As the second of three Yellow Springs superintendent finalists, Richard Spindler paid a visit to the village on Tuesday evening to continue the interview process for the job with village schools.

Starting down the home stretch of the superintendent search, candidate Tammy Carnahan came to Mills Lawn on Monday night for another round of interviews and a talk with the community. Carnahan lives less than three miles from Yellow Springs and serves as the assistant superintendent of Greenon Local Schools. Read more >>>

The Yellow Springs schools have recommended two principals for Yellow Springs High School and for Mills Lawn Elementary to be approved by the school board at the board’s meeting on Thursday, April 8.

Yellow Springs Senior Center director Rodney Bean feels that it’s time for a change, and as the center has been oriented toward campaigning for a new space, now seems like a good time to let someone new take the helm. On May 28 he will step down to let that happen.

Three school superintendent candidates will visit the village next week, and the community is invited to hear from them, ask questions and get involved in choosing at meetings, Mon.–Wed., April 5–7, from 5:40 to 7:15 p.m.

Thinking it was overgrown grass gone wild, school groundskeeper Craggy Conman threw his John Deere into high gear over the weekend and sheared the front lawn at Mills Lawn School down to an inch high. Luckily, he was only halfway done when he realized he had just shredded the artwork of Javabrite girls Nancine Lemon and Corrie Barakinanigloo, who have spent the past six months under a tarp knitting each of the lawn’s nearly 83 million blades of grass by hand.

Every year the local blues fest reminds community members about the roots of contemporary popular music. If gospel can spawn the blues, jazz, reggae and rap, then what can the art of the local community tell us about our own history and roots? African American Cross-Cultural Works and the Tecumseh Land Trust aim to find out when they put on the first ever Roots Fest on Saturday, March 27, at Bryan Community Center. It will be an evening of performances in which villagers use the arts to connect to and share their own stories.

At their meeting on Monday, March 15, Village Council members approved 5–0 the first reading of the Village budget for 2010. After three budget workshops on Feb. 9 and 23 and March 6, Council agreed on a total budget of $13,553,490 for 2010, including $3,671,167 allocated for the general fund; $1,616,810 for the special revenues fund; $126,353 for the debt services fund; $520,500 for the capitol projects fund; and $7,618,660 for the enterprise funds.

With a crowd of about 70 people gathered on Monday, March 15, to hear about the fate of the village’s first bark park, Village Council members approved 4–1 a resolution to support a dog park at Ellis Park. Council requested that the group pursuing the dog park should consult the Tree Committee, whose members have spent over 20 years cultivating a scenic park at the Ellis Park location.

As a filmmaker who has experienced some success and some challenges, Joanne Caputo has occasionally asked herself the question, “Am I an artist?” It’s perhaps a feeling she shares with her nephew, John Caputo, who is the focus of her latest documentary. As a prisoner for 11 years at the Graterford and Harrisburg penitentiaries in Pennsylvania, John Caputo would say that art in some ways saved him. But in making a life after his release, he wonders if he is truly an artist or simply an ex-con who makes art.