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Lions Club Recognizes Talented Eagles

students hold posters next to lion mascot

This year's Lions Club International Peace Poster contest invited students to "lead with compassion" by creating a poster that explored and visually expressed the peaceful future that compassionate leadership brings. From the Junior High, three 8th grade students were recognized and received cash prizes by the Exeter Township Lions Club for their outstanding interpretation of this theme through their original artwork, including third place winner, Layla Dibler (left); second place winner, Evianna Jones (center); and first place winner (right), Audrey Pallet. They were joined by a representative from the Lions Club this morning to receive their certificates as well as a hearty congratulations from the Lions Club mascot, Leo. Our warmest congratulations to our talented Eagles and our thanks to the JH's art teacher, Mrs. Kimberly Lopez and the Lions Club for their yearly support of our students and this fantastic project!

Jacksonwald Transforms into Storybook Pumpkin Patch

Using paint, glue, googly eyes and loads of imagination, Jacksonwald students today transformed pumpkins into their favorite storybook characters thanks to a fall wonderland that teachers and parent volunteers created on the lawn of the baseball field. Rolling up their sleeves and studying the covers of books they had brought along, students crafted their pumpkins into their most favorite storybook characters such as, "Pete the Cat," "The Rainbow Fish," "Captain Underpants," or "The Cat in the Hat."

Each elementary school is doing their own take on the same project with Owatin Creek and Lorane students transforming pumpkins into characters at home and sending in photos to school. Jacksonwald principal, Mr. Matt Hathaway, however, thought the project might be fun to tackle at school so that every student had the opportunity to participate, and so that students had an incentive and reward for their good behavior throughout the month. Once decorated, the pumpkins will stay at school to dry and will eventually line the route that students walk along during their Halloween parade on Monday.

Seniors Take Part in GoggleWorks Fellowship & Exhibit

student stands with her paintings at exhibit

McKenna Barker poses with her acrylic paintings at the GoggleWorks

student poses with her clay art sculpture

Kai Taylor poses with her clay art sculpture at the GoggleWorks

While most of their friends were spending their summers dipping their feet in the ocean, McKenna Barker and Kai Taylor were dipping brushes into paint and hands into clay as part of the Student Ambassador Fellowship Program at the GoggleWorks. The fellowship is an intensive and highly-competitive program that selects up to 16 students from area schools and pairs them with a mentoring professional artist for eight weeks over the summer, culminating with an exhibition of their work at the end of the fellowship. 

McKenna, a senior, was mentored by GoggleWorks artist Zoungy Kligge, who helped guide her through the creation of two “dreamy-aesthetic” open-acrylic pieces that represented retaining childhood memories. After McKenna presented her ideas to Mr. Kligge, he guided her through the process to help bring her ideas to life by first creating thumbnail sketches, followed by clay mock-ups, and then lighting her clay sculpture to help her visualize her work before she began to paint. “I had never painted something fictional before–I have always had a reference picture or something I am looking at that I can paint off of. But for my ideas, they were out of my head and I didn’t have anything to look at. So he helped me construct the idea of what I wanted to do and what I wanted it to be and what I wanted it to look like.” 

Kai, also a senior, was mentored by GoggleWorks artist Kristen Egan, who helped her conceptualize and create an air-dried clay sculpture of Icarus falling through the air with his wings falling apart. Kai said that besides her studio time with Ms. Egan, the process of exhibiting her work proved to be just as much of a learning experience. “I had a second piece that I wanted to display for the exhibit, but a day before the show, it just crumbled and fell apart and I had to restart a new project, and get it done in a night and put it on for the show, so it was definitely stressful.” Kai, who intends to go to college for museum studies, also said that she appreciated being able to see what went into creating an exhibit. “It was really beneficial for me to see how we had to set up for the show, such as filling out insurance and setting prices for our work. Plus, (Ms. Egan) has pieces that are shipping worldwide to other shows, so to have her perspective on that and to see her making a career as an artist was so helpful.”

Ms. Christina Pinkerton, an art teacher at the Senior High, recommended that McKenna and Kai apply for the fellowship because of these very real-world experiences that it gives students–including observing first-hand how people make a living being a professional artist. Mentioning how lucky Exeter students are to have access to such an experience locally to supplement their in-classroom experiences, she praised the GoggleWorks for their commitment to arts education and providing these opportunities to students. “All artists and teachers have various amounts of content knowledge that comes from a wide range of backgrounds,” she said, adding, “It’s so beneficial as an artist to experience different viewpoints so you can expand your skill set.”

McKenna, who is considering a career in product design, agreed on the real-world benefits of the fellowship: “The only experience I’ve had was doing art here with a teacher, which has been great, but it’s always been assignments. This was the first time that I really got a chance to do something that I wanted to do and have it be an actual big piece of work. It was a really great experience and I feel very lucky I got to do it.”

