Thursday, December 27, 2018 • Vol. 54, No. 32 • Verona, WI • Hometown USA • ConnectVerona.com • $1.25
Stories of the Year 2018
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New maps get mixed reaction Single-site TWI, K-2/3-5 pair presented to committee SCOTT GIRARD Unified Newspaper Group
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The new Verona Area High School has much of its core area staged as of mid-November. Construction will continue through the winter to ensure the school opens for the 2020-21 school year.
Changes trickle down Schools prepare for major shift, city deals with turnover It’s nothing new in Verona to have plenty that’s new. Change was again a major theme around the community in 2018, as the top stories voted on by the Press staff show, even without some of the major developments that had been anticipated when the year began. At the top, of course, was the high school project. The result of a $182 million referendum, it has taken over what seems have been a responsibility in Verona for years – having a crane on the city’s west
side. Construction crews have made progress on the building that still has a year and a half to finish, but it’s already easy to see the shape of a high school. Epic construction has slowed – a story that came in tied for 10th on our list – but Findorff got to continue basing a large workforce in Verona until at least August 2020. The next couple stories on our list couldn’t be separated, but both stuck with the theme of change. The
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Stories of 2018 1. High school construction starts amid dispute over road 2. (tie) Road construction everywhere 2. (tie) Changing of the guard in the city 4. Flooding overtakes roads, drowns cars 5. Planning new school boundaries begins 6. BPNN expands building, service area 7. Fire department firestorm 8. (tie) Car thefts become a problem 8. (tie) Matts House gets completed 10. (tie) Epic growth slows 10. (tie) Bennin wins state swimming titles 10. (tie) ICE detains area residents
‘Smart way to give back’ V-Fitt volunteer instructor steps down after 10 years
ago, he didn’t have a plan for how long he’d do it. Now, as 2018 comes SCOTT GIRARD to an end, the volunteer “multifunctional fitness Unified Newspaper Group class” instructor has When Jude Sullivan began giving taught his last class as early-morning fitness classes to Vero- part of the V-Fitt prona Area School District staff a decade gram after 10 years of The
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Food drive bests 20K-pound goal SCOTT GIRARD
three-day-a-week classes at 5:45 a.m. “It just happens that it’s a nice round number, 10 years,” Sullivan told the Press. “That was just kind of more of an accident than anything else.” Sullivan runs a fitness business with his wife and said wellness is “part of Sullivan
The “creative” options for new school attendance boundaries drove home the same point other maps had two weeks earlier: Something’s got to give. On Dec. 19, consultant Mark Roffers presented Options C and D to a committee tasked with evaluating and eventually recommending new attendance areas when the new Verona Area High School opens in 2020 and other schools shuffle around in the remaining spaces. The 29-person Attendance Area Advisory Committee had gotten permission from the school board two days earlier to evaluate the maps Roffers created, ones that would require policy changes such as splitting programs or grades to different sites. But even as the new maps
appeared to solve some problems, others would be created. “There will be some things that an option will cover well and other things that that same option will not cover well at all,” superintendent Dean Gorrell said at the committee’s fifth meeting. “There’s no way to get around that.” The committee had looked at Options A and B at its Dec. 5 meeting, and both had problems meeting the criteria the board set, including student diversity and affecting the least number of students possible. Option C would move the entire Two Way Immersion program to Sugar Creek Elementary School – which itself is moving to the existing Badger Ridge Middle School Campus. It would expand the program by adding sections at the kindergarten level each year and keeping those increased sections as students grow. While it could bring some programming advantages of collaboration for
The Verona Area High School food drive surpassed its goal for the first time in adviser Megan Wenn’s 11 years leading the effort. The drive, which ended with a seventh and final collection Wednesday, Dec. 19, collected more
than 20,000 pounds of food to donate to Badger Prairie Needs Network. The group also collected $987.29 in money to donate. “This set of kids was goal-driven moreso than I’ve ever seen,” Wenn said. VAHS senior Lindsey Hollar, one of seven student coordinators for the
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