Traverse City News and Latest Info
The Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council’s annual awards ceremony will be held Friday at the Park Place Dome. Environmentalist of the Year awards will be given in multiple categories, including students, educators, volunteers and agriculture.
By next fall, administrators at Traverse City College Preparatory Academy hope to draw at least 20 students to the school by offering them virtual learning. They would take advantage of what’s known as a “seat-time waiver” granted to the Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District under its state Project ReImagine initiative. The waiver allows schools to release students from traditional classroom settings and let them take at least three courses electronically
More than 20 people walked without shoes in downtown and Old Town in Traverse City to raise awareness about the need for proper footwear around the world. United Way of Northwest Michigan will collect shoes through the rest of the week, all to be donated locally.
The founder of a religious-based website that discourages homosexuality filed a second request of records from Traverse City’s public schools. Bill Wiesner’s second inquiry under the state’s Freedom of Information Act is shorter than his first, received by TCAPS on March 24. Both seek information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in schools.
John Reed spent part of his spring break from Northwestern Michigan College at the campus library, researching propaganda’s historical role in society for a final English research paper. The course hasn’t been his easiest subject. At 48, Reed, of Kalkaska County’s Clearwater Township, is back in school to become an electrician specializing in alternative energy after he was laid off from Tower Automotive.
Benzonia Public Library and Darcy Library of Beulah jointly would share revenue from a Benzonia Township library millage under a six-year proposal on the May 3 ballot. It’s among several millages, proposals and school board seats to be decided in local spring elections.
Northwestern Michigan College’s public relations director will leave the college at the end of April to lead a new national center focused on community colleges.
Paul Heaton, who has worked for NMC since 2006, will become the director of the Center for Community College Advancement, part of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in Washington, D.C.
His last day at NMC is April 26. His first day with CASE will be May 2.
The Father Fred Foundation and other regional nonprofits say the winter season and a cold start to spring triggered a noticeable drop in donations.
The founder of a local religious-based website filed a lengthy public records request with TCAPS for documents related to a recent school board review of a bullying policy and information about the district's "funding, sponsorship, promotion, discussion, correspondence, and/or relationship with any other organization(s) or activities or events regarding the so-called 'gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender' issue."
Traverse City Area Public Schools uses an abstinence-based sex education curriculum, but also teaches about contraception and the effects of teen pregnancy. A sex education advisory committee did not discuss specific details about recent infant deaths to guide curriculum, but a school nurse and committee member said it might have inspired a review of how Michigan’s safe delivery law is covered.