Latest news with #Plascencia
Chicago Tribune
27-05-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Waukegan High Class of 2025 buries time capsule; ‘We don't know what the world looks like when you open this'
Imagining how the world and Waukegan High School will be different 50 years from now is a challenging task, but some experienced members of the school community know what they want to happen by then. Many members of the Class of 2025 will have a tool to reminisce. Theresa Plascencia, the Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 superintendent, knows what the current student body wants, and Board of Education member Anita Hanna, now in her seventh term, knows what she hopes occurs. 'The student body has been actively advocating for a new high school, a state-of-the-art athletic field and a 21st-century environment,' Plascencia said. 'By then, I hope there is a new high school, and Bulldog pride will permeate through the community.' By 2075, the Washington campus will be more than 150 years old and the newer Brookside building will be almost as old as the present Washington Street structure. Hanna hopes neither is there in 50 years. 'I hope that we have two new high schools,' Hanna said. 'If I were to say what I want to say, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) has been a positive program for our community, our society and for the world we live in.' Members of the Class of 2025 will have the opportunity to relive in some ways what happened during their time in high school when they gather for their 50th reunion as they open a time capsule containing items from their high school days. Representatives of the Class of 2025, the school community and others filled and buried a time capsule Friday in front of the Brookside campus as they look forward to their future and the opportunity to see relics of their past when the current graduates are nearly 70. As more than 75 people gathered around two tables containing a variety of keepsakes — from school T-shirts, to a cellphone, to a yearbook, to posters, to copies of the News-Sun, to banners, to caps and more — they talked about the present and hopes for the school's future. Along with the items on the table, Nick Alatzakis, the district's communications director, walked around with a Polaroid camera, asking to take people's pictures, giving them the image and an opportunity to write a message on it for burial. Someone else gave people paper to write notes. After the capsule was lowered into its hole, many members of the crowd took turns using a shovel to cover it. Arvin Paul, one of the two student organizers of the event, is one of the people who said he will continue with others to make the wish for a new school expressed by Plascencia and Hanna a reality well before 2075. He and seven others created a group and crafted bylaws. 'It is now also another legacy we're passing onto our future Bulldogs, to continue our fight and to make sure our students get the best facilities they deserve,' Paul said after the event. 'This is another thing I hope that changes.' Ja'Kayla Tennin is another student organizer of the time capsule project. She and Paul held the items up and talked about them. They worked with Ali Schultz, an English teacher with a passion for history, to organize the time-capsule project. Tennin said she wants her classmates to feel proud now and in 50 years. Her long-term goal is to become a surgeon. 'I can say with pride Waukegan is a great place to be from,' Tennin said. 'We're doing this to give the senior class something to remember (one day). We started talking and the idea got bigger, just like a (rolling) snowball.' Schultz said when she watched members of the Class of 1974 last fall open a time capsule they buried 50 years earlier, she started thinking about doing it again for the class which graduated May 16. On Friday, she had a message for the Class of 2075. 'We in 2025 packed this capsule with our voices, our values and a lot of our T-shirts,' Schultz said. 'These items are more than objects to us. They're memories, questions, our hopes for the future and a little bit of who we are in this moment. We don't know what the world looks like when you open this, but we hope it's kinder, wiser (and) more connected.'
Chicago Tribune
01-04-2025
- Health
- Chicago Tribune
Waukegan High student tests positive for tuberculosis
A student at the Brookside campus of Waukegan High School was diagnosed with an active case of tuberculosis (TB) last week while the Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 community was on spring break. The student is currently isolated from others and undergoing treatment, according to an email from the Lake County Health Department, which notified the district and they are working together to protect the community. District 60 Superintendent Theresa Plascencia said in an email to the school community Friday that students and staff identified as having close contact with the individual were already notified by email and given recommended actions to take. 'As a precaution, the school is undergoing recommended cleaning procedures,' Plasencia said. 'School operations will continue as usual, with continued cleaning and COVID-era air filtration enhancements in place.' TB is a disease spread through the air from person to person by an individual with active — not latent — TB, according to the health department. Symptoms of the disease include coughing, night sweats and weight loss. 'While TB is contagious, it is not spread as easily as other illnesses, such as cold or flu,' the health department said in the email. 'Although TB can be serious, it is a treatable disease. Not everyone infected with TB becomes sick.' Working closely with the health department, Plascencia said people can transmit the disease through speaking, singing or coughing. People with active TB are, 'most likely to spread TB germs to people they spend time with every day.' In her email to the school community, Plascencia said that conditions like a persistent cough lasting three weeks or longer, coughing up blood, pain with breathing, chest pain, fatigue, weakness, loss of appetite, fever, chills or night sweats are warning signs. A person with those symptoms should get tested. 'Treatment of latent TB can prevent active TB from developing which is why testing when exposed is important,' the health department said. 'We encourage anyone who is contacted by the health department about an exposure to take the necessary steps to get tested.'
