By SAMANTHA MCDONNELL
OBSERVER Staff Writer
GOWANDA - The Gowanda Board of Education praised students for their achievements outside of school at a recent meeting.
The board praised students who participated in the annual computer science and the math and science competition at SUNY Fredonia. Teams of high school students traveled to each competition held at the college and competed against other area high schools.
"This was the fourth year that we went. It really started last year with enthusiasm when we came in runners up," Joseph Dempsey said.
This year, the students won three out of 10 awards at the math and science competition. Board member and senior Sarah Miller described to the board what competitions her team competed in. Her team competed in America's Best Math Crew dance competition.
"We had to answer math questions. Depending on how many math questions you got right, you got to enter into a dance competition," Miller said. "We got all of our questions right and we entered into the preliminaries of this dance competition and we won."
Because they won the preliminary round, the team had to compete in the final round in front of all the students. The school also won first place in the Smadness competition, a math challenge. The math competition includes having to come up with math equations to equal the numbers of Pi using randomly selected numbers. All three trophies that the students won are displayed in the trophy case in the high school office.
Students also competed in the computer science competition along with computer science teacher Jim Reeves and took first, second and fourth place.
"We were the only (school) to enter more than three teams in the computer science competition," Reeves said.
The competition had the students writing computer programs based on real life problems given to them. The students also participated in a competition similar to Jeopardy with computer programming questions. The school has been going to the competition for the past four years and has never placed higher than third place, according to Reeves.
High School Principal Dr. Robert Anderson also mentioned middle school teacher Kyle Steever was recently honored by Business First's 25 Teachers of Merit, a group of students were honored for their artwork at the western New York Federation of Women's Art Show and Courtney Young and Katie Stang were given awards for videos they have produced.
In other business:
Mary Caruso and Kimberly Schon received tenure in the areas of education of children with handicapping conditions, speech and hearing and physical education, respectively.
The board approved the resignations of Andrea Cooke in the academic area of Seneca Language and substitute teacher Michelle Lulas.
The following were approved for summer school positions: Amy Fantaske, math; Stacey Purpera, health education; Jeffrey Hatfield, social studies; Jonathan Spiegel, special education; Rhonda Dailey, registered nurse; Abigail Wesley, English; Amy Ackley, special education; Deanna Camizzi, occupational therapist; and Barbara Krawczyk, physical therapist.
Comments on this article may be sent to smcdonnell@observertoday.com.
