www.newrivervalley.com

It is with sadness that I inform you that the Chalk Dust soon will not exist.

In its place, The Roanoke Times will offer a community news blog with photos and tidbits about happenings where you live.

Don't fret, though. All your New River Valley education news will not disappear.  Just hop on over to the New River Notebook.  There, I plan to post about events and news from school systems across the region as well as national policies that might affect them.

Thank you for reading, and be sure to visit our new blog.

-Anna L. Mallory

Fred Morton, Montgomery County's schools superintendent from 1998 to 2004, was named Virginia's Superintendent of the Year at a conference of schools chiefs Tuesday.

The State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the officers of four Virginia education organizations selected him from among eight regional Superintendents of the Year.

Don Ford, president of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, called Morton a "champion of the underdog."

Morton left Montgomery County to take a post in Henrico County schools, one of the largest school districts in the state with 48,000 students. He recently started a program, which required building administrators to “adopt” ten students not likely to succeed in school and eventually drop out. The program helped to reduce Henrico’s drop-outs from 678 to 453 in one year, according to a news release.

The award makes Morton eligible for the National Superintendent of the Year Award, which will be presented in Phoenix, Arizona next February by the American Association of School Administrators.

A few weeks ago, i wrote about two  teachers at McHarg Elementary who tried to take her classroom to the world through a classroom blog.

Today, one of those teachers, Carolyn Wojtera, was named one of the Virginia Lottery's "Super Teachers."

Wojtera is one of eight across Virginia. She found out about the award -- $4,000 of which half must be spent on school supplies -- during a schoolwide assembly disguised a celebration that students completed their Standards of Learning exam.

A fellow teacher and parent of one of Wojtera's students nominated her.

"My daughter loves going to school and has developed a love of reading becasue of Mrs. Wojtera," wrote  first-grade teacher Tracie Shelton Farmer in a nomination essay to the lottery.

Wojtera said she plans to use the classroom supply money to purchase flip cameras that will allow her students to take videos of classroom projects and post them to the class blog.

You can read more about Wojtera in Wednesday's NRV Current.