What a grea5t week!! We have rolled out our new vocational programs and have introduced our new radio station!! We are bringing many new opportunities for the students at RCHS and will continue to build based off the needs of RCHS students and the city of Rushville. I hope everyone has a great weekend and enjoys reading about all the greatness at RCHS!!

Rushville Consolidated High School is excited to offer our Emergency Medical Services program starting in the 2024-25 School year! This program will be housed in the Ivy Tech Training Center in downtown Rushville. EMS will be a two year program geared towards juniors and seniors. The exception will be for Class of 2025 Students. These students will be able to take all classes necessary next year for their graduation pathway and their EMT certification. Class of 2026 students and all students after will complete the EMS program in two years, taking two classes each their junior and senior year.

Students that complete the EMS program will have opportunities for multiple certifications, including EMT and phlebotomy. Possible career paths for students that complete the EMS program are Medical Assistant, Emergency Medical Responder, Paramedic, or Emergency Medical Technician.

This is both an update and a THANK YOU! The Rush County Community Foundation awarded RCHS a grant so that we could purchase sets of caps and gowns in order for students to walk in Ivy Tech's graduation! We will have close to 30 students this year that are eligible to walk and because of this grant, those caps and gowns will be rented out to students with simply a deposit that they will get back upon return. Your student will walk and receive a college degree before their high school diploma if they earn an ICC or a Certificate of Ag! Thank you so much, Rush County Community Foundation!!!

We are excited to announce that RCHS now has an online radio station THE ROAR! It has been awhile since we can say that and it is online only, but it is full of music and content that is relevant to our schools and community. You can download the free Mixlr app via the App Store or Google Play and search our station "RCHS-The Roar" where you should see it immediately, click on it and begin listening. You can also open a tab in your web browser and go to https://mixlr.com/ type in "RCHS-The Roar" in the search bar and access it that way as well. The station is completely produced by students in Lion's Live.

If you are a local business and would like to purchase a sponsorship that includes PSAs on our radio station, graphic with your logo on Lions Live daily show, and ad space in the yearbook, please contact Amy Fox at foxa@rushville.k12.in.us or Lindsay Tillison at tillisonl@rushville.k12.in.us.

FFA week will run next week!! This is a great week to celebrate our kids and the Rushville FFA Chapter. FFA is so much more then farming and even goes way beyond agriculture. FFA is an organization that teaches leadership, character, and how to be a good human. Thank you to Blair Orme and Holly Wagner for continuing the tradition of being the best FFA organization in the State year after year!

Sunday

Church with the Chapter @ St. Mary's

Movie Night at the Princess Theatre, 6-8

Monday

DIX Roller Skating, 6-8 (for members who sold $450 or more during fruit sales)

Tuesday

MORE for Kids night at the Boys and Girls Club, 6:30-8

Wednesday

Ag Olympics at the Rushville Elementary School, 5:30-7:30

Thursday

Teacher Luncheon catered by the Kopper Kettle

DIX Volleyball Tournament

Friday

No events for members, but setup for the end of the week dance!

Saturday

Dinner and dance for members and their families

Dress-up Days

Neon, Western, Hat Day, Camo, Tacky Tourist, 80s, Blue and Gold, and wear chapter shirts

We have been talking about this since December. Juniors Dana Durbin and Izzy Pavey came to me with an idea. Who knew then that it would draw so much attention even as far as Florida! I wanted everyone to know the story behind all of this so I aske Dana to tell me how this journey has impacted them and what message do they want to send to others. Here is what she had to say.

Hello! My name is Dana Durbin. This year, as many of you know, RCHS has been struck by tragedy. We lost two of our students, Tanner Harrison and Valerie Tindall. Izzy Pavey and I were deeply affected by the passing of Tanner, and when we learned about Valerie's passing we knew that something needed to be done.

