40-year first for Lynn English

LYNN – She helped build a satellite. She likes to play the Caribbean steel pans. And in between all that, Danielle White is also the first English High School student in four decades to win a National Merit or National Achievement Scholarship.”She represents the best that English High School has to offer and she is very humble,” said English guidance counselor Kara Baletsa.White, 17, learned in March she had won the scholarship based on her 2013 scores on the pre-scholastic aptitude test. She scored 1,930 in reading, writing and mathematics, said guidance counselor Matthew Wilkins, who said a perfect PSAT score is 2,400. Although its $2,500 cash award is smaller than many scholarships, the National Achievement Scholarship is intended, according to its website description, to “provide recognition for outstanding Black American high school students.”When she talks about the significance of the scholarship in her future. White, a senior, looks beyond graduating high school with honors and attending college. She plans to study mechanical engineering next year at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.”I feel this college is important for my development as a black engineer,” she said. “There is a long way to go, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.”White learned about college life by spending her summers in 2013 and 2014 participating in a Boston University program for students that lasted several weeks. The students lived on the BU campus taking classes.She took part last summer in a satellite-building competition with students from other schools that included a warning at the beginning of the course to not discuss certain details of the project.”She took college-level calculus during the summer when everyone else is at the beach – and she got an A,” Baletsa said.White is one of only two students Baletsa has ranked during her 20 years in the Lynn schools as worthy of being described as “one of the top few I’ve encountered in my career.”White lives outside Wyoma Square with her father, Walter, mother, Sharolyn Pearyer, brother, Turner, and sister, Taryn.She has a four-page resume that lists interests and volunteer activities ranging from tutoring to panjamming, and she has performed in Boston and Lynn festivals playing the large, bowl-shaped steel musical instrument.”She takes advantage of everything out there – she digs right in,” Wilkins said.