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Friday, March 29, 2024

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Lucy Sternbach and Emily Gray get gavel plaques Tuesday in recognition of their work as School Committee student members. (Photo: Jean Cummings)

Lucy Sternbach and Emily Gray get gavel plaques Tuesday in recognition of their work as School Committee student members. (Photo: Jean Cummings)

It’s spring, so it’s a time of many celebrations of students, said Mayor David Maher as the School Committee took time Tuesday to recognize some outstanding achievement among the students of Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school.

Student committee members Lucy Sternbach and Emily Gray were recognized for their service and widely praised by each adult committee member, Superintendent Jeffrey Young and Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Turk, who variously cited the girls’ integrity, humility, leadership, voice and perspective. “Your fellow students should know that they have been very well represented by you,” Maher told them.

“It has been such an incredible learning experience for me,” said Gray, who is graduating this year. Sternbach said she will be back for her third and final year on the committee and looking forward to working on her project examining CRLS student experiences around the achievement gap, which she hopes to present to the committee.

Scholarships

Mayor David Maher with Elijah Booker, a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School senior headed to Trinity College. (Photo: Patty Nolan)

Mayor David Maher with Elijah Booker, a Cambridge Rindge and Latin School senior headed to Trinity College. (Photo: Patty Nolan)

The committee also recognized awards of scholarships of $100,000 or more to several students who were able to attend the meeting, while noting that even this large group didn’t represent all the year’s notable scholarship achievements.

Committee member Patty Nolan introduced the seniors able to be present: Posse Foundation leadership scholars Anna Klug (Union College) and Dinah Tsegaye (Bucknell University); Betsida Abebe (Colby-Sawyer College), Irvana Mouzinho (Colby-Sawyer), Feben Gebreegziabher (Colby-Sawyer), Tiah McLaren (Colby-Sawyer), Joshua Nolan (Lafayette College), Emily Gray, (George Washington University), Taseen Rahman (Tufts University), Sole Nazaire (Syracuse University), Wynther Gedeon (Goucher College), Elijah Booker (Trinity College), Miriam Gheraissa (Smith College), Shiann Gardner (Michigan State University).

“This is a small sample of students who have made great accomplishments,” CRLS principal Damon Smith said. “I will dearly miss [this class] when they graduate.”

Booker, a varsity football player, was courted by several schools before accepting an athletic scholarship at Trinity. “This whole experience has been surreal,” he said. “I will never forget all the people supporting me. I am grateful for going to this school.”

Nolan said the committee wanted to recognize the outstanding work of these students, help advertise to other students the existence of such generous scholarships and thank “the institutions and organizations who so generously reward our students with these awards.”

The committee would love to hear about other honored students, she said, “both in the classroom and on the sports field,” so they can be similarly recognized.

Envirothon team

“It’s nice to hear the sound of students in the School Committee room,” member Fred Fantini said in introducing seven members of the first CRLS team to enter the Envirothon in nearly a decade. The Cambridge team was one of the few urban teams in the hands-on environmental science competition, which is geared more toward schools in agricultural areas.

The students talked about how much they learned about gardening and local food issues in Cambridge, such as the daily summer farmers’ markets; the League of Urban Canners cooperative that sells canned fruit picked from trees in town; My City Growers, which pairs gardening hopefuls with people who have garden space they don’t use; the large network of Cambridge gardens and community gardens; and the issues surrounding getting high-quality, healthy soil in an urban area. Of the 32 teams competing, CRLS won second place in the wildlife category and fifth in the water category. A plaque was presented by the mayor to the team’s adviser, science teacher Ronald Dibling-Moore.