When Tanner passed, they had a sticky note memorial for him on his locker. Decorated with goodbyes and memories people shared with Tanner. When we all learned about Valerie’s passing a picture of her was put in the senior circle on a table with a bouquet of flowers. As beautiful of a thought these memorials are, they are not permanent. When something as tragic as a child losing their life happens, it is not moral to just let it “pass by”.

Izzy and I thought together. We brainstormed ways that we could commemorate the short, and meaningful lives that Tanner and Valerie had, as well as give some form of peace to their families. We decided upon a memorial garden. Part of this project consisted of two benches. These two benches would be towards the outside of the memorial with two trees in the middle. These tree’s symbolize Valerie and Tanner’s legacy continuing to grow even though their lives ran short.

The major part of this project was the benches. We wanted to make sustainable benches that would last for many many years to come. After some research, Izzy and I discovered that we can make benches out of bottle caps. We believed that not only would this be a sustainable method of making the benches, but we would also be helping the environment, and bringing our community together at the same time.

Izzy and I stayed after school, bought containers, printed labels, and taped them to each of the containers to put in every classroom at RCHS. We contacted all RCS schools and asked them if they would help us in our collection. We then asked Carter Barnes and Adrian Apodaca to help us with our project because we need more than two pairs of hands.

It takes quite a few caps to make a bench. For both of them we needed approximately 900 pounds of caps. So we quickly got the word out. We spread the word through Facebook, Lion’s Live, and Rushlite. We set the first collection date as January 8th, 2024, and let everyone know what cap types were, and were not acceptable, as well as ways they could get their caps to us. Which came in 4 methods.

From 2:40 to 3:30 we opened the highschool to community members to drop off their caps on Wednesday’s. Through Facebook word spread quickly. Rushville Nutrition reached out to let us know it is okay if members of the community left their caps at their store if they could not make it to our designated time at the high school on Wednesday’s. Connie Washburn, Tanner’s Grandmother, also reached out and told us that people could contact her personally to collect caps. Arlington Elementary also let us know that people could drop caps off to their school any time of the school week.

On January 8th, we collected 170 pounds of caps from the community. For the first day of collections we were ecstatic. My mother, Rene Durbin, has brought all the caps from Arlington Elementary to RCHS every Wednesday. These loads of caps consistently were truck loads that would sometimes spill over into my SUV.

Melissa Branson then reached out to me. Her children attended Waldron Elementary School. Waldron Elementary is out of the Rush County School System and they were wanting to be apart of our movement as well. After Waldron, Connersville residents stated that they were collecting as well. Then Morristown and Shelbyville.

Hearing this news was shocking to the four of us, especially Izzy and I. Knowing that something we started was moving outside of our small town was very humbling and emotional. After we were about 2 weeks into our collection, Steven Harmeyer, of The 812 reached out to us. He wanted to do a story on our cap collection. Soon we had shipments of caps coming from Batesville, Greensburg, even all the way from Lawrenceburg. Almost 2 hours away.

Then one day I got a package on my doorstep from Florida. My family in Largo, Florida spread the word about our collection and had others saving 1,000 miles away. We received about 40 pounds of caps in the mail from Florida.

One month from the day we started collecting on February 8th, we had collected 1,100 pounds of caps. Having this much success so quickly on our project is a lot to take in. To see how far it has grown, how happy it has made the families of Tanner and Valerie, it is all just so gratifying.

As I am writing this we are weighing in the final caps and we have collected 1,753 pounds in 1 month and 6 days. We are just 4 juniors at RCHS. When we started we expected this collection to take about 4 months. The fact that we did it in under a month is just beyond words for us. We are also hung up on the idea that this project has reached other communities, counties, and even states.

This journey has truly been blessing and emotional. We hope that with this memorial we will be able to bring a little bit of comfort to the families of Valerie and Tanner, and anyone else who was close to them, or affected by their deaths.

There is still a lot of work to do. We have to sort through over 1,000 pounds of caps, clean them, take them down to Evansville, as well as work on landscaping, and physically making this memorial.