Budget Workshops Announced

As the Exeter Township School District begins to shape the budget for the 2023-24 school year, the District will hold a series of workshops to discuss budget topics with the community. Parents, taxpayers and all members of the Exeter community are invited to join us for these meetings. The schedule for the next two upcoming workshops and topics are below. The District will also post a synopsis of each budget workshop on our website shortly after each meeting.

The next two meetings are scheduled for:

October 26th at 6PM
Location: Junior High
Topic: Overview and Purpose of Workshop Meetings/Index Review

November 30th at 6PM
Location: Senior High
Topic: Revenue

Exeter Area Food Pantry Finds New Home in Old Gym

volunteers from food pantry stand in gym

When Karen Williams was a Lorane kindergarten teacher, she mentioned to her husband, Jack, that she had a surprising number of students who were eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches. To see what they could do, Jack and Karen approached the Greater Berks Food Bank (now called Helping Harvest) to assist the Exeter community in need. “When we went out there, they told us that 19606 and 19508 were the most underserved zip codes in the county. It was shocking.”

And that is how the idea of the Exeter Area Food Pantry began a dozen years ago. 

With the help of area churches, donations and volunteers, the Williams and a steering committee established the EAFP and began operating out of Reformation Lutheran Church serving approximately 10 families a month. However, as need grew within the community during the next decade, the EAFP started to run out of space at Reformation–which happened at the exact time that the pandemic hit. Explaining how it was a perfect storm of increased demand, lack of space, and the need to find a building that could provide them with a place to operate outside safely during the initial days of the pandemic, Karen said that the pantry couldn’t believe their good luck when the district approached them and offered them space in the Administration Building. “It was just phenomenal,” she said. 

Since the spring of 2021, the pantry has coordinated volunteers to come in several days before “the give,” as it’s called, to receive deliveries and stage food in the former gym of Lausch Elementary. During the early days of the pandemic, volunteers collected food for those in need and delivered it safely outside to a line of cars that pulled up under the former bus drop off, where both food and volunteers stayed dry in poor weather conditions and where people could safely interact with social distancing guidelines in place. Now, with those guidelines gone, the gym transforms into a grocery store each month as those in need come inside with shopping carts to pick and choose food themselves from the tables that are stacked with fresh fruit and vegetables, canned goods and baked items. The give also offers Senior High students an opportunity to earn their community service hours as students help elderly or disabled shoppers load their cars with groceries, or pick and choose items from the neatly-arranged tables. 

While the EAFP still receives approximately 90% of their food from Helping Harvest, Karen said that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to close the gap between what Helping Harvest is able to provide and what the community needs. “We’re now serving at least 200 families–and that number continues to rise every month.” She said Helping Harvest was only able to supply about 75% of their food this month–which necessitated them to use direct food donations and monetary donations they’ve received to supplement this month’s expected need. 

As need continues to rise, the Pantry finds itself also in need of more donations and more volunteers. For those who are interested in helping, monetary donations can be directed to Reformation Lutheran Church with a notation that the donation should be given to the Pantry. People who are interested in donating food can do so through a number of locally-organized food drives, such as the collection that the Latin Club organizes during next week’s Safe Halloween Night, or they can drop off food at the Administration Building on the third Thursday of each month from 8-11AM. She said the pantry will also accept canned food that is up to a year past its expiration date if it’s in good condition. Volunteers are always needed as well–including students who are looking for community service hours–and can coordinate their time by contacting the Pantry’s volunteer coordinator, Susan Swavely, at eafpvolunteers@nullgmail.com.

For those who need food assistance, the Pantry operates the third Friday of every month at the Exeter Township Administration Building in the afternoons from 1:30-5:30. Those in need are asked to call ahead at 610-572-2334 so that the Pantry can stock appropriately for each month’s give. 

For more information about donating to or receiving help from the Pantry, please visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ExeterAreaFoodPantry.

Exeter’s New Supervisor of Transportation Earns National Recognition

school bus driver holds magazine

It's National School Bus Safety week, and we're so very proud to announce that Exeter's Kaisha McCulley was recently selected as one of ten "Rising Stars" by School Transportation News, a nationwide trade magazine for school bus drivers and professionals. Ms. McCulley, who was named Exeter's Supervisor of Transportation during last night's board meeting, has been a bus driver for the district for 8 years. Last year, she became the district's permanent route substitute, which meant she had memorized every route in the district without using a GPS, and could substitute for any bus driver–a monumental task, said Ms. McCulley’s supervisor, Benjamin Bernhart, Director of Transportation. Last year, she also earned accreditation as a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation CDL school bus instructor trainer, allowing her to manage the district's training program for new and existing bus drivers.

“We’re so proud that Kaisha earned this distinction,” said Mr. Bernhart. “She is an incredibly dedicated bus driver and bus professional who is committed to safety and always learning more to enable Exeter to have the best school bus drivers. We are so very lucky to have her, and congratulate her for receiving this national recognition.”