Kane County Reporter

At the Oct. 25 Community Unit School District 300 Board of Education meeting, board members shared several exciting events from the past month.

As part of its 20th anniversary celebration, Liberty Elementary School dug up and opened a time capsule buried at the school in 2002. The board was shown a video of teachers digging up the capsule, opening it and showing its artifacts to the school children.

They found written fortunes, booklets made by students, and a video cassette recording.

Board Vice President Nancy Zettler revealed that one of the kindergarten teachers at the Oct. 5 event was a kindergartner at the school when the time capsule was buried.

"And it was so much fun watching her opening up and finding the thing that she had done because each class did a project related to it," Zettler said. "And it was just very cool. It was very cool to watch the whole thing and it was very cool to see that she not only was there, but now she's teaching kindergarten in the district."

Hampshire High School received the High School Program of the Year award from the Technology Education Association of Illinois for its Industrial Technology Department. The award recognizes the program for its efficacy in teaching students about industrial tech, its history, its effect on people and society.

District 300 hosted its annual Choral Festival on Oct. 15, and this year was its 50th year. It was hosted at Hammonds Cultural Center and featured combined eighth graders from all schools in the district, along with chamber choirs and varsity choir from the local high schools. The festival featured two original compositions that were commissioned for this anniversary event.

The final piece of good news was a video of a surprise visit to a seventh grader at Algonquin Middle school. Right before one of their games in October, Irwin Bruce and her volleyball teammates high-fived their mascot, who revealed himself in front of Irwin to be her father, who had been serving overseas in the Army for 14 months. Their whole family was in attendance for the surprise, and later that day he also surprised his 12th grade daughter at Dundee Crown High School.