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Manson Northwest Webster Community Schools Serving, achieving at high levels
By BILL SHEA bshea@messengernews.net
MANSON — When deadly tornadoes clobbered the areas of Winterset and Norwalk in March 2022, some students from Manson Northwest Webster Community School District were among those providing support to residents of those communities.
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That support came in the form of casseroles and desserts prepared by 18 students in the family and consumer sciences program.
The relief cooking effort was organized by Jessica Lavicky, a family and consumer science teacher.
“I figured we could give back and what better way to do it,” Lavicky said.
Over the course of about a day and a half, she and her students prepared about 120 meals. Then they delivered them to the tornado-stricken areas.
Providing nutritious meals to the tornado victims was hardly the only accomplishment of Manson Northwest students in the past year.
A garden project returned to the elementary school in Barnum.
Actually, a garden was started at the school in 2019, but the pandemic derailed it. But in 2022 fifth-grade teacher Amy Brown, along with instructional coach Jodi Jacobsen and fifth-grade teacher Heather Wittrock, got it started again.
Raised planting beds were built by high school students in an ag construction class. They were then filled with soil.
Students Kathleen Hildreth, Maddie Wittrock, Bella Nelson, Brody Bush, Camdyn Swanson and Brooklynn Dornath played key early roles in getting the garden planted. They planted squash, peppers, tomatoes, yellow onions, eggplant, cilantro and parsley.
At the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, elementary school students made salsa with vegetables grown in their garden.
Also in 2022, a group of Manson Northwest Webster students brought home a big honor from the All-State Speech Festival.
Cael Collins, Aubrey Jorgensen, Rilynn Lawman, Trinity Johnson, Sean Peters, and Shelby Swartzendruber won the Critics Choice Award in large group speech.
The district is now considering some building projects to be started in the near future. Replacing part of the roof on the junior high/high school building with a sloped metal roof is one of those projects.
The district is also planning an addition to the east side of that building. Allers Associates Architects, of Fort Dodge, has been hired by the Board of Education to design that addition.
A $2.5 million bond issue is being considered to pay for that project.
-Submitted photos
ABOVE: MNW High School students Adelynn Hudek, Brooklyn Boehler, Marleigh Doan and Makayla Geerdes stand in the Family and Consumer Science classroom in March 2022, showing many of the meals they prepared to give to victims of the March 5 tornadoes.
LEFT: Manson Northwest Webster elementary students, from left, Brooklyn Dornath, Maddie Wittrock, Bella Nelson, Kathleen Hildreth, Camdyn Swanson, and Brody Bush helped get the school’s raised-bed garden planted last summer.