Shahkila Daniels is excited about baton twirling, and so much more. The teachers at Canton McKinley High School and the other adults in her life are excited about Shahkila’s accomplishment in the quest for a prestigious national scholarship. One thousand high school students in the United States were selected this spring for a Gates Millennium Scholarship. Shahkila Daniels of Canton McKinley High is one of them, and one of only 14 from Ohio.

Some Stark County high school students travel a relatively easy road to college. Ben Graeff, Jackson High School graduate, feels that he was one such student. His academic work and his abilities on the football field gained him admission to Harvard College, where he is earning a degree in economics while playing varsity football in the Ivy League. So what do you suppose that a student like Ben does with his good fortune? He has turned it into good fortune for others. Once again this summer, he is working with the Cambridge Youth Enrichment Program (CYEP) at Harvard’s Phillips Brooks House Association. The association organizes and directs Harvard students who are interested in community service in Cambridge, Mass., which is home to Harvard and across the Charles River Basin from Boston.

Samantha Sims, a senior at Washington High School in Massillon, Ohio, will graduate from high school this spring with the ability to find work in the adult world and the ability to pursue higher career goals in a university program thanks to DREAM. Samantha is one of thousands of Stark County students who are preparing for college through a program that also prepares them for the world of work.

After successfully completing her junior year at Perry, a tragedy occurred in the life of Dominque Gates. Her mother died in spring 2003. All she had after her mother’s passing was her sister, then age 24 with two children. “I could have easily drifted off the other way,” Dominque said. But a teacher stepped up to offer her comfort and guidance. The teacher was Jan Zak, one of the founders of the medical tech prep program at Perry. The teacher offered comfort to the student at her mother’s funeral, and that led to a deeper commitment by Mrs. Zak to Dominque’s success in college and life.

In selected classes at Massillon’s Gorrell Elementary School, art projects, theater projects and dance classes supplement language and mathematics lessons. More than supplementing the academics, the arts are integrated into the academic classes so that there is always an academic purpose behind the arts activity. Among the group of students who worked regularly with artists in residence, standardized test scores rose dramatically.

Ward J. “Jack” Timken is a leader of the business and philanthropic community who helped to establish the Stark Education Partnership and who has nurtured the organization over the last 20 years. He is quick to point out that neither he, nor his brother, Ambassador W.R. Timken Jr., the former chairman of the Timken Co., worked alone. A coalition of charitable foundations — Timken, Deuble, Hoover and Stark Community — provided the initial $3 million investment in 1989 to form what was first known as The Education Enhancement Partnership.

If you are a GlenOak High School student in Stark County, Ohio, you have a daily opportunity to plan a college future beyond high school. That opportunity is called the SBE period. It is a new twist to the school day, featuring career and college counseling for high school students, offered by Principal Mark Black and his staff. SBE stands for Soaring Beyond Excellent — excellent being the distinction that Plain Local School District in Canton and Plain Township has earned on the state of Ohio’s school report cards. In particular, GlenOak High School has received a state rating of excellent for eight consecutive years. Part of that excellence that Plain Local strives for is excellence in preparing high school students for college and careers, and ensuring that students are “college ready” by the time they graduate.

At Minerva High School in Ohio, students have a choice. It’s education or poverty, in the view of school leaders. And they’re not shy about saying so. Minerva High School will not permit a student to drop out of high school. It will do everything it can to prevent failure. Educational leaders take a hard, matter-of-fact approach to this work of keeping kids in school and pushing them to graduate high school.

Early in her senior year at GlenOak high school, Mercedes Marshall met counseling intern Kristen Zurbuch. And the direction of her life after high school changed. Before she met Mrs. Zurbuch, Mercedes had no college plan, only an interest in culinary arts and the hospitality industry, and a vague notion about college. Mrs. Zurbach, like other high school counselors at GlenOak, made a presentation to an English class at GlenOak on college opportunities. Counselors visit English classes because English is the one course that all students take. After the class, Mercedes and Mrs. Zurbach met, spurring a plan for attending college.

Just ask Braedon Suminski of the Early College program at Timken High School. He has one. Specifically, he has a four-year full tuition scholarship to Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. thanks to the QuestBridge scholarship. Braedon expects to graduate in the spring with an associate’s degree in electromechanical engineering technology from Stark State College, and a diploma from Timken High. His interest in engineering, fueled by his favorite television show, “Myth Busters” on the Discovery Channel, plans to study engineering physics at Washington and Lee.