Thursday, June 6, 2019 • Vol. 55, No. 3 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25
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Life skills learned Grads appreciate tech ed opportunities at VAHS SCOTT GIRARD Unified Newspaper Group
Photo by Kimberly Wethal
From left, Ava Hammersley, Matthew Hammersley, Nathan Hammersley and Elizabeth Paul get whipped around the Tilt-AWhirl at the annual Hometown Days festival on Friday, May 31.
Going for a whirl Inside
More Hometown Days photos Pages 18-19
VAHS grads win research scholarships JUSTIN LOEWEN Unified Newspaper Group
Of the three University of Wisconsin-Madison students to win this year’s prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship, two are from Verona. Luquant Singh and Claire Evensen, 2016 Verona Area High School graduates, were named Goldwater Scholars this spring for their work studying plasma physics and genetic transcription, respectively. This distinction provides up to $7,500 per year for undergraduate expenses and is available to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering, according to a UW-Madison news release. Singh and Evensen, who were among the 496 students selected from 1,223 nominees around the United States, both became interested in their fields of study while attending Verona
Evensen
Singh
schools. Singh took his first physics class in high school under the tutelage of VAHS science teacher Annelies Howell. “I just had such a great time and I felt like that was when I started to realize that physics was what I wanted to do rather than math or any other discipline,” Singh said. In his senior year of high school, Singh served as a teaching assistant in Howell’s classes, where he helped set up physics experiments. “Luquant is a gifted student and it
The
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was a joy to work with him,” Howell wrote in an email to the Press. “In my class, he was both curious and insightful.” For Evensen, VASD math teacher Jim Guy taught her throughout both middle and high school. “I think he was the most influential one in leading to my choice to pursue math,” Evensen said. “He obviously really loved what he was teaching and I thought he gave us a great sense of why this was important.” Evensen took every Advanced Placement math class available during high school, including three semesters of calculus, which helped her enter college with credits already to her name. “At the very beginning I could tell she had a tremendous gift for mathematics,” Guy wrote in an email to the Press. “Claire had such a wonderful,
Turn to Research/Page 20
What: Verona Area High School graduation When: 1 p.m. Sunday, June 9 Where: Epic’s Voyager Hall, 1789 Milky Way Info: verona.k12.wi.us you have to coordinate with other people, and that’s kind of hard for me to do. “It’s helped me a lot.” With m o r e t h a n Feller 30 courses in the technical education department, teacher Phill Smith wrote in an email it’s a grow- Sanderson ing area that can be valuable whether a student is going directly into the trades or going to a McDermott university. “For some, technical education still suffers a stigma, a belief that technical
Turn to Graduation/Page 14
Tax rate stays even in preliminary budget $12.77 is what district predicted during referendum SCOTT GIRARD Unified Newspaper Group
The Verona Area School District is staying true to its word for another year – at least preliminarily. An early version of the 2019-20 budget has the tax
rate remaining at $12.77 per $1,000 of equalized property value. That’s the same rate as the past two years and what the district predicted publicly during the 2017 referendum process in which voters approved building a new high school and athletic facilities. The board will vote on the preliminary budget at its next meeting, which
Turn to Budget/Page 13
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The annual Hometown Days festival was held from Thursday, May 30, through Sunday, June 2. The festival featured a carnival, the newly rebranded Hometown Hustle twilight 5K, Friday night fireworks, a “kids’ zone” where children had the opportunity to get up close with animals, food from local non-profit organizations, energizing live music performances and a parade on Sunday.
Nathan Feller has always loved working with his hands. So in his four years at Verona Area High School, he took every opportunity to do just that, with shop, welding and auto maintenance classes among those he loved the most. Feller will be among the 395 VAHS seniors walking across the stage at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 9, at Epic Systems to receive their diploma and graduate. And he’s part of about one-fifth of that class, based on statistics from recent years, who will pursue something other than a four-year degree. Feller has an internship as a heavy equipment operator at a construction company in McFarland. There, and for the rest of his career in the construction industry, he’ll use the lessons he got from those shop classes: How to work both by himself and as part of a team. “A lot of the shop classes you’re doing your own projects, you just find something to do and you just work on it,” Feller told the Press. “But also if you have a group project
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