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Mount Olive Honors Graduating Class Amid Pandemic
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By Megan Roche he Class of 2020 has had many things taken away from them; prom, decision day, their last days roaming the halls of Mount Olive High School, and unfortunately, the graduation ceremony. Thanks to the help of Joe Nicastro and Mary Lalama, the seniors will be honored in a different way. Council President Nicastro was speaking with his wife Mary when she told him about something she saw on Facebook about a town who had posters made of the senior class and had them put around the town. Since graduations this year are not being conducted normally, Nicastro thought that they
should do something for the Mount Olive senior class. Nicastro reached out to MOHS Principal Kevin Moore who thought it was a great idea. In turn, Moore reached out to Superintendent Rob Zywicki who gave the greenlight for the project. Nicastro said, “We are all going through some really tough times and trying to bring some sense of normality to the lives of our high school seniors was the least we can do. It will not replace the ceremony itself but will allow them and the residents to see the 2020 graduating class.” Councilman Nicastro and his wife own the Mount Olive Life newspapers as well as 17 other community pa-
pers. They also produced a special graduation issue for the senior class. If you have not seen it you can view it online https://www. mypaperonline.com/mt-olive-high-school-graduatingclass-2020.html. Helping support this special issue was Johnson Auto Group and County College of Morris. Mary also worked with the school newspaper over the past year, helping them
with layout and ideas to print the school newspaper. Mount Olive Life has been helping the newspaper by printing the edition for them to hand out to students. Mary said “it is great to see
the students reading print publications. When they saw the first issue in print, they thought it was great to hold it and read it. Print is still a great way for young and old to read local news”.
You can see the school paper which is dedicated to the senior class by visiting https:// www.mypaperonline.com/ mt-olive-high-school-newspaper-2020.html.
Mount Olive High School Valedictorian and Salutatorian Look Forward in Hope
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By Steve Sears aitlin McNally and Nikhil Nandikanti were recently named Valedictorian and Salutatorian respectively of the Mount Olive High School Class of 2020. Both will present their speeches at the scheduled graduation ceremony on July 8, 2020.
McNally will be heading to Princeton University in the fall to major in Public Policy, and Nandikanti will attend the Georgia Institute of Technology to major in Chemical Engineering. McNally reflects on the past school year and the ramifications of the Coronavirus. “It took away a lot of the closure from our grade, for sure. Not even just graduation and prom. There are so many little events that we didn’t get a chance to do that we’ve seen previous classes do, and I think that it was always something we were looking forward to.” She then adds, “But it (COVID-19) is something the entire world has had to deal with, and our entire class has made the best of it we can. We have tried to do online things, but it is something we have had to deal with, and I think everyone‘s okay with that and realizes it’s for a greater reason.” McNally says her Mom, Evelyn, instilled her curiosity for learning. “When I was younger, she would make me do summer work over the summer, tell me I had to give it to my teachers, and I would give it to them the first day of school. She would go to the store and buy the workbooks, keep me learning throughout the summer.” From her, Dad,
Caitlin McNally
Nikhil Nandikanti
Peter McNally, she says she got her natural intelligence, and 20-year-old brother Justin is huge in the support column. Nandikanti put a strong emphasis on high level AP STEM classes. “Science and Math: those happen to be the ones I enjoyed the most,” he says. In the summer of his freshman year, he studied Honors Chemistry so he could in his sophocontinued on page 2