This week marks the latest installment of an occasional Editorial Ink Drops feature we titled “Standing O’s And Oh Nos” — because some issues and individuals in the community deserve this kind of heightened focus, for good or for ill, right at the top of our front page.

Please rise and give a resounding “Standing O” to Newtown Lions Club, Newtown Parks & Recreation, and young Leah Mangino over the latest development in a quest to provide wheelchair-bound children a playground where they can actually play and feel included. On March 20, as readers can see from the front page photo of this week's print edition, dozens of people gathered to mark the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new fully inclusive playground equipment that will be getting installed beside the Dickinson Park Playspace. With Parks staffers doing most of the heavy lifting, the new facility should be available to all by Memorial Day. None of this may have ever happened had Leah not penned a heartfelt letter ten months ago to The Newtown Bee, wondering why there was no playground equipment that could be accessed by her wheelchair-bound brother, Ryan.

Remain standing for The Rotary Club of Newtown, which similarly came to the aid of a very special child in need way back in 2014. Earlier this week, local Rotarians welcomed Genesis Fuentes and some of her family members back to town to celebrate the success of open-heart and related surgeries that were paid for through local fundraising and the Rotary’s international Gift of Life initiative. At the time, 3-year-old Genesis was projected to only survive about another year. Yet thanks to our own Newtown Rotarians and their many generous donors, Genesis proudly stood before a welcoming audience in the Edmond Town Hall Alexandria Room on Monday night, a healthy, happy 11-year-old.

Conversely, our latest “Oh No” reflects our consternation with the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office, which recently notified the town that all buildings on the Fairfield Hills campus must be preserved in order for a potential developer to access historic credits to offset the expense of renovating Kent Hall and Shelton Hall for mixed commercial/residential re-use. While some might make a case for preserving several hulking and frankly dangerous former state hospital buildings while a couple of others deemed savable are transformed for re-use, we would hope state preservation officials will negotiate contractual language permitting Newtown to raze any remaining Fairfield Hills buildings deemed a legitimate public safety threat.

Our final “Standing O” is for the growing number of Newtown individuals, businesses, and communities of faith who are raining funds, collecting donations of critical items, and in any other way supporting the people of Ukraine as they continue to be victimized by war crimes and the heinous, cowardly invasion of Russian forces. While we will leave detailed national and global reporting on this ongoing conflict to other media outlets, The Bee will continue to promote and cover local efforts and stories. We also urge anyone hosting related Ukraine fundraisers or collections to contact us so we can help get the word out.

And now, a few announcements:

Last week, Newtown Bee Publisher R. Scudder Smith finalized the promotion of Shannon Hicks — who has been writing about and photographing the community (and editing, and managing web content, and so much more) for this newspaper for over 35 years — to the position of Managing Editor.

Concurrently, Smith conveyed the title of Education Editor to longtime reporter Eliza Hallabeck and the title of Associate Editor to reporter Jim Taylor, who recently joined the “Bee Team” after serving in a similar capacity at several other regional community papers.