New Haven Independent

So after orbiting around his mom Paula for a couple of revolutions, Rocket Man was taken home for dinner and was acknowledged in absentia.

Other New Haven Public School (NHPS) students were able to stay at Wednesday night’s meeting, however, and receive their honors from the members of the Board of Education, including the newest addition, Michael Nast, on the far left. Flanked by Bishop Woods Principal Barbara Chock, front row on the left, and the library/media specialist Jean Lowery (who was also Christopher’s space flight adviser), the crew of charming young bibliophiles included, left to right, Natalie DeMario, Tamia Butler, Skylyn Rios, and Briana Butler.

These girls helped to make the Bishop Woods School for the 10th consecutive year one of the top performers in the Governor’s Summer Reading Challenge, which tracks the number of books read in the previous summer by an entire school. Bishop Woods students won their reading laurels by reading a whopping 9,144 books spread out among 246 students.

Their passion for the page came in handy and was well employed on Wednesday, as the awards ceremony was delayed well over an hour while the BOE members were in executive session far longer than expected. During the interval Natalie practically finished her 237-page tome. Then the girls formed an impromptu book discussion group. While Tamia’s favorite was Clifford, the Big Red Dog (also a favorite of your reporter), the other kids agreed that E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web was their favorite. While Briana liked the humor and details, Natalie said spiders in books were better than spider webs in real life.

“I love the way the animals talk to you,” Briana said.

Then Natalie added that she usually likes to read more about girls than boys, but she doesn’t mind when boys appear in books as talking animals.

When the BOE members arrived, it was all worth it, especially for these two young history buffs, Yasmine Avila (on the left) and Olga Ortiz, shown with their parents Sonia and Lucy sitting behind them. Their school, Metropolitan Business Academy Magnet High School, sent an impressive team of 12 students to the History Day in Connecticut Competition, and Yasmine and Olga placed high enough so they will now compete in the National History Day contest next month, a competition at the University of Maryland among 2,000 students.

The competition, in various submission categories such as research papers, documentaries, and performance, judges achievements students have attained in American history. Yasmine created a film on the history of cancer research. Why? “There’s cancer in my family, and one of the things most interesting to me was that before 1970, the survival rate for many forms of the disease was only 50 percent. Now it’s 70 percent.”

Olga Ortiz, who wants to be a psychology major in college, said she has strong women in her family. (Her mother behind her nodded.) “I wanted to learn about other powerful women, so I researched and wrote a performance piece on Rose Winslow, who helped to launch the suffragists’ movement in the 1920s. She was the wife of a senator, who, by the way, did not help her, and she had to go on a hunger strike to advance her aims.”

Other Metropolitan students, who were also honored by the board, did research on such close-to-home subjects as how the 1964 Civil Rights Act affected local New Haven ordinances, as well as the Black Panther presence in the Elm City.

At press time, word reached the Independent that Rocket Man had had a good dinner.