News Releases
September Volunteer of the Month:
Alison Mahoney, Walter R. Sundling Junior High PTA
When Alison Mahoney volunteered to create the Web site for the Walter R. Sunding PTA, she set out with the mindset, “What do parents and students need to know?”
The result is a colorful, easy-to-navigate, and information-packed PTA Web site. “Alison has spent countless hours setting it up, maintaining it, and adding features that are critical and informative to our families,” her nominator said. In addition to volunteering as the Sundling PTA webmaster, Alison also serves on the District 15 Technology Committee and the district’s Web Site Policy Committee.
Alison’s commitment to providing useful information to parents grew out of a concern about her own inadequate understanding of issues surrounding the February 2005 referendum vote and the April 2005 Board of Education election. “I realized that I’d better start paying attention,” she said. “I felt that if I got involved, I’d know more about the important things that affect our schools and district.” She first volunteered to create a Web site for the Marion Jordan PTA—a responsibility that she somewhat reluctantly handed off this school year. That experience gave her the confidence to step into the Sundling webmaster position.
Alison grew up in Elk Grove Village. She attended Queen of the Rosary School except for one year when she went to elementary school in Scotland, her mother’s native country. Later she went to Sacred Heart of Mary High School (at the facility currently occupied by Conyers Learning Academy). She graduated from National-Louis University with a degree in elementary education and a minor in math. For the past five years, she has taught math at Lake Zurich Middle School North in all of the school’s three grades (sixth, seventh, and eighth), “wherever I am needed.” This year she is teaching two classes—one of seventh graders and one of eighth graders.
Alison’s family includes husband Bill; son Sam, an eighth-grader at Sundling; daughter Anne, a fifth grader at Marion Jordan; and adult stepdaughters Katie and Megan. When not teaching or working on Web sites, Alison is a soccer mom for both Sam and Anne, enjoys reading, and likes to scuba dive. She also enjoys travel, a pleasure she learned at a young age since her mother is from Scotland and her father is from Ireland. In the last few years, she and Bill and their children have visited Argentina, Peru, and Hawaii.
Alison will be recognized at the September 13, 2006, Board of Education meeting, to be held at Walter R. Sundling Junior High School, at 7 p.m.
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