On Saturday, October 4, National College hosts the Fall Festival from noon until 3 p.m. at 1813 East Main Street.

The festival is for people of all ages. Some of the planned activities include pony rides, a magician, face painting, and a Pirate Ship – Climb, Slide, Bounce.

There will be blood pressure/blood sugar checks, door prizes, and raffles.
A DJ will be providing musical entertainment. Refreshments will be available at family-friendly prices. There will also be a bake sale, a book sale, a yard sale and a silent auction.

Tickets are available in advance at National College, as well as at the festival. Everyone is invited to attend. The festival is held every year as a fun way to bring the school and the community together.

For more information, please contact Peggy Randall at 562-7186.

Chandler and Carson Sutphin went to Savannah, Georgia this summer. These are photos they took while at River Street. They are the sons of Tim and Kelly Sutphin.

Submitted by: Tim Sutphin

Did you take a vacation this summer? Or do you have plans to take one soon? Tell us about it at news@sosalem.com. For more summer vacation photos from people in Salem and western Roanoke County, see below:

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Do you recognize this church? It used to be known as ‘The Old Salem Camp Meeting Hall.’ It has been sold to ‘New Creation Ministries 2 Corinthians 5:17.’ This is a nondenominational church. Kendall Johnson is the Pastor. It’s located in the City of Salem, at 202 Third Street.

This is a picture of Bryce Scott, son of Chris & Crystal Scott of Roanoke. His grandparents are Wayne & Jean Dillman of Salem.

Did you or someone you know in Salem recently have a baby? If so, please send us a photo! Email it to us at news@sosalem.com!

Submitted by Laura Tucker

All Salem schools except one — Andrew Lewis Middle School — met the federal standards under the No Child Left Behind Act. The latest report is out today. Every school in Roanoke County met the standards.

The standards, known as Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, measure students in reading and math. Schools last year had to show that 77 percent of students passed Standards of Learning tests in English and 75 percent passed the tests in math in order to meet the federal benchmarks. The law also requires that students of different demographic groups pass the tests at the same rate. The standards become increasingly difficult every year until 2014, when all students will be expected to pass the state tests.

In 2007 and 2006, every Salem school met the standards. In 2005, only one came up short — Andrew Lewis.

You can look up details on each Salem school (or anywhere in Western Virginia, for that matter) on our Datasphere.

For a news story on schools across the region, click here.

For more on Roanoke County schools, click here.

Got an opinion? You can click “comment” below.

Our last post about Andrew Lewis Middle School was August 25.

More than five inches of rain has been recorded on Mason Creek in the past 24 hours thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Fay.

As of 2:30 p.m., here were some rainfall totals in and around Salem:

Mason Cove — 3.79 inches
Fort Lewis Mountain — 3.48 inches
Mason Creek — 5.40 inches
Salem pump station — 2.52 inches

For the latest totals, click here. For more weather, see Kevin Myatt’s Weather Journal. For a news story on weather-related accidents around the region, click here.

How’s the weather in your neighborhood? Click “comment” below — and if you have photos, you can share them at news@sosalem.com

Christina Vance, Taylor Harveycutter, Cassie Conley, Allison Martin, and Rev. Brad Laycock from St. Paul’s Episcopal in Salem joined 37 other volunteers (including Sarah Bentley of Salem) to visit and to rebuild houses in New Orleans. They spent almost two weeks of their summer vacations traveling to Louisiana and on construction detail—July 25 to August 3. The trip was organized through the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia’s youth coordinator Amy Bostwick.

The theme seemed to be “when you’ve done it unto the least of these, you’ve done it to me.’ Time and time again that piece of scripture came up,” said Laycock. But volunteer work driven by the Diocese of Louisiana’s office of disaster recovery and by other organizations seemed to be taking hold and putting many homes and families on higher ground.

On previous trips, he said, the youth primarily worked on gutting the insides of damaged houses, but this time they contributed to the final touches of five nearly finished homes.

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