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 EDUCATOR REAPS SPECIAL HONOR
Often, an individual must donate a considerable sum of money to have a building, a suite, or a room named in his or her honor.
However, for Zora “Rose” Dena Rashkis, her lifetime work as an educator was sufficient.
Officially retired for more than twenty-five years from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School District in North Carolina, Mrs. Rashkis and her husband, Mel, a successful real estate agent, received a special tribute: The school board unanimously agreed to name its newest building the Mel and Zora Rashkis Elementary School.
“It is a wonderful honor for us. It is a wonderful school with a delightful faculty; the students are great,” Mrs. Rashkis says. “We volunteer there all the time. One of the things l like about it is that the staff was selected; they chose to teach there.”
Located in the upscale neighborhood of Meadowmount, about a quarter of a mile from their home, the school honors the couple who not only support education but also have maintained a lifelong involvement in their community. “I may have officially retired from the classroom, but I’m still an educator,” she says.
Over the years, Mrs. Rashkis and her husband have supported United Way, the Community Alliance for Student Success, the Chapel Hill Public Library, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Public School Foundation, and the Chapel Hill Senior Center.
Mrs. Rashkis, 90, moved to Chapel Hill in 1963, after working many years as a high school English teacher and an administrator in the Cleveland Public Schools. She earned two outstanding teacher awards.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1934 from Western Reserve University’s Flora Stone Mather College, followed by a master’s in 1935 from the School of Graduate Studies.
Once in Chapel Hill, she began teaching at Phillips Junior High School. She became chair of the Language Arts Department at Phillips and later at Culbreth Junior High School.
From 1979 to 2002, she was the volunteer host of the cable television show Meet the Teacher, broadcast on the People’s Channel 8. The show highlighted the work and gave voice to area teachers and personnel in the school system.
The Mel and Zora Rashkis Elementary School opened in August 2003, to serve an ethnically diverse population of up to 600 children in kindergarten to fifth grade. 
Marsha Lynn Bragg
Photograph by Bernard Thomas, the Herald-Sun, Durham, NC
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