prior years: young adults older than 21 who don’t have families. “The more we got into this, the more excited we got about how this would be a completely different event that other festivals don’t have,” she said. One other significant Turn to Hometown/Page 16
Photo by Kimberly Wethal
Fifth-grader Theodora Leuschen experiences a rain of colored powder while nearing the finish line during the Glacier Edge Elementary School’s color run on Wednesday, May 1.
Coated in many colors Glacier Edge Elementary School students left the school grounds on Wednesday, May 1, a little more colorful than when they arrived that morning. Staff held a color run for students, where children started the race by throwing colored powder in the air and finished with staff tossing cups of powder on them as they neared the finish.
Board wants more attendance boundary map data KIMBERLY WETHAL Unified Newspaper Group
Verona Area school board members want to see more diversity data related to the three elementary school attendance boundary map
options before they make a decision. The full school board reviewed the options for the first time at a work session on the morning of Saturday, May 4. Board members had questions for consultants about how each boundary map would impact the achievement gap for students of color, where TwoWay Immersion students were located throughout the district and how boundary
The
Verona Press
See more photos of Glacier Edge Elementary School’s color run Page 7
Email reporter Kimberly Wethal at kimberly.wethal@ wcinet.com and follow her on Twitter @kimberly_wethal.
Verona Area School District
Diversity statistics, achievement gap impacts among questions
Inside
lines might change with the addition of a potential fifth elementary school in the next decade. None of the board members were vocally in favor or against any of the three plans during the meeting. They are expected to continue reviewing the maps at upcoming meetings, and have discussed holding public outreach meetings before making a decision. The three maps
forwarded to the board were selected by the Attendance Area Advisory Committee, a 29-person group made up of VASD parents and community members. Each one received more than 50 percent support at the AAAC’s last meeting on April 24. The district conducted two listening sessions in April before that meeting, where student diversity and
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