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Wednesday, September 25, 2013 • The Islands’ Sounder
Another successful ‘fifth School is off to a good start season’ for Farm to Cafeteria by BARBARA KLINE
Orcas School Superintendent
by MADIE MURRAY F2C Chair
“Fifth Season” on Orcas Island is when we gather as much abundant fresh summer produce, fruits and herbs from island farms as possible and process and freeze them so they can be used later in the year when they would normally not be available for our school breakfasts and lunches. In essence, we are creating an additional, or fifth, season of food. On Friday the 13th, a band of earnest Farm to Cafeteria volunteers gathered together in the school Home Economics classroom amongst a virtual garden of plums, beets, basil, onions, tomatoes, garlic, corn, green and yellow beans, parsley, Italian prunes, red and yellow spuds, pears and squash...and did I mention plums? Perhaps our biggest job was pitting and packaging about 75 pounds of plums that will be turned into sauces and desserts prepared by our cafeteria staff this fall. Processing the rest of the items was a piece of cake, so to speak. The school garden, as well as Black Dog, Taproot, Coffelt, Morning Star, and Family Tides Farms supplied the amazingly beautiful veggies and herbs. The orchards of Ed Suij, Coffelt and Barbara Wheeler provided a huge supply of delicious pears and plums. A great big thanks to these amazing farms and orchards for their generous support of this program, also Bing, Zach and Debbie in our cafeteria, and to the volunteers: Kate Long, Merry Bush, Margie Doyle,
Contributed photo
Farm to Cafeteria volunteer Geri Turnoy and Jim Wilde of Lowe’s cutting up plums. Mariah Miller, Geri and David Turnoy, Jackie Daigle, Evangeline O’Sullivan, Chelsea Cates, and Jim Wilde from Lowe’s who came all way from “America” to give us a hand.
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Students and staff at the Orcas Island School District has gotten off to a great start for the 2013-14 school year. Students seem very excited to be back at school with their friends in new classes or schools. Both students and staff are enjoying their work with Kathy Page, new principal of the elementary, and Kyle Freeman, now principal of both middle and high schools. Kathy and Kyle have been continuing the positive behavior work that we began a few years ago. The three rules for all schools are: “Be Safe, Be Responsible, Be Respectful.” Kathy has brought new depth and fun for elementary students by the addition of “high five” stickers for students who are “caught” being particularly safe or responsible or respectful. Students are very happy to be collecting stickers and getting high fives from staff for their efforts. Elementary students (grades 1-3) were taking swimming lessons at Camp Orkila last week when the weather was still warm and sunny. We are very lucky to have a great resource such as Camp Orkila available to us and appreciate the partnership between the school and the camp. A big thank you also goes out to the parents who volunteered their time to accompany the students. Last Friday afternoon teachers spent time in a workshop learning more about the new instruc-
Contributed photo
The new modular building on Orcas School’s campus. tional Framework, the 5+ Dimensions of Teaching and Learning from the University of Washington. http://www.k-12leadership. org/services/5-dimensions. A substantial group of teachers continued working into Friday evening to improve their understanding and teaching skills in reading for students in preschool through elementary. Athletics and student clubs have gotten underway. We had three exciting home games on Saturday with more planned for the coming week. If you are interested in keeping up with student activities and events, you can find the weekly student bulletin and announcements posted at the school district website at http://www.orcasislandschools.org/. We are looking forward to good conversations with parents at the Back to School Nights on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. We are very appreciative of the support of the community as we start the new school year. Thanks to the tech levy that was passed by the commu-
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nity, we started school with new student and teacher computers. These expand access by adding more devices as well as replacing ones that are past their useful life. We also continue to work on the 2012 bond plans. We expect to go out for bid in January with construction scheduled to begin in early April. The first construction site will be in the elementary building to create the new middle school. We are also placing a modular building on campus. As soon as the permit is approved, we will build the foundation for the new modular building. When the foundation is complete, we will move the modular to the foundation and set it up as a classroom behind the current administration building. This is the picture of a new modular building that is now the property of the Orcas Island School District; it is pictured on the University of Washington campus which was its old home. The building is currently stored in Mt. Vernon waiting for the foundation to be completed. When that step is done, it will be moved and placed on its new foundation on the school campus behind the district office.
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