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Top Students Announced for Hoosac Valley Class of 2023

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CHESHIRE, Mass. — Hoosac Valley High School has named Kathryn Scholz and Tia Kareh as the valedictorian and salutatorian, respectively, of the class of 2023. 
 
Graduation exercises will take place at 6 p.m. on Friday in the school gymnasium. 
 
Scholz, daughter of Erik and Laura Scholz of Adams, is a member of the National Honor Society and recipient of the Superintendent's Award. She was a member of the Ski Club and Leo Club, the track and field team and a Hoosac PRIDE (Perseverance, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, Empathy) mentor. She participated in band and as backstage crew for the school's musicals, and in Project 351. 
 
She was also an intern with the Garden Club and a member of Girls Who Code and Berkshire Community Rowing, and team member and instructor at the Gemini Gymnastics. She was the recipient of the Feel Good in Your Community Award, the Cornell University Sweat Shirt Award and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Medal. 
 
Scholz is planning to attend the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to study microbiology and German
 
Kareh, daughter of Paul Kareh and Hasna Nehme of Adams, was president of the local National Honor Society chapter, a class officer for the past four years and vice president of Student Council, and a member of the Athletic Leadership Council for four years. She also was a member of the Link Crew, the Leo Club, Ski Club, the art club, the school's 84th Chapter (on smoking prevention) and World of Difference. She was a PRIDE mentor, co-chair of the District Attorney's Youth Advisory Board and participated in the school's annual musical productions and band.  and band. 
 
She was captain of the soccer team and named to the All-League Team and captain of the lacrosse team.
 
Kareh has received the statewide Youth Leadership Award, the Feel Good in Your Community Award, the Williams College Book Award and the CIAO soccer scholarship as well as excellence awards for Advanced Placement in history, world history, literature and physics. 
 
She plans to first attend Massachusetts College of Liberal and to later transfer to complete a double major at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  

Tags: graduation 2023,   HVHS,   val & sal,   

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Housing Secretary Makes Adams Housing Authority No. 40 on List of Visits

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

Executive Director William Schrade invited Secretary Edward Augustus to the rededication of the Housing Authority's Community Room, providing a chance for the secretary to hear about the authority's successes and challenges. 
ADAMS, Mass. — The state's new secretary of housing got a bit of a rock-star welcome on Wednesday morning as Adams Housing Authority residents, board members and staff lined up to get their picture taken with him. 
 
Edward Augustus Jr. was invited to join the Adams Housing Authority in the rededication of its renovated community room, named for James P. McAndrews, the authority's first executive director. 
 
Executive Director William Schrade said he was surprised that the secretary had taken up the invitation but Augustus said he's on a mission — to visit every housing authority in the state. 
 
"The next logical question is how many housing authorities are there in Massachusetts? There's 242 of them so I get a lot of driving left to do," he laughed. "This is number 40. You're in the first tier I've been able to visit but to me, it's one way for me to understand what's actually going on."
 
The former state senator and Worcester city manager was appointed secretary of housing and livable communities — the first cabinet level housing chief in 30 years — by Gov. Maura Healey last year as part of her answer to the state's housing crisis. 
 
He's been leading the charge for the governor's $4 billion Affordable Homes Act that looks to invest $1.6 billion in repairing and modernizing the state's 43,000 public housing units that house some 70,000 low-income, disabled and senior residents, as well as families. 
 
Massachusetts has the most public housing units and is one of only a few states that support public housing. Numbers range from Boston's tens of thousands of units to Sutton's 40. Adams has 64 one-bedroom units in the Columbia Valley facility and 24 single and multiple-bedroom units scattered through the community.
 
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