We hope that what we have done here will inspire others to be an active member in their communities, help others, and just try and be a better person. We have had so much success and fun with this project we are wanting to do more service projects for our community. We also hope that people in the community will understand that there is a group of people that will always be there to help them. Even if it is just a group of 4 high school students, we can get stuff done :)

Thank you to everyone who has played a role in this journey. If you brough caps to us on a Wednesday, if you dropped a load off to Rushville Nutrition, if you shared a Facebook post of mine, if you told a friend, if you saved even one cap, thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you. We pray that Valerie and Tanner are resting in an ever heavenly peace.

• With the utmost love and respect, Dana Durbin

Lindsay Tillison - Shout out to Amy Fox for all she does not just for me but the school/district.

Jeff Cox - Shout out to Dan Riddell for all his brilliance and willingness to provide answers to many (all) of my pressing questions.

Bryan Hummel - Shout out to Amy Fox (and her mom)-shoutout for most original wardrobe. Much of it is handmade.

Curtis Mock - Mother Nature. Its been a pretty week!

Curtis Mock - Shout out to the new custodian, Mr. Shaw. Glad to have you!!

Curtis Mock - Shout out to the basketball team. It's almost tournament time!!

Christin Nichols - Shout out to Special Education Team - We have had several sick staff members in our department, and we everyone has been wonderful to pitch-up and help!

Christin Nichols - Shout out to Nan Scanlan - running our food pantry. She spends a great deal of time organizing and keeping it up and running.

Christin Nichols - Shout out to Brett Smith - he really goes above and beyond for his students. He pushes them to step out of their comfort zone to continue to grow.

Bryan Hummel - Kelley Stanley and Elliott Chambers have been working diligently on optimizing the English Department Office

Liz Meek - Shout out to Riley Sheehan, Anne Rosario, and Jill Carmony for piloting our new hall pass

system!

Brandi Manghelli - shout out goes to Bob Bridges for once again coming to the rescue! He made sure a couple of our new Key Club officers didn’t miss the Kiwanis meeting at Mocha Moose yesterday!! He is such a treasure in our community! Thank you!

The special shout out this week is to our Health and PE teacher, Mr. Zach Burchett. He was one of the first to volunteer to help Mrs. Meek by piloting a new electronic pass system this semester and put together some information to give to the other teachers. He frequently reached out during that pilot process to check in and to provide updates. He also started a new club this semester, the Anime club! We are thankful to have Zach in our building! Thank you!

I was lucky enough to walk into the Laughlin Center just in time to watch a group of theatre students in Mrs. Lemmons class perform a skit to practice for the play. Talented kids!!!!

Mrs. Wagner has her Animal Science class working on their certification with a hands on approach. Kids can say they know how to do certain things when they are handling an animal but Mrs. Wagner has them showing her how to do the different techniques while handling a stuffed animal.

Please watch this video and help spread the word to keep our kids safe!

New Amazing Opportunities for students at RCHS. We offer the Indiana College Core by offering 26 different Dual Credit courses in several different areas. Students can graduate with 30 college credit hours that will apply at ALL INDIANA PUBLIC COLLEGES and even some private colleges like UIndy!! Best thing is this one year of college credit for FREE !! Click the link below to get more information!!

STOPit - Open the PDF and read about our new Anonymous Reporting System. This online anonymous reporting system is designed to deter bullying, discrimination, and other inappropriate or unsafe behaviors.

The button below will take you to the Breakfast and Lunch menus for the month of February at RCHS!

This button will take you directly to the RCHS activities calendar. Click below to see what is going on at RCHS next week.

Want to know what is going on at RCHS? Watch our daily LIVE episodes of Lion's Live where students produce and stream to YouTube a daily show that features what is going on at RCHS! You can access our channel by hitting the button below and then click on SUBSCRIBE to be notified when we GO LIVE!