Category Archives: Top Stories

The Last Time for Tea

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In final year of teaching, LGS instructor hosts last holiday tradition

Photo by RR Best Lovington Grade School teacher Debbie Long reads a story to her students during her annual Christmas Tea Sunday at her home in Sullivan. Since this year marks Long’s last teaching, so will it for her holiday tradition.

Photo by RR Best
Lovington Grade School teacher Debbie Long reads a story to her students during her annual Christmas Tea Sunday at her home in Sullivan. Since this year marks Long’s last teaching, so will it for her holiday tradition.

by Christina Whitford
Sullivan Reporter

Growing up as a little girl in Decatur, Debbie Long always knew she wanted to dedicate her life to teaching children. With the support of her family, she was able to create a very successful career out of teaching, one that will culminate this year, her 35th.

Long followed her dreams and graduated from Illinois State University in 1978. From there she began her career teaching in Lovington in 1979.

“Ever since I can remember I wanted to teach children,” Long recalled. “I would get all the neighborhood kids and teach them in my school room in my basement. My grandpa even got me a chalk board out of an old one room school house and hung it up for me.” Read More

Tax Increase Approved Monday Night for Sullivan Schools

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Head football coach resignation also accepted

by Keith Stewart
keith@newsprogress.com

The Sullivan school district approved their tax levy Monday night, representing a tentative net increase of $342,129 in tax dollars, an 8.78 percent increase over last year’s amount. Because the increase was more than five percent, the district held a truth-in-taxation meeting prior to the regularly scheduled meeting, giving members of the public an opportunity to voice either support for or opposition to the levy. Read More

Feeling the Proration Pinch, Sullivan Schools Max Rates

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9.98 percent increase now, cuts to come later in school year

by Keith Stewart
keith@newsprogress.com

The Sullivan school district will vote on a tax increase next week, but not before holding a truth-in-taxation hearing.

At last month’s board meeting, the district preliminarily approved a tax increase resulting in approximately $234,901 of new money. This would result in a 22 cent or less increase per $100 equalized assessed value, or EAV. According to Superintendent Brad Tuttle, this would mean for a home with an EAV of $50,000, there would be an increase of $23.47 on their tax bill for the district’s portion. Read More

State Test Scores Released: Moultrie County Schools Left Wondering

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Tougher standards implemented before instruction can catch up leaves ISAT scores laggingArthurLovingtonSchools

by Derek Pope
Bethany Reporter

At the beginning of November the state of Illinois made the scores of last year’s major standardized tests, the Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT) and the Prairie State Achievement Test (PSAE), available to the public. The “State Report Cards”, as the Illinois Board of Education calls them, are released yearly, and this year the results are presenting a mixed message for schools all over the state—a problem since administrators and teachers alike rely upon the state report cards to guide instruction.  Read More

Moultrie Escapes Brunt of Sunday’s Storm

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Photo by RR Best A Sullivan police officer waves traffic back away from the Asa Creek bridge in Sullivan Sunday after heavy downpours caused flash flooding.

Photo by RR Best
A Sullivan police officer waves traffic back away from the Asa Creek bridge in Sullivan Sunday after heavy downpours caused flash flooding.

Though scattered and infrequent damage is still sustained

by Keith Stewart
keith@newsprogress.com

Sunday’s storm, which was responsible for approximately 80 reports of tornadoes including those near the Altamont, Tuscola, and Gifford areas, left Moultrie County, by comparison, in relatively good shape.

Nonetheless, parts of the county did suffer extensive damage from what is generally believed as straight line winds. Read More

Sharing a Story About Service & Life

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Photo by Keith Stewart SES fifth grader Zoey Walton shakes Francis Drummond Jr.’s hand after he spoke to her class about his experiences in the military and life.

Photo by Keith Stewart
SES fifth grader Zoey Walton shakes Francis Drummond Jr.’s hand after he spoke to her class about his experiences in the military and life.

Fifth grade class learns about Navy and
excellence from veteran

by Keith Stewart
keith@newsprogress.com

Just a kid of the countryside, Francis Marian Drummond Jr. willingly enlisted in the Navy on a Saturday in January of 1952 but only after his older brother Everett told him of the realities that would lie in store for him if he was drafted into the Army.

“I changed the plans,” said Drummond, who did in fact bypass the draft, which he would have otherwise soon experienced at the age of 19. “He told me that the last place I wanted to sleep in was a hole in the ground, so the next day my friend and I enlisted.”

Drummond’s brother had served in the Army during WWII after being drafted, joining several of the family’s relatives in service to the country, including his uncle Walter, his father’s youngest brother, who died during WWI. Drummond’s father, Francis Sr. had also served in WWI in the army as did another uncle–Bertram. Read More

Sullivan Schools Commended Once Again

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Earn performance award for 12th yearBrightStar scores2

by Jake Dilley
Reporting in Sullivan

Sullivan Schools have gone above and beyond to receive the SchoolSearch 2013 Bright Star Award for the 12th time in the last 13 years.
This year, Sullivan joined 90 other Illinois school districts (out of 866 districts) in receiving the Bright Star Award, which looks at districts whose students’ academic performance ranks in the upper one third of Illinois school districts but whose expenditure per pupil ranks in the lower one-fourth of Illinois school districts for the previous school year. Read More

Get Ready to Round Up! Round Two

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roundupfoodpantrySecond annual food pantry fundraiser hopes for success

by Christina Whitford
Sullivan Reporter

Imagine having to make the agonizing decision each month of how to provide food, utilities or medication for your family. For some families this scenario is often times all too familiar. But beginning the first full week in November, the IGA Round-Up, now in its second year, hopes to once again counteract this dilemma.

According to a recent study by Feeding America, 13.18 percent of residents of Moultrie County are food insecure, which means more than 1,800 of your neighbors may have to miss a meal or may struggle to provide a meal. But to counter that, many area people, businesses and organizations have come together to give back and insure that those in our community can provide these basic needs of life for their families.  Read More

Good Sense to See “Nunsense”

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Photo by Keith Stewart Reverend Mother Sister Mary Regina, played by Therese Kincade, gets wild after sniffing amyl nitrate, at first, by accident.

Photo by Keith Stewart
Reverend Mother Sister Mary Regina, played by Therese Kincade, gets wild after sniffing amyl nitrate, at first, by accident.

Farcical musical energetic, laugh-out-loud

By Dan Hagen
NP Theatre Critic

What’s black and white and treads all over the country?

That would be the musical “Nunsense,” a 1985 show that, with its sundry sequels and spin-offs, is really more an institution now. It’s even been converted to a drag show — “Nunsense A-Men.”

Dan Goggin’s musical didn’t start as a show, either, but as a line of greeting cards.

Its durability springs from the awe and fear Catholic schoolchildren have for nuns, and its comedy depends — as so much of comedy has from the beginning of time — on the subversion of authority figures. That subversion soothes any ill feelings left over from hands that might once have been smacked by rulers. Read More

Woman Falls From Second Story Window at Mason Point, Dies

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Dementia patient opens window, exits room

by Keith Stewart
keith@newsprogress.com

An elderly woman residing at Mason Point and who suffered from dementia, was found dead Friday, October 4 after appearing to have exited out a window of the second floor of the Collins building, which houses those with Alzheimer’s and other similar degenerative diseases, according to Moultrie County deputy coroner Dave Reed and Chief Deputy Sheriff Chris Sims. Read More