U-46 honors Special Olympics Gold winners

Two Elgin Area School District U-46 students and members of the U-46 BlueStars were recently honored by the school board for their first-place wins at the 2016 Special Olympics Illinois Summer Games.

Gwen Cerami, who represented Centennial Elementary School in Bartlett, placed first in the aquatics 25-meter and 50-meter freestyle races in June at Illinois State University in Normal.

Tina Hondros also represented Centennial and took home the gold medal for the same events.

"For both Gwen and Tina to get gold in both their events is amazing," said Maureen Lue, U-46 coordinator of Special Olympics and BlueStars swim coach. "They worked extremely hard and it paid off."

This was the first year the BlueStars competed with a swim team. Gwen, this year a seventh-grader at Canton Middle School in Streamwood, and Tina, this year a sixth-grader at Centennial, were among five U-46 students who participated in the Summer Games. The swim team trained for the competition at South Elgin High School's pool.

U-46 welcomes new staff:

Elgin Area School District U-46 welcomed several new faces among its administrative ranks this school year.

Among them are elementary school principals Josefina Melendez at Channing Memorial in Elgin and Jennifer Schwardt at Horizon Elementary in Hanover Park.

Melendez previously served as assistant principal and dean of students at Elgin High School since 2011, and before that as an assistant principal of curriculum and instruction at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago Public Schools for four years.

Schwardt comes to U-46 from Algonquin-based Community Unit District 300 where she served as assistant principal of Westfield Community School from 2012 to 2016. She previously worked as a special-education teacher in Elmhurst Public School District 205.

In the secondary grades, four new principals took the helm last week.

Lisa Olsem is the new principal at Kenyon Woods Middle School in South Elgin. She previously served as the associate principal at South Elgin High School since 2014, and before that as the 10-month assistant principal at South Elgin High overseeing the guidance department, dean's office and the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program.

Bartlett High School's new Principal Mike Demovsky was previously principal at Kenyon Woods Middle School since 2012. Demovsky also served as assistant principal at Streamwood High School for two years.

Brian Moran is the new principal at South Elgin High School. He previously served as the associate principal at Streamwood High School since 2014, the instructional leader for the math and science departments, and as testing coordinator for assessments.

Dave Smiley is now the interim principal at Streamwood High School. Smiley taught at Streamwood in the 1980s and early 1990s, and was the head football coach at Streamwood from 1980 until 1992. He then became principal at Ellis Middle School in Elgin and principal at Elgin High School until his retirement in 2011.

Two other new hires are Donald Evans, the new director of human resources, and Amy Ingente, math coordinator.

Evans comes to U-46 from the Illinois State Board of Education where he served as the chief operating officer/director of human resources and labor relations. Evans also worked as a substitute teacher for several years in Chicago Public Schools while working on his graduate degree.

Ingente has been a U-46 employee for 16 years. She recently finished her second year as an instructional math coach implementing Eureka Math resources in kindergarten through eighth grades and helping the district implement state learning standards in sixth through 12th grades. Ingente also taught math at Ellis Middle School.