Tiffany Foster and Nick Terranova are engaged.

Henry C. Conrad High School will return by the 2007-08 school year, mixing a focus on biotechnology and allied health career programs with a traditional program.

Henry C. Conrad High School in Woodcrest brought a lot of excitement to its community before it was turned into a junior high in 1978 as part of a federal desegregation order.

Although there were more than a dozen secondary schools in Northern New Castle County in the 1960s, if you said you went to “High School,” everyone knew you were talking about Wilmington High School. The Red Devils became a victim of forced busing -- half empty as suburban families rejected busing en masse -- and was replaced by Cab Calloway School of the Arts and The Charter School of Wilmington. Its last class graduated in 1999.

Claymont High School was the first public school in Delaware to integrate in 1952, an historic fact that was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Brown v. Board of Education decision that mandated school desegregation.  Its reward was to be closed by the Brandywine Board of Education in 1990 because of "racial imbalance" during the busing era.

After 17 years of federal oversight of northern New Castle County public schools following a U.S. District Court desegregation order, the Delaware State Board of Education successfully argued for the court to end its supervision in 1995. The state Neighborhood Schools Act was passed in 2000 when school districts acted as though they were still under federal oversight. To this day, community schooling has never been truly restored in Greater Wilmington.

A Georgian school building stands majestically in a scenic residential neighborhood in Wilmington’s Ninth Ward, its white columns and stone steps crisp against red brick. So stunning is the classic design and craftsmanship, artists have replicated the 1935 building and photographed it for greeting cards. Welcome to P.S. duPont High School, once part of the Wilmington school district.

De La Warr High School opened in 1960 and served much of the  New Castle area, developing an instant and natural rivalry with William Penn High School. But in 1978, the high school ceased to exist because of the fallout of a sweeping federal busing order that forced schools to adopt racial quotas.

There was a time when local high school football teams were plentiful, the rivalries fierce, and the Thanksgiving Day games were the center of attention amid a myriad of high school colors, proudly displayed. Greater Wilmington had community schools before a 1978 busing order aimed at creating racial balances swept away a slice of Americana forever.

The last class to graduate from Delaware City High School was in 1960, when from thereon out everyone was moved to a brand new school called Gunning Bedford, Jr. Senior High School.  The school built in farmland and named after one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. a man who helped write the U.S. Constitution. By the 1971-72 school year, the New Castle-Gunning Bedford Board of Education turned the land of the Panthers into a junior high.

Some H. Fletcher Brown alumni were hoping the New Castle County Vocational Technical School District would name the new St. Georges Technical High School after their alma mater and made a presentation to the board of education. Their efforts fell short.

Harry Fletcher Brown (1867-1944) was a Harvard University-trained chemist who rose to become a DuPont vice president after he spearheaded the development of a stable, smokeless explosive powder for Great Britain.

H. Fletcher Brown Vocational High School served greater Wilmington for 31 years, producing a generation of craftsmen, artisans and beauticians that helped make New Castle County what it is today. Once one of Wilmington’s “Big Five” sports schools (that included Howard, P.S. duPont, Wilmington and Salesianum), Brown Vocational closed in 1969 to make way for the larger, technologically up-to-date suburban Delcastle Technical High School, which opened in the fall of 1970.

The Lost High Schools of New Castle County series was published over a five-week period in the autumn of 2006. Since the 1960s, seven high schools in northern New Castle County, once centers of their communities, have closed – one ia victim of geography, one of consolidation three from the immediate fallout of a controversial and sweeping district court busing order in 1978 and two that closed in the 1990s as the county tried to deal with lingering effects of racial balancing. As a public service, the Community is republishing the series. Here are links to each story.

The Delaware BioScience Association honored four industry leaders at its first annual awards gala on Sept. 25.

The following are family-friendly hikes at Wilmington State Parks.

The state of Delaware provides several programs for residents seeking help affording medical expenses.

The following is a list of charity golf outings at local golf courses.

Padua has been a contender in girls volleyball since 2003, but each time high hopes were dashed by the likes of Ursuline and St. Mark's, who have combined to win every state title since 1993.