Education

For today's student, longer school days and more class offerings can make for a heavy load of school books.  However, that load will be a little lighter next year for Mount Vernon students.
Mount Vernon has adopted the Discovery Education Science Techbook for the district starting next year. The techbook was chosen after evaluation and analysis by teachers, science specialists and administrators.
Students will still have a science book for resources, but most of the curriculum will be online and students will do more online labs and activities in class.

Earlier this month, the Indiana State Department of Education released its annual list of four-star schools. For Posey County, this year’s list looked a little different than normal.
Three county schools made the list — North Posey junior and senior high schools, and St. Matthew, a private, parochial school in Mount Vernon.
Normally, each school system in Posey County has representation on the list, and two schools that often make the four-star list are New Harmony School and Marrs Elementary.

North Posey’s school board voted unanimously to let bids for summer renovations to North Elementary School.
Todd Cullum, an architect with VPS, explained the project and bid structure to the board at the Friday, Jan. 14 school board meeting.
According to Cullum, the project is divided up into two bids, with the first for general contractors. This bid includes plumbing and electrical work and ceiling repairs.

Cargill will award $350,000 in scholarships to high-school seniors who live in communities where Cargill has operations and plan to enroll in post-secondary education next fall.
The national program will award 350 scholarships of $1,000. In addition, each recipient’s high school will receive a $200 grant.
National FFA will process the applications and select the scholarship recipients, although students do not need to be FFA members to be eligible for Cargill’s program.