LR district's portal open for updates
The Little Rock School District is asking parents of new and returning students for the 2018-19 school year to update and verify information about their children by Friday on the district's new online "Gateway" portal.
The portal is intended to reduce the time parents typically spend during the start of the school year check-in period that is set for Aug. 1-2.
The portal can be reached directly at https://bit.ly/2KbAuTO.
Or it can be reached through the "parent" and "student registration" links on the district's home page: lrsd.org.
Each school has a Parent Center that will be available for parents to use if they do not have access to a computer. Parents who may have questions should contact the attendance secretary at their children's schools.
Fifth-grader's essay a first-place winner
Mariah Roberts, 11, a fifth-grader at Arnold Drive Elementary in the Pulaski County Special School District, won a national first-place award for her essay on how J.B. Hunt Transport should manage its assets and why she would like to work for the company.
The award, presented last week at a luncheon at the Statehouse Convention Center to Mariah and her teacher, Rick Kron, is from the SIFMA Foundation's InvestWrite competition that tests students' knowledge of markets, stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
The national essay competition involving some 20,000 students annually is the culminating activity for the SIFMA Foundation's Stock Market Game. It is underwritten by Wells Fargo.
"Smokey & the Bandit reruns and trucking company stories from my dad have me in an Eastbound and Down mood," Mariah started her winning essay. "In other words, I'd like to work for the same trucking company my dad did, J.B Hunt. It's more than my dad's stories and movies that have me looking at this company though. It's how the company operates, what it does for the employees, and that it's a good investment," she wrote.
Pablo Manon and his teacher, Brett Unger, from Har-Ber High in Springdale also were recognized at the luncheon. Pablo placed 10th in the nation, and first in Arkansas, in the high school division.
Top coders take home scholarships
Hunter Fleming, Jonathan Hopkins and Archer Murray from Conway High School placed first and each received a $2,000 scholarship in the second annual Governor's All-State Coding Competition at Arkansas State University.
Benjamin Allen, John Ostermuller and Noah Sherry from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in Hot Springs placed second and each received a $1,000 scholarship.
The third-place team of Matthew Anderson, William Babb and Jonathan Brinkley from Gentry High School each received scholarships of $500.
The schools that sponsored the first-place, second-place and third-place teams received $10,000, $6,000 and $4,000, respectively, to support their computer-science programs.
More than 85 teams from across the state participated in 16 regional competitions, an increase from 75 teams that competed in last year's event. The top 16 teams from the regional events along with a team from last year's first-place school received invitations to compete in the 2018 All-State Competition.
In 2017, Verizon expanded its financial support for the current year's competition to $50,000. At a ceremony this year, due to the success of the first two years, Verizon announced it would contribute $50,000 to sponsor the third year of the competition, with a portion of those funds to be used to train and certify computer science teachers across the state.
Metro on 05/14/2018