HONORS AND AWARDS

This list represents just a fraction of the many honors and awards bestowed upon Richland One schools, departments, students and staff during the 2007-2008 school year. Congratulations to everyone on another successful school year!

* Richland One Student Nutrition Services’ Silver Spoon Lunch Program, a program created to teach good manners to students, won the USDA 2007 National Customer Service Award.

* Dr. Alma W. Byrd, Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, the late Charlie Dickerson and Sen. Kay Patterson were inducted into the Richland One Hall of Fame in January 2008.

* The Dreher High School Web site was nominated as an exemplary site and highlighted in the eChalk online newsletter.

* Paulette Cunningham of Southeast Middle School was named the 2007 SC Bar Law-Related Middle School Teacher of the Year.

* Dana Amaker of Webber Elementary School was named the 2007 SC Preserve America History Teacher of the Year.

* Twelve high school students from Dreher and A.C. Flora high schools were named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists. Daniel Kellogg of Dreher and Michael Levinson of Flora won $2,500 National Merit scholarships.

* Geneena Donaldson of Columbia High and Alexx Niblock of Keenan High won $2,500 college scholarships through the 2008 National Achievement Scholarship Program.

* Richland One’s Challenger Learning Center was recognized as a leader in space science education at the 2007 Challenger Center Annual Conference in Seattle.

* Melony Sanford of Columbia High School was named 2007 SC Teacher in Excellence for Secondary Social Studies.

* Webber Elementary School won the Excellence Award from the SC Council for the Social Studies conference.

* The A.C. Flora Math Team won the Carolina Panthers’ Numbers Crunch Full Contact Math competition, a football-themed math competition sponsored by the NFL football team.

* Sandra Jamison of C.A. Johnson Preparatory Academy, Shari Williams of W.G. Sanders Middle School, Brenda Bell of A.C. Moore Elementary, Renee Scott of Webber Elementary and Valerie Thomas of Pine Grove Elementary were winners of the 2007 Diane Harlin Award for Excellence in Bookkeeping.

* Dr. Traci Young Cooper, director of the Office of Extended Day Programs, was named a 2007-08 Afterschool Ambassador by the Afterschool Alliance, a national nonprofit awareness and advocacy organization.

* The Junior League of Columbia and the Mill Creek PTA were presented State Department of Education Volunteer Awards at a meeting of the State Board of Education.

* Twenty-seven more Richland One teachers earned National Board certification in 2007. The district now has 222 teachers with National Board certification, the highest credential available in the teaching profession.

* The Keenan High volleyball team finished as runners-up in the Class 2A state championship.

* Fourteen Richland One schools were named 2007-08 Palmetto Gold and Palmetto Silver award winners by the state for having high levels of student academic achievement and improvement, more than triple the number of district schools that earned the awards in 2006-07.
Palmetto Gold award winners were: Columbia High, Dreher High, A.C. Flora High and Heyward Career and Technology Center. Palmetto Silver award winners were: Brennen Elementary, Gadsden Elementary, Greenview Elementary, Hand Middle, Hopkins Elementary, Mill Creek Elementary, A.C. Moore Elementary, E.E. Taylor Elementary, H.B. Rhame Elementary and Brockman Elementary.

* Loma Jones of Burnside Elementary and Samuel Trump of Hand Middle School were selected as winners in the 2008 Lieutenant Governor’s Writing Awards Program.

* The Lower Richland High School Academic/World Quest team won the Columbia Affairs Council’s World Quest Competition.

* The Keenan High girls’ basketball team won the Class 2A state championship and the Lower Richland High girls’ basketball team won the Class 4A state championship for the third consecutive year.

* The Crayton Middle School MATHCOUNTS team won its fourth state MATHCOUNTS title in the last six years.

* The Robo-Raiders, Keenan High School’s robotics team, won the Chairman’s Award at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Palmetto Regional Robotics Competition at Clemson University in March 2008. The Keenan students and Evolution, the robot they created, competed against rivals from 37 states during the event.

* Richland One schools took first place in five of the 11 categories of the 2008 State Odyssey of the Mind competition, an international educational program that challenges students from kindergarten to college to solve problems using their creative skills and quick-thinking abilities.

First-place winners:
Brockman Elementary School - Odyssey Road Rally, Division I
Lewis Greenview Elementary - The Wonderful Muses, Division I
W.G. Sanders Middle School - The Wonderful Muses, Division II
W.G. Sanders Middle School - Tee Structure, Division II
Lewis Greenview Elementary - The Eccentrics! Division I

Second-place winners:
Lewis Greenview Elementary - Odyssey Road Rally, Division I
Brockman Elementary - The Eccentrics! Division I

* Deputy Sherrick Hill, school resource officer at Brockman and John P. Thomas elementary schools, was named the 2008 South Carolina DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) Officer of the Year.

