Sarasota Students Win Town Hall Scholarships

From Sarasota County Schools: Sixteen high school seniors were honored at the May 16 Sarasota County School Board meeting for receiving Town Hall Scholarships. Fifteen seniors were recognized for winning scholarships sponsored by the School District Administrators and School-Based Administrators organizations.

The Town Hall Scholars are high school seniors who attend the 2017 Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series, held January 23 through March 22. More than 140 seniors from public and private schools in Sarasota and Manatee counties attended the lectures by former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, actress and activist Geena Davis, photographer and climate-change chronicler James Balog and technology innovator Jared Cohen. Student tickets were provided by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County.

Students wrote about their experiences attending the Town Hall lectures this year in essays submitted with their academic and extracurricular information. The 16 winning essays were chosen from 101 received this year. The winning seniors each received a $2,000 college scholarship. Ten scholarships were funded by the Lou and Rosemary Oberndorf Town Hall Scholarship Fund and six were funded by the Dorothy B. Templeton Scholarship Fund. Both funds are administered by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County.

This year’s Town Hall Scholarship winners are Grace Gerdes, Jessica O’Dell and Brady Schwabach of Booker High; Matthew Twargoski of Cardinal Mooney High; Nicholas Murphy of Out of Door Academy; Abigail Hostelter, Eryn Lin, Timothy Mirnyi, Kim Nguyen and Livia Qoshe of Pine View School; Aubrey Kilduff of Sarasota High; Bernard Chajkowski and Ian Sharff of St. Stephen’s Episcopal School; Joshua Mendiata of Suncoast Polytechnical High; and Bailey Jordan of Venice High.

The SDA/SBA organizations are made up of administrators throughout the Sarasota County School District who work together on fundraising events, including an annual golf tournament, to help fund the scholarships and support employee recognition programs. This year the SDA/SBA team received applications, transcripts and essays from 53 high school seniors and awarded 15 $1,000 scholarships to high school seniors: Odane Lennox and Melissa Roberts of Booker High; Brooke Fisher, Jessica Koerner and Brandin Muniz of North Port High; Jade Fischer and Neysa Rogers of Pine View School; Alessandro Giannini of Riverview High; Charles Arnold and Sierra Pittman of Sarasota High; Randell Penaso of Suncoast Polytechnical High; and Patch Chen, Emma Gallagher, Bryana Mammana and Caroline Jones of Venice High.