School briefs

AMERICAN FORK — Alpine School District and Greg Holbrook, director of accounting, have received two awards in financial reporting.

The first award is a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting from the Government Financial Officers Associations. The national award is for financial reporting for the 2004-05 fiscal year. This is the 23rd year that the district has received this award.

The second award is from the Association of School Business Officials Internationals. The district received the certificate of excellence for its annual report for the 2004-05 school year. Alpine School District is one of the few districts in the nation that has received Certificate of Excellence for 24 or more years.

HIGHLAND — Lone Peak's Operation Smile club was awarded Outstanding Student Association of the Year for 2006. Operation Smile sends doctors to South America and Central America to reconstruct disfigured children's faces, some from birth defects. Students from Lone Peak, Timberline, Mountain Ridge Westfield, Alpine, Highland, Cedar Ridge, Legacy, Deerfield and Freedom elementaries are included in Lone Peak's Operation Smile club, which raised $40,000 this past year for the program.

OREM — A team of students at Orem Junior High School was the top point collector in the academic division of the Internet and Computing Course Certification exams.

Not only did teacher Phillip Hanney's students win the division, they won more than $10,000 in prizes including computers, iPods and team T-shirts. They came close to beating a CompUSA team that won the corporate division, an Alpine School District spokesman said. Coaches for both teams, Gary Ramey of CompUSA and Hanney also won an all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World in Orlando. The competition featured teams competing against one another by acquiring skills and credentials mapped to global standards.

PLEASANT GROVE — The National Council for Geographic Education recently awarded teacher Bart Farnsworth of Pleasant Grove Junior High School its annual Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award for 2006. Farnsworth has been teaching at Pleasant Grove Junior High School for 25 years, teaching geography since 1987. He currently teaches world geography and world civilizations.

PROVO — Meridian School began hosting 15 German students on Oct. 12 and continues through Nov. 7 as a part of the German American Partnership Program.