By LEONARD GRAY Managing Editor

LULING – Three St. Charles Parish students will proceed to state competition as Student of the Year, after having been selected from among schoolwide Students of the Year, honored Wednesday by the school board.

Elementary School Student of the Year for the St. Charles Parish public school district is Kiera Marie Lane, 10, the daughter of Kimberly Evans and Jerry Lane Jr. of St Rose. She is a fifth-grade student at St. Rose Elementary School.

Middle School Student of the Year is Jourdan Nicole McCullough, 14, the daughter of Tammy Dufrene and Mark McCullough of Des Allemands. She is an eighth-grade student at J.B. Martin Middle School in Paradis.

High School Student of the Year is Darryl Richard, 18, the son of Tanda and Darryl Richard of Destrehan. He is a senior at Destrehan High School.

Elementary School-

Kiera Lane has her sights set high. She aims at nothing less than to be the first lady President of the United States. “I feel I can lead the country into the right things,” she said.

Kiera maintains a 4.0 grade point average and lists her interests as reading, dancing, cooking, singing, writing and sketching new fashion designs. She does have a fallback plan if politics doesn’t work out; she plans to be a fashion designer. “The choices I make now will affect my future plans,” she said in an autobiographical essay.

She commented as well in an interview, “I try to be aware of how I treat my peers around me.”

Kiera is active in spiritual dancing at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, as a peer mediator and has awards in soccer, piano, basketball, spelling and last year, placed second in a King Day essay contest.

Middle School-

Jourdan McCullough, a LaPlace native, is deeply involved in summer writers’ camp, in church and loves reading. She plans to be valedictorian of her high school and college classes and would love to attend Loyola University to study forensic science.

This is her second time as student of the year for J.B. Martin, and she is also a Team Council representative, a student council member, and was a junior Catfish Queen in 2001. She is active in chorus, Beta Club, band, yearbook, softball and as a peer mediator.

Jourdan has also won state recognition in the Duke University Talent Program, was on the Principal’s List in seventh grade and won four awards in the Young Writers Workshop, as well as a first-place award in the school social studies fair and overall winner in the fair.

“My dream is to become successful whatever I do, to be around my family.” she said. “I just want to be happy.”

High School-

Darryl Richard of Destrehan, is a star player with the Destrehan High School football team, but doesn’t stop there. He is also student body president, Honor Society treasurer, and is active in basketball and track.

He also serves as a peer mediator, as a DARE role model and in junior ROTC.

Add to this being an ABC-26 Scholar-Athlete, listed as All-American in state and district, a state Literary Rally winner and a winner of the wendy’s High School Heisman award.

He took his election as student body president to heart. In his essay, he wrote, “When I was greeted on the day following the election with 85 percent of the vote, I knew that I was commissioned by the people, but even more so by God to do great things in this life.

“My dream is to become a success and help other people achieve their goals,” he said in an interview. “To give back to the community like has been given to me, and even more.”

In college, he plans to major in sports administration.

Also recognized as Students of the Year for their respective schools:

Elementary-Americo Sheppard, Carver; Janelle Clark, Norco 4-6; Benjamin Conlin, Lakewood; Sable Cureaux, Schoeffner; and Andre Romero, R.J. Vial.

Middle-Sarah DeLoach, Cammon; Chelsea Fales, Landry; and Joseph Jourdan, J.B. Martin.

High School-Jeri Gomez, Hahnville.