Sand Creek Community Schools announces top 10 graduating seniors for the Class of 2025
SAND CREEK — With the 2024-25 school year winding down, Sand Creek Community Schools has announced its top 10 seniors for the Class of 2025.
This year's top 10 graduating seniors are (in alphabetical order): Faith Beardmore, Natalie Dickerson, Paige Luck, Gavin Marks, Erika Meckley, Abigail Rendel, Zoe Rorick, Jared Snyder, Collin Turpening and Aidan Walsh.
With only a handful of weeks remaining in the school year, Sand Creek school officials have also shared some important dates as the end of the school year approaches. The commencement ceremony for the Class of 2025 will be at 7 p.m. May 22 outdoors — weather permitting — at Ayers Field on the Sand Creek schools' campus. The selected commencement speaker will be Vicky Strang, according to information shared with The Daily Telegram by Erika Scheu-Millek, high school English teacher and yearbook adviser at Sand Creek Community Schools.
Strang is a former Sand Creek teacher, and she also served as the principal of Ruth McGregor Elementary School, Scheu-Millek said.
Additional end-of-the-year dates are:
Seniors' last full day of school at Sand Creek is Friday, May 16. Two half-day exams are scheduled for May 19 and May 20.
Sand Creek Community Church, 6201 Sand Creek Highway, is hosting a baccalaureate service for graduates and their families starting at 7 p.m. May 20.
Seniors are required to attend graduation rehearsal at 10 a.m. May 21. After rehearsal, graduates are then invited to walk through Ruth McGregor Elementary School in their graduation regalia.
The last full day of school for all Sand Creek students is Monday, June 2. Two half-day exams follow, with the final day of the school year being June 4.
Support local news and subscribe: For all the latest local developments, breaking news, and high school and college sports content.
For any additional information about end-of-the-year happenings at Sand Creek schools, visit sc-aggies.us.
— Contact reporter Brad Heineman at bheineman@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @LenaweeHeineman.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Top 10 graduating seniors for Class of 2025 announced by Sand Creek schools
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Chicago Tribune
7 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
United Way officials encouraged by awareness of 211 services; ‘We're very excited about the results of the … survey'
Awareness of the 211 Lake County service offered by United Way of Lake County to help people with a variety of needs — from paying for rent or a utility bill, to escaping domestic violence, to mental health, to legal issues and more — is growing and exceeding expectations, officials say. Three years after it was started in 2019, a survey commissioned by United Way showed 21.5% of county residents were aware of the telephone service's existence. Three years later, Gale Graves, the organization's vice president of community impact, said people are substantially more aware. After the initial survey, Graves said a second study was ordered earlier this year to determine whether the efforts to let people know how the service can help were fruitful. 'We're very excited about the results of the awareness survey,' she said, 'In 2022, we were told 15% (awareness) would be good, and we did 21.5%. Our awareness in Lake County is increasing even more. With a third aware, we are drawing awareness across the county.' Awareness of United Way's 211 service grew 63.4% between 2022 and 2025, with 33.4% of residents surveyed cognizant of the assistance across Lake County. The organization is using the latest survey results to help it plan for the future. Though anyone in Lake County might need to call 211, Graves said a larger percentage are those living below the poverty level, 8%, or who do not earn a living wage, 26%, are knowledgeable. ''People who are not earning a living wage' means they are not earning enough to be able to afford basic needs like housing, utilities or healthcare,' Graves said. 'They are not able to afford all the basics.' Among people or families with income less than $50,000 a year, Jennifer Strom, United Way's director of marketing and communications, said in an email awareness is higher, with 43.5% of the subgroup knowledgeable. Strom said a large number of calls come from people dealing with homelessness and needing shelter, recovering from substance abuse, those with mental health needs or crime victims. They are referred to partner agencies specializing in their situations. 'Some of our partner agencies serve the Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities,' Strom said. For those not speaking English or Spanish, Graves said there are interpretation services for 150 languages including Polish, Korean, Hindi, Russian, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Urdu and Mandarin. Part of the reason for the growth in awareness exceeding expectations comes from United Way's outreach to the county's Spanish-speaking community. Newspaper and radio commercials were done in both languages, according to a press release. Materials are multicultural. Between Jan. 1 and March 31 of this year, 211 has reached 14,884 community contacts and 1,300 people have been trained to use the service, according to the release. The training is done in both English and Spanish. Graves said United Way regularly goes to community events and holds workshops to both increase awareness and teach people how to use the 211 service. There is also contact with community partners who specialize in particular needs. 'We talk to people to make them aware of 211,' Graves said. 'We do trainings with people to teach them how to use 211.' Community partners include Family First of Lake County, NIRCO, school districts, HACES, Mano a Mano, libraries, the YWCA and more.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Student support program returns to Lansing Community College
LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — The College Connect program is returning to Lansing Community College (LCC), offering students an opportunity to receive extra support as they begin their collegiate journey. LCC says the College Connect program will provide an 'introduction to the college experience and offer support to enhance a student's reading, writing, and math skills.' College Connect will offer free morning and evening sessions, beginning on July 8, 2025. The program will last a total of four weeks. The program will also provide a LCC loaned laptop, free Wi-Fi while on campus, meals and snacks, and bus passes if needed. Eligibility for the program is based on the following criteria: Students who recently graduated from high school between 2023-25 and have not completed college-level Math or English courses Individuals who recently completed their GED and have not completed college-level Math or English courses Michigan Reconnect students who will be new to LCC in Fall 2025 and have not completed college-level Math or English courses To learn more about the program and to register, visit College Connect. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Opinion: How My California Middle School Uses Glyphs to Teach English Learners to Read
In the agricultural regions of California's San Joaquin Valley, schools like Firebaugh Middle School are surrounded by fields. But many of Firebaugh's students struggle to read that word. If they were to see 'field' on the board, they would likely pronounce it as 'filed,' a reflection of their unfamiliarity with the varied pronunciations in English. Firebaugh's student body is 98% Hispanic, and about 30% of its 530 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders are designated as English learners. Based on diagnostic testing, administrators know many of them have limited or nonexistent phonics skills. In some cases, the students did not attend elementary school and lack the basics of literacy even in their primary language. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter If you think of reading as an equation with specific components, you might assume reading instruction is straightforward. But as with any equation, there are variables, and English learners have many of them, from Individualized Education Programs to a diversity of home languages that makes it difficult for teachers to find a starting point for reading instruction. Any supplemental instruction educators provide must be flexible enough to account for those individual differences. This is hard enough at the elementary level, but in middle school, students do not merely need to know how to read; they need to know how to read well, so they can comprehend information, analyze it and synthesize it. But in most middle schools, educators likely do not have comprehensive training in supporting basic reading development. While they may have picked up some strategies, their job and focus is to teach a single subject‚ not literacy. I'm a perfect example. I was a history major, and I am credentialed in social science. I was trained to teach ancient civilizations, modern government and economics, and everything in between — but not reading. Related Time is also a limiting factor. At Firebaugh, students rotate through a seven-period school day. Teachers cannot adapt their schedules the way elementary educators can, making it challenging to spend extra time catching up students who are not reading at grade level. We had attempted many approaches to improving literacy at Firebaugh. We added English language development classes. Educators tried to emphasize reading strategies and target specific students who were two or more grade levels behind in literacy. However, none of these efforts proved effective. Along the way, we realized many students needed pieces of the reading equation that we did not know they needed, such as decoding words. Then, we discovered an unusual approach to adolescent literacy that uses glyphs as a resource to foster reading fluency and boost comprehension for English learners. The system consists of 21 glyphs, or diacritical marks, that function as a pronunciation guide for each word. These marks (think accents or umlauts) are widely used in languages other than English to aid with pronunciation and comprehension. The system indicates which letters make their usual sound, which make a different-than-usual sound and which are silent. It also denotes syllable breaks. We implemented this glyph approach for English learners who had no experience sounding out words. In the first stage of implementation, students worked with teachers to learn the glyphs and complete core skill-building activities. In the second stage, the diacriticals — which are available for more than 100,000 words — were integrated into students' daily reading practice to build fluency and comprehension. With the markups, words like 'field' and 'filed,' for example, were no longer a problem.