* Carolyn Duff, RN, school nurse at A.C. Moore Elementary, won the 2008 Dee Dee Chewning Healing Award from Healthy Learners, an organization that works to provide access to health care for uninsured and underinsured children in South Carolina.

* Marilyn Davis, Richland One’s executive director for special education, was named the SC Council for Exceptional Children’s Advocate of the Year.

* Richland One’s Office of Communications received three awards and two honorable mentions through the S.C. Chapter of the National School Public Relations Association’s 2008 Rewards for Excellence Program.

* The Annie B. Burnside Elementary School Challengers finished second in their division in the Destination ImagiNation state competition held in March 2008 in Simpsonville. The team was invited to compete in the Destination ImagiNation Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee in May.

* St. Andrews Baptist Church, a partner of H.B. Rhame Elementary School, won the 2008 South Carolina Governor’s Volunteer Group Award. The award honors a group that has provided exceptional service to the community and individuals and that has shown extraordinary initiative and commitment.

* Twenty-three Richland One middle school students were recognized as Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP) Scholars, an honor bestowed upon academically gifted students who score at or above the national average on at least one part of the SAT.

* The Dreher High School Academic Decathlon team competed in the 40th National United States Academic Decathlon Competition. The team finished sixth in its division and 17th overall.

* The A.C. Flora High School golf team won the Class 3A state championship for the second consecutive year.

* In April 2008, 124 high-school seniors were honored as Richland One’s 2008 Academic All-Stars. To qualify, students must have at least a 3.5 GPA, rank in the top 10 percent of their school’s senior class and have no grade lower than a C for any subject taken for high-school credit.

* Newsweek magazine ranked Dreher and A.C. Flora high schools in the top 5 percent of public high schools in America. Dreher and Flora were included on the 2008 Newsweek/Washington Post "Challenge Index," an annual survey that measures rigorous course offerings and how all students perform in those classes.

* Webber and A.C. Moore elementary schools were named Red Carpet Schools by the State Department of Education and the SC Chapter of the National School Public Relations Association. The award recognizes schools that demonstrate excellent customer service.

* In recognition of the school’s exceptional architectural design, the Council for Educational Facilities Planners International (CEFPI) named Richland One’s Gibbes Middle School as the 2008 Best Middle School in the Southeast in the new construction category. The school was designed by Liollio Architecture.

* Keenan High students Jordan Blyther, Baichard Donald and Larry Russell presented their Telepresence Amusement Park Ride invention at the 2008 Intel International Science Fair in Atlanta and won third place, beating out more than 1,200 competitors from 51 countries. The young inventors won the trip to the international science fair by winning the grand prize at the University of South Carolina’s Central South Carolina Region II Science and Engineering Fair.

* Dreher High senior Roddey Smith and A.C. Flora High senior Lee Deneen were named recipients of the highly prestigious Furman University Hollingsworth Scholarship which is valued at $100,000 over a four-year period.

* Dreher High senior Casey Wentworth was awarded a $150,000 Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) scholarship by the U.S. Marine Corps.

* Mary Allyson Osborne of Lower Richland One High School was the recipient of the 2008 Dr. John R. Stevenson Music Scholarship. The $1,000 scholarship is awarded annually to a Richland One senior who plans to pursue post-secondary study in music.

* Dywanna Smith of Hand Middle School was named Richland One’s 2008-09 Teacher of the Year; Marv Ward of Richland One TV was named Classified Employee of the Year; and Austin Jeffries of Hopkins Middle School was named Substitute Teacher of the Year.

* Deborah Morgan of Burnside Elementary was named Richland One’s Database Specialist of the Year.

* The Dreher High School Navy JROTC cadets captured first place in the annual Richland One Superintendent’s Trophy competition. Cadets in district JROTC programs are judged in five areas: uniform wear, drill, physical fitness, community service and academics.

* Hand Middle School won the 2008 Richland One Middle School Academic Bowl championship title.

* The marketing CD and brochure produced by Richland One’s Office of Communications received national recognition for excellence in school public relations from the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA).

* Danielle Patrice Rivers of Columbia High School was among the 63 South Carolina graduates in the Class of 2008 recognized for not missing a day of school in 12 years.

* The Junior Scientists of Forest Heights Elementary School were named state Champion of the Environment winners by the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). The school received a $2,500 check, a crystal trophy and a certificate signed by Gov. Mark Sanford.