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Top fundraising students presented a check to St. Jude in the amount of $47,748 on Friday, March 31, during a field trip they were awarded to the children’s research hospital in Memphis. The Poplar Bluff School District has raised a total of $967,924 for the hospital since the campus community first began participating in Math-A-Thon in 1989. If the students reach their all-time goal next school year, R-I will be the first school system ever to donate more than $1 million, according to district coordinator Jenifer Richardson, Oak Grove principal. During the visit, students—grades K through 8—learned about the work that St. Jude is doing to some day cure cancer by watching informational videos and participating in a historical scavenger

Poplar Bluff Junior High students concluded their unit on the scientific method with a rocket launch on Thursday, Oct. 27, at Fred M. Morrow Stadium. Rocket Day was founded several years ago by retired science teacher Vic Clark, who still returns for the occasion to help operate his homemade compressed air launcher. Eighth graders later make qualitative and quantitative observations about the data. Prior to the event this year, students watched “October Sky,” which was inspired by Homer Hickam Jr., a NASA engineer, who actually wrote a personal letter to the class after teacher Ashley Woolard connected with him via Twitter. “Best wishes to you and remember, if you never have dreams, they never come true. Aim high,” Hickam

The Mules Booster Club named Poplar Bluff High School softball catcher Gracie King and football quarterback Zane Foust the Athletes of the Month for September. The single game and season record holder for yards, Foust, a senior, has completed 162 of his 226 attempts for 2,737 yards, with 33 touchdowns. Meanwhile King, also a senior, ended the softball season with 29 runs batted in and a .469 batting average. According to both of their head coaches, Lisa Boyer and Mark Barousse, King and Foust are leaders both on and off the field.

More than 700 Poplar Bluff R-I certified and classified employees attended the district’s back-to-school convocation on Monday, Aug. 29, at the Black River Coliseum. In his first state-of-the-schools address, Superintendent Scott Dill, who comes by way of Houston, Mo., called the community’s investment in its infrastructure and school facilities “astounding” and “unheard of.” Besides the great strides the district is making, part of Dill’s decision in accepting the position to succeed Chris Hon in July, he noted, was to provide more opportunities for his own daughters, Caroline and Maura, who are enrolled at the new High School and Middle School. “To me this [job] is personal. Y’all have my kids in the system too,” said Dill, “and I wouldn’t

Gifted students at Poplar Bluff Junior High School won their first ever regional underwater robot competition by employing Albert Einstein’s theory of keeping it simple. “We used Einstein’s philosophy that: ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,’” said eighth grader Dylan Wells, one of six members of team Mulus Aquaticus, water mules in Latin. The students placed first out of about 10 intermediate schools in the scout division of the fourth annual remotely operated vehicle competition of the Northern Gulf from April 22-24 at Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Mobile, Ala. The event was sponsored by the international Marine Advanced Technology Education program. Out of a possible 340 points, Mulus Aquaticus scored 248, 75 points ahead