■ Ed Moreno is no longer the Hillsboro R-3 School District’s activities director, after several weeks of mystery about his absence from his duties. He is now a teacher at the Jefferson County Juvenile Detention Center in Hillsboro, where he is expected to remain until the end of the school year, when he has agreed to resign and retire. Moreno, who was placed on paid leave Jan. 7, had been the R-3 activities director and assistant principal for students in grades seven through 12 for the past 11 years. See Russell Korando’s Page 1 story.
■ Festus R-6 school officials have agreed to put 62.5 acres of district property along Hwy. A, once proposed as the site for a new high school, on the market. Board of Education members voted 7-0 Feb. 20 in favor of selling, seeking $1.5 million for the tract, the same amount the district paid in 2006 to buy it. The property is outside Festus city limits and is more than 2.5 miles west of the Mid-Meadow Lane-Westwind Drive campus sites where the district’s other buildings are located. See Kevin Carbery’s story.
■ Fox High School senior Utentam “Tam” Nguyen feels more prepared to make her professional aspirations, thanks to her participation in the RISE Society, a women’s mentoring program. In addition, Nguyen, 17, of unincorporated Fenton recently was named a National Merit Scholarship finalist and may get some scholarship funds through that program to help her pay for college, which also could help her realizes her dreams of becoming a doctor. See Tony Krausz’s Page 1 feature story.
■ After a contentious Fox C-6 Board of Education meeting attended by 300 people, the board is expected on March 3 to vote again on whether to extend Superintendent Nisha Patel’s three-year contract by a year. Board president Carole Yount said the vote would be taken during a closed session before the group’s open meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Fox C-6 Service Center, 849 Jeffco Blvd., in Arnold. It will be the second time in about a month the board will vote on Patel’s contract. Patel, who was hired last year to replace former Superintendent Jim Wipke, has a three-year contract that began July 1, 2019. She is being paid $182,500 this school year. See Tony Krausz’s story.
■ The week of Feb. 2-8, Jefferson County residents experienced their worst seven days for influenza in more than year. By the next week, the numbers were improving. The Jefferson County Health Department reported 404 laboratory-positive flu cases for the first week of February, a dramatic surge from the week before, when 169 cases were reported, the worst week up to that point. In the entire 2018-2019 season (which ran from October 2018 through May 2019), the highest weekly tally was 318 cases. Dylan Steigerwald, epidemiologist for the Health Department, characterized the Feb. 2-8 spike as a “large increase,” but was happy to report a similarly large decline in flu for the week of Feb. 9-15, when 167 laboratory-positive cases were reported. See Katelyn Mary Skaggs’ story.
■ It looks like the Northwest R-1 School District is going to change the company it contracts with to provide student transportation, despite pleas from current bus drivers to stick with First Student, the company the district has used for the past 15 years. The Northwest Board of Educationvoted 6-0 Feb. 20 to negotiate a contract with Durham School Services for next year’s student transportation. See Tracey Bruce’s story.
■ The award-winning Leader Teen Advisory Board prepared the Editorial Section in the Feb. 27 newspaper, examining the topic of student parking at area schools.
■ County athletes performed spectacularly at the state wrestling tournament in Columbia last weekend. Read all about it in this week’s Sports section.
*** Marching into March. Winter, begone.